The entire Islamic world believes that the Quran is infallible. This belief is so rooted in their psyche that when a Muslim friend of mine introduced me to Islam, he presented this as evidence of the divine origin of the Quran. He argued that because the Quran unlike all other holy books has not been changed it must be from God.
Whether the Quran is infallible or whether it has been corrupted or not are two different subjects.
As for the first question the answer is that the Quran is not infallible. It contains thousands of errors, absurdities, contradictions, inaccuracies and sheer nonsense. It contradicts logic, history, science, the Bible and even itself. It even contains grammatical errors that show its author was an illiterate man. Hardly can you find a book as absurd as this book. It is so poorly written that I cannot call it literature.
As for the other question, we don’t know. The Quran we have is the one compiled by Othman. He burned all other versions of the Quran so there can be no disagreement among Muslims. It is clear that the other versions must have been different from the one chosen by him otherwise he would not have burned them. How did he determine his version is the correct one and the other versions are not? There was no way for him to know for certainty. It is very possible that his pick was not the right one. However, since all other versions are destroyed, it is impossible to say whether the one we have is the authentic one.
Just see what has happened to the hadiths. Various people have reported the same story is various ways. They defer in details. The verses of the Quran could have also suffered similar fate, although perhaps not to that extent, because they were memorized.
However, with a little rational thinking, we can assume since Othman had to burn the other versions to avoid discrepancy, this book must have been altered. It is also possible that many of the verses of the present Quran are not what Muhammad said. The original verses may have been the ones that were burned. Many verses may have been lost forever. It is also possible that some verses have been added to the Quran that were not originally said by Muhammad.
===================================================================
2:106 We do not abolish a verse unless we provide a better verse.
Contradiction: 10:64 There is no change in the words of Allah.
=============================================================
The Quran is well preserved ?
It was narrated that ‘Aishah said: “The Verse of stoning and of breastfeeding an adult ten times was revealed, and the paper was with me under my pillow. When the Messenger of Allah died, we were preoccupied with his death, and a tame sheep came in and ate it.” Sunan Ibn Majah1944
==========================================================
The Quran was written twice. The first quran had to be burned because of the contradictions. Sahih Bukhari 4987
==========================================================
A large part of the Qur’an has been lost
Sahih Bukhari 7191, Narrated by Zaid bin Thabit:
Abu Bakr sent for me because of the great number of casualties in the battle of Yamama, while `Umar was sitting with him. Abu Bakr said (to me): `Umar came to me and said: ‘A large number of men who recite the Holy Qur’an, who memorized it, were killed on the day of the battle of Yamama, as well as on other battlefields, so that a large part of the Qur’an may be lost.
Abu Bakr then said to me (Zaid): “You are a wise young man and we have no suspicions about you, and you have written the Divine Inspiration for the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). So you should search for the fragmentary writings of the Qur’an and collect them (in one book).” So I started compiling the Qur’an by collecting it from the leafless stems of the date palm, from the pieces of leather and hides, from the stones and from the chests of men (who had memorized the Qur’an).
==================================================
Sunan Ibn Majah 1944
“The Verse of stoning and of breastfeeding an adult ten times was revealed1, and the paper was with me under my pillow. When the Messenger of Allah died, we were preoccupied with his death, and a tame sheep came in and ate it.”
==================================================
We, as Muslims, were taught that the Qur’an is the unaltered, perfectly preserved Word of God unchanged since the time of the Prophet. But that’s simply not true.
There are seven to ten canonized Qur’ans in circulation today, each with textual differences in Arabic. These aren’t just pronunciation differences. They include real differences in wording and meaning. That’s not even counting the earlier versions that Uthman ordered to be destroyed. The version most Muslims read today, Hafs ‘an ‘Asim, wasn’t even standardized until 1924. And now that the Qur’an is finally being studied critically and academically, major issues are being exposed that were hidden or ignored for centuries.
Compare that to the Bible. Yes, there are four canonized versions: Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Ethiopian. But this is openly acknowledged. The Bible is the most studied text in human history, with tens of thousands of manuscripts, some dating back nearly two thousand years. Scholars have debated its contents for centuries, and its history is well documented and transparent.
So ironically, one could argue that the Bible is actually better preserved than the Qur’an. Not because it’s perfect, but because it is historically transparent and open to scrutiny. The Qur’an, on the other hand, has been protected from criticism, curated through political enforcement, and falsely presented as unchanged. Once you look at the actual historical record, the myth of perfect Qur’anic preservation falls apart.===
=================================================
6:34 There is no change in God’s words.
Contradiction: 2:106 Whatever sign We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, for it We bring better or equal to it.
Contradiction: Every contradiction is a change of God’s word.
Contradiction : 16:101 God changes the Qur’an by abolishing and replacing it.
Aisha and Ubayy ibn Ka’b on the 100+ Verses Missing from Surah 33
Muslims claim that the Qur’an has been perfectly preserved. They can only make this claim, however, by employing their standard apologetic strategy–namely, rejecting their own sources and calling the early Muslim scholars “liars.” As I argued here, such an approach will ultimately lead to skepticism about Muhammad. But if this is how Muslims want to argue, so be it.
Indeed, I’d like to see my Muslim friends reject even more commentary from early Muslims, who were in a better position to know what really happened. Let’s consider two passages in which Ubayy ibn Ka’b (one of Muhammad’s most trusted reciters of the Qur’an) and Aisha (the “Mother of the Faithful”) declare that approximately two-thirds of Surah 33 is missing. Both passages are taken from Abu Ubaid’s Kitab Fada’il-al-Qur’an.
Ibn Abi Maryam related to us from Ibn Luhai’a from Abu’l-Aswad from Urwa b. az-Zubair from A’isha who said, “Surat al-Ahzab (xxxiii) used to be recited in the time of the Prophet with two hundred verses, but when Uthman wrote out the codices he was unable to procure more of it than there is in it today.”
Isma’il b. Ibrahim and Isma’i b. Ja’far related to us from al-Mubarak b. Fadala from Asim b. Abi’n-Nujud from Zirr b. Hubaish who said–Ubai b. Ka’b said to me, “O Zirr, how many verses did you count (or how many verses did you read) in Surat al-Ahzab?” “Seventy-two or seventy-three,” I answered. Said he, “Yet it used to be equal to Surat al-Baqara (ii), and we used to read in it the verse of Stoning.”
I brought up Aisha’s claim in a debate with Bassam, and Bassam, if I recall correctly, confidently proclaimed that the passage had been “fabricated.” I hereby ask my friend Bassam to provide evidence that the Muslims in the chains I’ve presented were inventing false claims about the Qur’an. I would also like Bassam to say that Abu Ubaid (who was called “the ocean of knowledge” by his fellow Muslims) was ignorant and sloppy in his investigation of these passages.
(Note: If you ever wondered what happened to the “Verse of Stoning,” which was supposed to be part of the Qur’an but instead came up missing, Ubayy ibn Ka’b says above that it fell out with the other 100+ missing verses of Surah 33).
Abu Ubaid al-Qasim bin Salam, author of Kitab Fada’il-al-Qur’an (The Excellent Qualities of the Holy Quran)
Born: 774 AD, Herat, Afghanistan
Died: 838 AD, Mecca, Saudi Arabia