168 No god but God
twenty-two years of Muhammad’s ministry, the Quran was in an
almost constant state of flux, sometimes altering dramatically depend-
ing on where and when a verse was revealed, whether in Mecca or
Medina, whether at the beginning or the end of Muhammad’s life.
Occasionally, these changes led to what appear to be significant
textual contradictions. For example, the Quran initially took a some-
what neutral stance on the drinking of wine and the practice of gam-
bling, claiming that in both “there is great sin and some benefit for
people, though the sin is greater than the benefit” (2:219). A few years
later, another verse was revealed that, while still not prohibiting
drinking and gambling, urged believers to refrain from gambling and
not to “come to prayer while intoxicated” (4:43). Some time after that,
however, the Quran explicitly outlawed both drinking and gambling,
calling them “acts of Satan” and associating them with idolatry, the
greatest sin (5:90). In this way, the previous verses, which condemned
but did not forbid drinking and gambling, appear to have been abro-
gated by another, later verse, which unambiguously prohibited both.
Quranic scholars call this abrogation of one verse with another
naskh, claiming that it demonstrates that God chose to introduce
important sociological changes to Muhammad in stages, thereby
allowing the Ummah to adjust gradually to the new moral ethos. But
if naskh demonstrates anything, it is that while God may not change,
the Revelation most certainly did, and without apology: “Whenever
We abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten,” the Quran says, “We
exchange it with a better or similar one; don’t you know that God can
do anything?” (2:106; see also 16:101).
The Prophet himself sometimes openly suppressed or negated
older verses, considering them to have been replaced by newer ones.
That is because Muhammad did not consider the Quran to be a static
Revelation, which may be why he never bothered to authorize its col-
lection into a codified book. The Quran was for Muhammad a living
scripture that consciously evolved alongside the Ummah, continually
adapting itself to meet the specific needs of the developing commu-
nity. In fact, an entire science of commentary called asbab al-nuzul
(“the reasons for, or causes of Revelation”) developed soon after
Muhammad’s death in order to determine the specific historical cir-
cumstances in which a certain verse was revealed. By tracking the