Here is some more reading for you Abu, on how your book has remained unchanged since the angels gave it to you, I mean, who would find that implausible?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199901/koran

This is about the restoration of some of the earliest copies found.

Here is a short extract from the article which is pertinent to the argument.

"To historicize the Koran would in effect delegitimize the whole historical experience of the Muslim community," says R. Stephen Humphreys, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "The Koran is the charter for the community, the document that called it into existence. And ideally—though obviously not always in reality—Islamic history has been the effort to pursue and work out the commandments of the Koran in human life. If the Koran is a historical document, then the whole Islamic struggle of fourteen centuries is effectively meaningless."

It should be funny seeing the tapdancing around this issue, obviously this may be like dinosaur bones, and just be a trick of the devil.lol.

Due to the number of different interpretations of the koran, one really doesn't know how it was "meant" to be read.....and is just a text used to interpret anyway the reader decides. Muslims scholars can't even agree on the details, how would one expect the local terrorist to properly understand it's true meaning.

What is clear is that it can, and is, used to cause terror, to control, to punish, to kill, to dominate and to generally be a pain in the arse when it comes to independent thought and progression of the human race.

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Unlike the Bible, the Qur'an is so highly regarded by Muslims, that from the time of Muhammad (pbuh) until this very day, there's ALWAYS been a significant proportion of the Muslim Community that have committed the entire Qur'an to memory. They are known as Huffaz, and I personally have two friends who are Huffaz, meaning they've preserved (hafiz means preserver, huffaz being the plural) the entire contents of the Qur'an in their memories, and they spend a considerable amount of time each day maintaining it. This is different from the concept of 'oral traditions' because there's also always been an accompanying written form as well and the two have always been used to verify one another. No generation has existed since that time till now that didn't have many many huffaz.

This nonsense is stopped at the first hurdle. If you like, I can also post articles that pick apart the same article that you posted, but there's really no need. Knowing the history of the Muslim community and a little about the methods used to preserve the text of the Qur'an make it quite obvious this article is not relevant to the question of authenticity of the Qur'an.

And it never actually says anything in the article about it deviating from the standardised text and readings that we have from the huffaz.

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What they mean by variant readings is quite interesting, and probably just means things like a long vowel in place of a short vowel for instance. As for varying verse orders, that speaks for itself, doesn't indicate any difference in the Qur'anic text whatsoever. In fact it's been well known in the Islamic world that there have been differing ways of ordering the chapters (that's what he means, not verses), so that point is really nothing new.

Add to this the fact only two 'scholars' have ever been permitted to view the documents, both of them German Orientalists, in the 30 years since they've been discovered, makes this a little more than suspicious. If it's really something that's gonna 'shake our faith', then why not publish it? Why hide it away and allow only two men, both non-Muslims to view it?

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I can read Arabic, I'm just not overly fluent in the language, indicating that I'm certainly no scholar of the language, as this guy is claiming to be, yet I can quite clearly pick out how pathetically weak his argument is. Anyone who's memorised even a few chapters of the Qur'an would know this is nonsense, as we read daily verses which contain phrases like the one I mentioned (azwaajan Mutahhara) which quite plainly mean "pure/pristine spouses". In fact one verse I was just reading a few days ago contains this phrase, it is a description of paradise:

But give glad tidings to those who believe and work righteousness, that their portion is Gardens, beneath which rivers flow. Every time they are fed with fruits therefrom, they say: "Why, this is what we were fed with before," for they are given things in similitude; and they have therein companions pure (and holy); and they abide therein (for ever).

mozza, you claim you're attempting to incite Muslims to reform, yet you bring nothing but absolute nonsense which any Muslim could clearly refute, simply from knowing a few basic chapters of the Qur'an. whilst you continue to use such baseless arguments, you cannot expect anyone to pay you much serious attention.

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Rubbish. There's many translations into almost every single language. Scholars have merely pointed out that a translation is not an authoritative text.

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Preposterous, I know so many normal ever day Arabs who can listen to the Qur'an and understand it word for word. Even some raised in the West, as long as they've had some extra attention to Arabic language. There are some archaic words that are not used in modern day speech, but their meaning is well known amongst those educated in the Islamic sciences. I really don't know wher eyou get this tripe from.

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The first article I did read right the way through. But I gotta admit, when it began talking about translating the Qur'an by using Aramaic, I got a little put off.
Then to see him claim that because Aramaic says Hoor means white raisin, therefore it means that in the Qur'an, when it's quite obvious that other phrases which CLEARLY mean pure spouses refer to the same thing, did make me lose interest... but I suffered to complete the article, the rest of which didn't offer anything more revealing.

The second article I've read before, so just skimmed it lightly to re-familiarise myself with it.

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Your position is akin to saying let's bring two Turkish Cypriot scholars to translate them and no Greek scholars would be allowed to even view them. And then we publicise claims about them that supposedly shake the foundations of all we know about Greek civilisation.

My position would be akin to saying let's allow some actual Greek scholars to investigate the texts also, before we make any wild claims about what they do or don't reveal.

It's quite obvious to any impartial onlooker who is calling to a rational and logical approach to these claims, and who is driven by a blinded ideological viewpoint.

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Nowhere did I state you need to be a Muslim to understand the Qur'an or that you need to understand the Qur'an to be a Muslim. Your posts are truly delusional.

Let me try again, in plain English:

Scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, Arab and non-Arab must be allowed to study the texts in question, and their findings must be made public, so that they can be transparent and subject to scrutiny.
Are you against this? If not, then stop the petty bickering.