than Islam really is.
A little history of the Koran will help explain why the
chapters (“Surahs”) of the Koran appear in the jumbled-up
order in which they are traditionally presented, and then we
will go on to discuss why this traditional ordering has no
sound reasoning behind it. The Koran was not written down
as a unified text in Mohammed’s lifetime, but was
assembled some years after his death. And whilst Muslims
will claim there is only one perfect and unchanging Koran
(which was supposedly passed from Allah to Mohammed
via the Angel Gabriel), there were in fact multiple Korans in
existence as texts. These variant Korans were all thought to
be destroyed, leaving only one unified Koran.^288 This single
Koran in Arabic has been the basis for all the translations
which Muslims have used ever since.
Since the word “Koran” means “recitation” why was
the Koran ever written down? Following Mohammed’s
death a decision was made to transcribe the various
fragments of the Koran into a single text. Since Islam is a
religion of war, those who knew how to recite the Koran
were among the most ferocious warriors and were being
killed, and it was thus feared that parts of the Koran
would end up being forgotten, as all those devout Muslims
who could recite it were dying in wars to impose Islam on
others.^289 Whilst many early Christians were murdered
simply because they held Christian beliefs, by contrast
Muslims were being killed in the process of killing or
enslaving unbelievers (because the jihadis believed that only
this form of martyrdom guaranteed entry to Paradise). Thus
the very concept of “martyr” in Christianity and Islam are