The Koran

Submitted by Vinod Kumar (United States), Oct 4, 2006 at 12:28

Dr RJP wrote:

"According to a very knowledgable source, the original Koran was written by a rabbi! Before you start shaking your head in disbelief, think about the following:

As the story goes, he was forced against his will to write it, and his way of rebelling against the task was to make it jumbled and difficult to read. I do not know how true is the story, but it does provide one reason for the initial similarites between the Torah and the Koran."

Not true according to my information. As Muhammad used to get his "revelations" he used to tell these to his followers and they used to record right away or whenever on whatever was available. Over period of time these revelations were floating all around and different people made compilations -- none complete.

Also many distorted versions of revelations also found their way. After the death of Muhammad as Islam spread north and west, diffrent compilations also spread. Third Caliph Othman then appointed one of companions of Muhammad who was very familiar with the revelations to collect different versions of compilations making the rounds and compile an authentic version. The present Koran is the result of that endeavor. Since the actual sequence of revelations could not be established with certainty, it was decided to list the revelations as the longest first and continue in declining order accordnig to the length of revelations. All existing copies of the Koran were collected and burnt. It is said that no original copy survived.

I think the original similarities between the Koran and the Torah stem from the fact that during his travels while he was working as caravan guide for his wife Khadija he used to disucss religion with the Rabiis and learnt much from them about the Torah, the Bible and all the hebrew prophets.

On Muhammad trying to please the Jews. he did try to win them over to Islam. When he came to Medina, initially he started praying facing Jerusalem but when the Jews refused to be converted, he changed the Kiblah towards Mecca.

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