first Muslim community in order to
determine the time and circumstances... in
which certain verses were revealed.^307So, not only is abrogation accepted as mainstream in the
study of Islam, abrogation and knowledge of the correct
chronological order of the chapters of the Koran is a pre-
requisite for Islamic (sharia) law. Those Muslims who say
they want sharia law, are thus Muslims who are committed
to the expertise of those who know the chronology of the
Koran. And if significant numbers of Muslims are
committed to this chronology, then significant numbers of
Muslims are also committed to the Koran culminating with
commands to kill the unbelievers. These commands are the
first thing you will see when you turn to our Koran.
The chronological ordering of the Koran has extremely
wide implications, with just a single verse of the Koran
being able to cancel scores of the verses which precede it.
To illustrate this, consider the following quotation from The
Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an:
The abrogation theory achieved great
sophistication at the hands of later legal
scholars, who, for instance, argued that the
famous ‘Sword Verse’ enjoining the
believers to ‘slay the idolaters wherever you
find them’ (Q9:5) abrogated no fewer than
124 other verses commanding ‘anything less
than a total offensive against the non-
believers’.^308