Preservation of the Qur"an

DISCLAIMERPro's performance in this debate was disappointing. Pro plagiarized most of his responses, used non-academic blogs as his sources and gave inadequate responses which he repeated (after being refuted), while using all sorts of numerological tricks which are based on fabrications to argue for a mathematical symmetry in the Qur'an.Pro's plagiarism in the third round involved using paragraphs written by Muslim bloggers without giving any citations. After being exposed for plagiarism, Pro gave out his non-trusted sources, which were non-trusted, Islam-biased blogs such as "LetMeTurnTheTables.com" and "IslamicAwarness.com", which have no academic accreditation whatsoever.Pro's arguments were either quote-mining scholars, misunderstandings of the history of the Qur'an or numerological tricks. I shall try and address each falsehood in the form of a general myth used in this debate.MYTHSMyth #1 - The Qur'an was revealed to Mohammad split into versesAccording to the book "The Religion of Islam" co-written by the Islamic scholar Muhammad Ali and the Non-Muslim, Western scholar Christopher Gallegos, there are five different verse-numbering systems: Basra, Kufa, Madina, Meccah and Sham with different number of verses. The Basra had 6204 verses, the Madinah had 6211 verses, the Makkah had 6219 verses and so on[1]. This difference is explained by the two scholars as "a difference of computation only, some readers marking the end of a verse where others do not[1]."The Muslim academic Mahmoud Ayoub in his book, "The Qur'an and its Interpretors," explains that the Kufa numbering was a human-made convention followed under the authority of the Islamic Caliph Ali, who came after Mohammad: "Surat Al Bakarah is divided into 286 verses, according to the school of Kufah; 287 according to that of Basrah; 285 according to the scholars of Mecca and Medina; and 284 according to the school of Syria. The Kufan numbering, however, is the one most widely accepted and is also related on the authority of 'Ali, the first Shi'i imam[2]."In conclusion, any argument for mathematical symmetry in the original Qur'an that relies on the number of verses show ignorance of the history of the Qur'an, as the original Qur'an revealed to Mohammad had no verses.Furthermore, the odd-even property is not something that implies outstanding symmetry. If you have X number of buckets, and you split them into even and odds, it is predictable that you are going to have +1, 0, -1 differences if you compare the number of the even buckets and the odd buckets. This could be done to any book, including the verse-numbering in the Bible, as there is no uniform number of sentences in the Qur'an and the Bible for the verses.Myth #2 - Mathematical relations exist in the Qur'anPro provided many false numbers one of which is... "zakah (in this root is mentioned 32 not 47 you pick words similair[sic] to zakah. blessings (root of tabarka) is mentioned 32."Rebuttal: Tabarka means "To be blessed", it doesn't stand for blessings. Blessings in Arabic is translated as "بَرَكَاتٍ" which is mentioned twice according to Search-the-qur'an.com. Moreover, Search-the-Qur'an.com, gives 8 instanes of Tabarka(تَبَارَك), not 32 as Pro claims. Please check out the page for yourself(http://search-the-quran.com...) and CTRL+F "تَبَارَك".In summary, Pro's numbers are mostly false and sometimes based on false definitions. We have not been given any proof or direct citations for the numbers he presented.Myth #3 - Islamic-ordained rulings on Hadeehs are empirical evidencePro argues, "i already gave you evidence why its weak - its sources came from one person and untrusted one.."Rebuttal: This is not empirical evidence. Empirical evidence should have consisted of:1- Contradictions such a chain narrator makes.2- Historic evidence that this narrator is lying.3- Further accounts that show many discrepancies in what that narrator narrated.I made a preemption that personal attacks against chain narrators(such as he is "well-known to be not reliable") are not accepted by me as I don't subscribe to the Islamic rulings on the authenticity of hadeeths for many reasons such as:1- Every Islamic sect have different rulings on the authenticity of Hadeeths(e.g Non-Wahabi Sunni, Wahabi Sunni, Shiah, Druze, Ahmadiyah).2- Unreliable criteria such as personal attacks on chain narrators without any historic or empirical evidence such as "He was a drunkard, he forgets a lot, he hates the Prophet" and other personal attacks.Therefore, the two hadeeths are valid evidence, provided that Pro failed in proving that the chain-narrator was wrong through empirical evidence, but based his response on personal attacks that are not based on one shred of historic evidence.Those are the two hadeeths which I presentedA’isha(Prophet's wife): "During the time of the prophet, the chapter of the Parties used to be two hundred verses when read. When Uthman edited the copies of the Qur’an, only the current (verses) were recorded.Uba ibn Ka’b(Prophet's companion) asked one of the Muslims, "How many verses in the chapter of the Parties?" He said, "Seventy-three verses." He (Uba) told him, "It used to be almost equal to the chapter of the Cow (about 286 verses) and included the verse of the stoning".FURTHER EVIDENCE1- Uthman confessing that he changed some verses in the Qur'an.[Pro did not respond]2- The Qur'an collected through inaccurate measures by Zaid Ibn Thabet.Pro first quote-mined Zaid and then responded, "Zaid didnt accept the written text unless the same verse had been memorized. the written text only found with Abu Khuzaimah al-Ansari."Rebuttal: This is another misrepresentation of the account of Ziad Ibn Thabet. Zaid did not find it with "anybody else", he did not claim that he only found it in written form with Abu Khuzaimah al-Ansari, as he could have easily stated that "only al-Ansari had it written down but other people knew it."3- Al-Zuhri's expert testimony on lost versesPro repeated his same response which I have already refuted above. He claims that Al-Zuhri did not use any sources, when he did use many trusted sources(Abu Dawood) and eyewitness accounts(Umar's) which I provided in my refutation above.Here is his expert's testimony:"We have heard that many Qur'an passages were revealed but that those who had memorised them fell in the Yamamah fighting. Those passages had not been written down and, following the deaths of those who knew them, were no longer known; nor had Abu Bakr, nor Umar nor Uthman as yet collected the texts of the Qur'an . Those lost passages were not to be found with anyone after the deaths of those who had memorised them."4- Lack of Diacritical marks in the early Qur'ansPro tried shifting the goal-posts and arguing that the Qur'an was preserved in meanings (although some words are probably wrong). Knowing that Pro originally said the Qur'an was preserved to the letter:Pro had originally said, "If they committee would have made a error even of a single alphabet in transcribing the Quran, the Qurra (memorizers of the Quran)... would have caught it right away and correct it."...SUMMARYPro dropped many of his initial claims and ignored most of what I said by exactly repeating his responses. He did not offer any substantial arguments, and clearly argued like someone not familiar with the history of the Qur'an. Moreover, he shifted goal-posts and failed in satisfying his burden of proof that the Qur'an was preserved to the letter (or the alphabet).I thank Pro for starting this debate.It was at least interesting.CITATIONS[1] The Religion of Islam. By Muhammad Ali, Christopher Gallegos. Jul 25, 2011 - Body, Mind & Spirit.[2] The Qur'an and Its Interpreters , Volume 1. Mahmoud Ayoub. P.55. Found online on: http://books.google.com.lb...