Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics

(Jacob Rumans) #1

In 1972, construction workers who were restoring the
Great Mosque of Sana’a in Yemen chanced upon a cache of
ancient manuscripts. These turned out to be pages of the
Koran dating back to the seventh and eighth centuries,
many of which contained passages that differed from the
canonical and universally accepted Koran. Although most
of these differences were minor, their very existence was
enormously significant, for they represented a fresh
challenge to the Muslim assumption that the Koran is the
perfect Word of Allah Himself, sent from Heaven and
preserved in pristine form without any variants at all. The
original text is preserved in Heaven on golden tablets.


Other scholars have found evidence that challenges the
common Islamic claim that the Koran was fully compiled
during the reign of Uthman. ‘‘There is no hard evidence,’’
says Patricia Crone, author ofHagarism: The Making of the
Islamic World, ‘‘for the existence of the Koran in any form
before the last decade of the seventh century.’’[22] If this is
true, of course, it casts doubt upon the accepted Islamic
understanding of the prophecy of Muhammad and, indeed,
about his status as a true prophet.


33. What does the Koran teach about


Jesus?


In the Koran, Jesus is ordinarily called Jesus the
Messiah (Isa Al Masih) or Jesus, Son of Mary.


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