“but just want to understand why they believe what they are saying is true.”

I used this question and it worked. They had no way to defend their silly beliefs. Thanks Richard I will subscribe in 2025 Lords willing.

Can you identify any actual factual error in this article? And demonstrate it is incorrect with a material citation?

Or are you the one writing bullshit?

By the way this paper about the Sanaa manuscripts makes the best rigorous defence I have seen for the traditional story about the Quran:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/110978941/Sanaa-1-and-the-Origins-of-the-Qur-An

The two researchers are qualified (PhDs) and were working as assistant professors (not sure if still or not) at Stanford and Harvard.

They have Muslim names though and I don’t know if they still follow the religion and if so, whether they are apologetics or not and I don’t know unfortunately of a sharp skeptic and qualified scholar in Quranic studies that I can ask for his opinion like we ask Dr. Carrier about Biblical ones.

I would have made a very good Islamic apologetic it seems, too bad my integrity and moral compass prevented me 😀

So let me tell you something, this is a somewhat losing battle.

I’ll just pick a few points because I have wrestled with these hadiths when I was a Muslim, I am now Agnostic but I still think the case from these is weak.

For the first hadith you mentioned, he is saying that he not everyone forgot these chapters. The first verse he mentioned is actually a hadith (Bukhari 6439 and Muslim 1048) so it can be easily argued that he was just confused there, the second verse that he mentioned does indeed exist in a chapter in the Quran (Chapter 61, Verse 2).

For the other two hadiths that say that some notable companions (You are blowing their importance up a lot by the way, your description of them is technically correct but it doesn’t really mean much authority as you think it does and as your way of writing will indicate to the readers not well-versed in the Islamic tradition, Umar and Uthman for example are much much more of an authority than them) had different versions, that is factually correct. There is even a third one that says the same about Abu al-Darda who is also a notable companion. The problem is:

1- There are other hadiths that detail some of these differences between the versions and the differences are very few and very minimal (Example Bukhari 4944).

2- The hadith literature also details how Uthman settled on the variant and it was always a majority vote requiring at least a testimony of two prophet companions that they heard him say the verse on every single verse.

3- Add to number two that the hadith literature says that Gabriel sometimes came to Muhammad and removed, added and reworded some verses and you have a very solid defence that some of these companions didn’t hear the final revealed version especially that some of them did travel.

Even the written over older variants on the Sanaa manuscripts can be explained away with this and I have seen it done in a peer-reviewed academic publication with some of the verses that varied in it compared with the Uthmanic version and some versions that survived of these dissenting companions and in the majority of the cases, the Uthmanic version coincides with one against the other making it 2 against 1.

You can still press these and make a case against total preservation from corruption but it is IMHO a very hard battle and won’t probably persuade even liberal Muslims.

Johan, I don’t know if you will see this but I will leave it here anyway because this is literally the best article on the internet on Islamic counter-apologetics written for a Western audience.

There are multiple levels here and please note that what I will write next are mostly facts not opinions and I am able to copiously support every point of them with sources including mostly Arabic Islamic scholarly books where relevant if required:

1- Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is not mentioned in the Quran/Koran.

2- There’s no authentic hadith that singles out FGM and says it’s recommended. The only authentic one singling it out (It’s in Muslim’s book) just mentions it as a fact of being already done as it basically says something that could be roughly translated as “If the two mutilated organs meet …..” in referral to PIV sexual intercourse so no recommendation here as well.

3- There are other authentic hadiths that use a generic word that could refer to both male and female mutilation and say that the practice denoted by this word is recommended but you can easily interpret these as only meaning male circumcision as the word used is generic.

4- There are other hadiths that single out FGM and recommend it but are weak hadiths.

5- Islamic schools of law (Fiqh Madhhabs) either mandate it or recommend it.

5- A lot of modern Islamic authorities advise Muslims not to do it, some even agreeing that the government make it illegal punish both the parents and the professional who do it by law. This includes Al-Azhar in Egypt which can be argued to be the most influential Sunni organization/authority in the world (it took decades of campaigning and pressure from Egyptian feminists, starting with the late Nawal El Saadawi in the early 70s, for them to reverse their opinion and reach this stance but it’s their stance now and has been for some years). Hence, no, it’s not only secular Muslims who are against it.

6- Most modern Muslims worldwide don’t view it as a part of the religion. In fact there’s a small but growing minority even in the Salafist branch of Sunni Islam that is opposing it now and that’s the most extreme branch of fundamentalism in Islam.

7- Most Liberal Muslims don’t give crap about what hadiths say anyway because they (correctly) believe that they were not reliably transmitted so you can’t use this to argue with them anyway. Of course, if they don’t give a crap about hadiths then it follows that they don’t even consider the Islamic schools of law to be of any authority. Indeed, they even straight out strongly criticize these schools.

All in all, what Dr. Carrier said stands. The FGM argument can and should be used to only corner an Islamic fundamentalist who sees it as recommended or mandatory but it will be of no help with moderate or liberal Muslims which are the ones you will probably talk to.

I think the problem isn’t entirely divorced from Islam, in fact, if I recall correctly, one of the four main Sunni Islam schools recommends it should be done. I could be wrong, regardless, EXMNA’s Sarah Haider did a good rebuttal on it to Reza Aslan’s famed CNN defense of this being an ‘African’ problem, not an Islamic/Muslim one. That’s actually not true, and FGM is practiced in Muslim majority countries like Indonesia (which I believe follow the Shafi’i version). Again the very idea that the Hadith is flexible on the matter is pretty abhorrent, and to many Muslims, the assumption that most of Hadith is actually not attributable to Mohammed is actually akin to challenging Islam’s fundamentals. IMHO, you’re a bit generous in your criticism on the issue but I see where you’re coming from. I’m only commenting here because I don’t see myself entirely agreeing with you, and esp. because I come from a Muslim background (orthodox Sunni).

It is simply not true that “all the most influential Muslim authorities” support FGM. Please actually read the things I linked you to.

Indeed, many (secular) Muslims campaign against FGM. Probably, you can find some conservative Muslims who do – depending on your definition of ‘conservative’. But claiming that most conservative Muslims oppose it flies in the face of reason, considering all the most influential Muslim authorities, within Sunni and Shia Islam, recommend it.

You are right that there is little point to bring this up when discussing with Muslims. Support for FGM is indeed very, very low among Muslims living in Western countries. I would only ever bring it up as an example of how Muslims and non-Muslims can agree on important issues, in that frame of reference. It can also be used to show how modern science can help inform us about how to interpret scripture. Because it is really the knowledge about the harms of FGM that informs anti-FGM Muslims to interpret the same passages against FGM, that the supporters use in favor of it. If Muhammed wanted the procedure that is better for the woman, and FGM is bad for the woman, then clearly we should oppose FGM.

The reason why I bring it up here is that what you say is simply misleading. And you’re not alone. And the problem here is that this causes a lot of well-meaning, tolerant, generally sympathetic people to repeat falsehoods that make them look ridiculous if exposed, which is very easily done. Which is obviously used by xenophobic, Muslim-hating groups to show how they are the ones with facts on their side. And that is a position we should never allow those forces to be in.

So, while we should not bring up FGM as a fundamentally ‘Muslim’ problem, we also should not repeat common falsehoods such as FGM not being advocated in Islam, or FGM only being an African problem.