Why DATES of the different Qur'ans are so DAMAGING!

According to Dr Shabir Ally there were only 10 approved recitations, and Muslims were not permitted to "go beyond these 10", but that the initial 7 were those which were revealed to Muhammad during his lifetime, with another 3 added later.

Dr Yasir Qadhi agrees with Dr Ally, saying that the 10 were "the creme de la creme" and "the best of the best"!

Listening to these gentleman, one would not be faulted with assuming that all of these initial 10 existed while Muhammad was still living (i.e. before 632 AD, when he died), but once a time line is introduced it is obvious that none of these 10 compilations of the Qur'an were around during the life of Muhammad.

In fact none of them were even around during the century Muhammad lived.

The earliest of the Qira'at Qur'anic writers was Ibn Amir ad-Dimashqi, who died in 736 AD, so he probably wrote his Qur'an during the previous 20 years before his death; thus between 716-736 AD. That's over 80 years after Muhammad died! So, when he wrote his Qur'an Muhammad had been dead for almost a century!

What's more, all of the other 6 Qira'at Qur'ans were written after ibn Amir. Thus, all of the 7 'holy Qur'ans' continued to be written 84-173 years after Muhammad was already dead!

The man who chose them, Ibn Mujahid, did so around 936 AD, so a good 300 years after Muhammad had died!

Then, another 3 were added to the 7, whose dates are from 748 AD - 844 AD, or a good 116 to 212 years after Muhammad's death, and they were chosen by Al-Jazari in 1429 AD, which was 797 years after Muhammad had died.

So, the 10 "creme de la creme" and "the best of the best" of the Qira'at Qur'ans were never in existence during the lifetime of Muhammad, but were being created and written down between 84 to 212 years after Muhammad was already dead.

So, how can Muslims continue to say that these 10 Qira'at compilations existed at the time of Muhammad when they didn't even begin to be created for almost a century after he died?

But, the biggest question concerns the canonized Qur'an today, the HAFS Qur'an, chosen first in 1924 in Cairo as the official Qur'an, and then canonized by King Fahd in 1985 as the official Qur'an for the whole Muslim world, and according to Yasir Qadhi accepted by 90% of all Muslims as the authoritative Qira'at.

Yet, it is not among the 10 authoritative Qira'ats! So, where is it? It's among the 20 other Qira'ats which were chosen as transmitters of the original 10 (2 for each of the 10), which means they couldn't have been chosen until the 10 were first chosen, and they weren't finalized until Al-Jazari did so in 1429 AD; suggesting that the 30 final authoritative Qira'at Qur'ans (7+3+20=30) used today were only chosen sometime after 1429 AD, or almost 800 years after Muhammad!

Can you now understand why Muslims don't want us to put these names and dates on a timeline, because they visually show you just how damaging this information really is!

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020
(34,610) (Music: "small adventure", by Rafael Krux (from filmmusic-io - License CC BY)