just read that news piece (didn't care to read it before) and all I can say is that it's just another specimen of yellow journalism, nothing worth a second look. I like how most news items nowadays start with 'experts believe/say' this and that. So basically they just want us to swallow whole any rubbish they publish because some moron has an opinion about it...however implausible. I mean anyone who's read the Qur'an al-Kareem will laugh at the idea that it predated the Prophet (peace be upon him). Just shows their desperation. They couldn't find anything similar to Christianity's irrational trinity or the sketchy history of the gradual 'evolution' of their primary text so they're fuming and throwing all pretense of sanity to the winds, unable to contain their hatred for Islam. We have our response ready:
1. If a piece of paper is manufactured in 2015 and is not written on until 2050, carbon dating will show 2015 but won't account for the 35 years... 2. Tom Holland says it dates back to between AD 568 and 645. That's a 77 year window. The Quran was revealed between 610-632. Is that not within 568-645?!
wow I didn't know there were so many 'embarrassments' to cover-up in carbon dating until I read this wiki. some good info on carbon dating in this paper about dead sea scrolls: http://roberteisenman.com/articles/Redating_the_Radio_Carbon_Dating_of_the_DSS.pdf
tom holland is a known islamophobe and a chronic liar. don't waste any more time refuting the cheapo.
that shakespeare wrote those works...or not is still a controversy; they probably think that our histories and documents are also as hypotheses-conjecture-induction-speculation laden as their own. --- thousands of narrators, histories of each narrator, works by major narrators/scholars, testimonies of those who met them, saw them, heard them, narrated from them... all of this is fiction and unreliable to according to these fussaq, who are merely working on conjecture and hypotheses. ---- to muslims, i say: would anyone treat you with any respect if you told them: modern computers and internet were actually invented by muslim students in palestine and all these capitalists jews/christians appropriated these inventions and just to safeguard this secret (which is a global conspiracy) - they are trying to eliminate palestinians. imagine the reaction? we treat their opinion concerning our histories and documents, with even more contempt. ---- look at the primary sources of ANY history - it will be just a handful of people if it not only a cicero or a hippocrates. yet islamic history is narrations of thousands upon thousands of narrators. so if you just take bukhari or muslim, it is not just ONE book, but thousands of narrators - all known - and reports corroborated, compared, analysed; plausibility questioned - to the point that even if contemporaries narrate from each other, it is not taken for granted until it is proven that they had indeed met (even that their meeting is possible is questioned!) and they indeed have narrated from the other person. and our gradation of reports is not just true/false, black/white. we have a nuanced gradation system the equivalent of which is not found in any civilisation. not just the text, but we also have additional attributes to reports such as the manner in which it was conveyed. so if one gets a report, the manner in which it was conveyed is also known. did the narrator recite it? or did you read it in is presence? or did you find it written? --- yet according to these cheap* historians and fussaq all of these people were either foolish, or ignorant or false and only 1400 years later, some immoral character has discovered the 'truth'. -------------------------- *i don't care how 'respectable' that fasiq kazzab historian is in western mythology - to me he is unclean filth, whose opinion is fit to be discarded without a second thought. has anyone heard of accepting a kafir's opinion in diyaanaat? ridiculous.
it is us, muslims who invented the science of corroboration - no nation before us and after us has the elaborate and complex system of verifying and source-authentication. yet this "historian" will teach us authentication. his own testimony will be rejected outright as he is a kafir which is the biggest fisq. he will die and be forgotten like the goldizhers and rest of the rotten orientalists and christian missionaries. gaddafi (or someone) theorised that shakespeare was an arab, shaykh zubayr - which is not as outlandish as this claim. they tried to prove grammar 'mistakes' in the qur'an etc. and expect that arabic scholars are as immature and incompetent as their own scholars? when it was rebutted roundly, they resort to all kinds of fake theories. their entire history is based on accounts of one or two lechers with probably no character at all - and they so wisely propound theories etc. based on accounts of philanderers and crooks. the ignorant - juhala - probably expect our histories to be as shaky as their own. after the sun rises from the west.
As if carbon dating is conclusive evidence! Carbon dating has many limitations and assumptions. The clock was initially calibrated by dating objects of known age such as Egyptian mummies and bread from Pompeii; work that won Willard Libby the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. But even he “realized that there probably would be variation”. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-dating-gets-reset)
yes, these fussaq expect us to take their word - these wine-drinking swine-eating lying, cheating, philandering fussaq - rather than the millions of true, pious, upright muslims from the saHabah's time! dream on offspring of shayateen - and try all the schemes your grandmaster teaches you. but the qur'an has remained and shall remain:
Hmm .. What are these people up too.... http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/new...koran-could-rewrite-9966936#ICID=FB-Birm-main
Indeed the transmission of the Qur'an Shareef is mutawatir bil tabaqa; the highest form of transmitted knowledge. However, the argument of shaykh yaqubi sahib suffers from an inconsistency. Hazrat usman's compilation and the reports about it are ahaad so to rely on akhbar al-aahad to prove a mutawatir bil tabaqa does not make sense to me or perhaps someone can clarify for me.
Comment about the Birmingham Quran Manuscript By Sayyid Shaykh Muhammad Abul Huda al-Yaqoubi Correction of the message of Shaykh Dr. Ayman Suwayd The Holy Qur'an is proven authenticate by verbal narration of group of narrators who took it from the mouth of Prophet Salla Allah-u 'alayhi wasallam, and memorised it, not by writing and leaves. Writing it down in the seven copies during the time of our master Uthman ibn 'Affān in seven copies was not for authentication, because authentication relied on memorisation, and mutawaatir, i.e. large group narration was the proof of its validity. Some Sahabahs' Mus'hafs (and they are all trustworthy) had extra words which were rejected by consensus of the Sahaba and considered Tafsir, i.e. commentary, not Qur'an. Therefore, we do not have any consideration for any leaves or parchments discovered from the first century even if written by a companion of the Prophet, if they have different or extra words. So, the question posed in Dr. Ayman's comment about "who wrote it" is irrelevant and has no impact on the authentication of the Holy Qur'an, even no matter who the writer is; because the Holy Qur'an was proven via mutawātir oral narration. So is the other question which he posed about, "Where did the writer copied it from"; it is irrelevant to the authenticity of the Holy Qur'an. SO, when the good doctor says, "Our System (rather he meant, our method, is based on who wrote and where from" is wrong. Our method for the authenticity of the Qur'an was based on Mutawātir oral narration. It is upon this tawātur i.e. large group narration, the seven copies, which were ordered to be copied by Sayyiduna Uthman, may Allah be pleased with him, relied. The seven copies were later on narrated by Mutawātir way and were considered source of the authentication of the various Qirā'āt, ie.e readings, of the Holy Qur'an. So, the condition of Mutawatir narration to prove any was later on replaced by finding the verse in one of the seven copies. Finally, narration from books and papers is the weakest method of narration, it is called amongst the scholars of the methodology of hadith "Wijādah وجادة". It is not prove any Qur'an nor the soundness of any hadith. There is a lot more to say but we tried to be brief in these remarks as it is important to draw the attention of Muslims around the world the main method of the authentication fo the Qur'an which Allah guaranteed is "Memorisation and oral narration" Not "Writing".
for those interested in history of scripts, an interesting read. http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2749&context=theses
though the hijazi script matches well-known MSs from the first century: https://othmanabdullah.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/quranic-manuscript-hijazi-script/. also some samples here: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/samarqand.html wAllahu a'alam
they can't give up on their mischief making: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/22/oldest-quran-fragments-found-at-birmingham-university ---- unless they are referring to the inclusion of diacritic marks and ayah numbers etc in the present copies.
looking at these Qur'an Kareem fragments brings tears to my eyes. the whole of islamic history, i see it in front glaring as the sun in the sky