In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"
Nobody in the hadith has argued that some verses had to be part of the FINAL compilation of the Quran.
Here is a concrete example, as regards the stoning verse.
Umar doesnt argue it was part, or should have been part of the Quran. He simply laments that people might forget or neglect the command, precisely because of it not being in the Quran. The mere statement that "I read it" does not indicate he read it as part of the Quran left by the prophet. Some prophetic rulings and prayers were meant to be of temporary application, but they were never meant to be in the Quran, neither temporarily nor in the complete and final version left by the prophet. But anyone could have written those rulings down, just as people recorded non-Quranic utterances of the prophet in his own lifetime.
The fact that Umar remembered the "stoning verse", as well as other companions the likes of Ubay and Zaid bin Thabit, means that it was never lost. It was memorized and preserved, regardless of whether the written copies of it were all destroyed somehow, including the discarded report stating one written copy in Aisha's house was "eaten by a sheep". Umar and other companions could have simply re-introduced it in their own manuscript at least, had it been meant to be in the Quran. But this never occured, because nobody thought the prophet recited it as part of the Quran. Al Ghamari has rightly observed that what some call the ayat al rajm is not a verse at all, but at most a hadith. When the prophet uttered it, Umar recalls
"I went to the Prophet and I said: Let me write it.” Shu’bah said: It was as if the Prophet disliked that".
In another narration, the Prophet said in response
"I cannot have it written".
This desire of Umar to have it written, does not imply "as part of the Quran". Umar wanted it recorded so it can never be forgotten, which the prophet disliked. The only reason is that it could get confused as a Quran verse. And this is exactly what later occured with the proponents of abrogation. Some believed that certain statements were temporary Quran verses, that got abrogated once they saw and heard the final and completed Quran left by the prophet. This notion however isnt established by any prophetic saying. Nowhere does the prophet support the theory of abrogation of a Quran verse by another, nor does he hint to it. Other misunderstandings might be due to words of prayers which the prophet recited and that were thought to be Quran verses, until they saw that the prophet did not instruct them to be part of the final version. Even today, in the daily prayers and many other rituals, Muslims recite words that arent from the Quran.
Again, none ever argued that these verses were missing from the Quran which the prophet left, just that they were abrogated. In addition, the prophet did sometimes speak revelation, which he paraphrased and that were never meant to be in the Quran, known later as hadith qudsi. Some early believers might have included them in their personal recitations, just as others would include personal notes in relation to certain passages, and even words of prayers and supplications.
A typical such example is that of Ubayy' ibn Kaab's supposed 2 missing chapters, al-Hafd and al-Khalaa, which were in fact supplications the prophet used to recite and never ordered them written as part of the Quran, neither did Ubayy claim anything of the sort. That later people believed them to be so is no proof of anything. Ubayy was part of the standardization comitee under Uthman. Uthman himself is reported to have recited these supposed "lost surahs" as a supplication in his prayers (Musannaf ibn Abi Shayba, n°7032).
The prophet allowed, under his watch, for the companions to freely paraphrase, add or substract to certain Quran passages during their supplications. The prophet himself did so, sometimes merging different suras together for supplication
"When Allah’s Messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) went to his mattress each night, he joined the palms of his hands, then breathed into them and recited into them: “Say: ‘He is Allah, One [qul Huwa'llahu Ahad]!' (Al-Qur'an;112:1), and: “Say: ‘I take refuge with the Lord of the Daybreak [qul a'udhu bi-Rabbil-falaq]!' (Al-Qur'an;113:1), and: “Say: ‘I take refuge with the Lord of humankind [qul a'udhu bi-Rabbi’n-nas]!' (Al-Qur'an;114:1)".
Neither the prophet nor the companions said that these recitals were to be passed on as Quran readings. Here is another example with sura ikhlas
"Mihjan bin Al-Adra' narrated to him that the Messenger of Allah entered the masjid and there was a man who had finished his prayer and he was reciting the tashahhud. He said: "Allahumma inni as'aluka ya Allah! Bi-annakal-Wahidul-Ahad us-Samad, alladhi lam yalid wa lam yowled, wa lam yakun lahu kufuwan ahad, an taghfirali dhunubi, innaka antal-Ghafurur-Rahim".
The prophet forbade his contemporaries from recording from him anything other than the Quran, precisely to limit or stop this phenomenon
"Do not write down anything of me...whoever writes other thn the Quran should delete it".
This shows that the prophet was reacting to an already existing trend among certain believers. But the consensus of the community, given the mass transmission of the Quran, always prevailed over these marginal opinions. Another such issue is that of the verse on the 10 sucklings, later reduced to 5 sucklings and finally abrogated shortly before the prophet's death. The abrogation and death of the prophet happened so close to oneanother that some people still were unaware of the final version of the Quran, and were still reciting the abrogated verse. One cannot but wonder how close to his death did this occur considering that the same hadith books say that Gabriel reviewed the entire recitation of the Quran with the prophet twice the year he passed away, without any reported change between the recitations. This contradicts the notion that a Quran containing the abrogated verse was in circulation until very close to his death to the point that some were still reciting the abrogated verse after his death. The simple explanation for such a report would be that, again some people among the vast cluster of tribes spread throughout the peninsula that adopted Islam by the time of the prophet's death, may have confused a ruling never meant to be part of the Quran, neither temporarily nor in the final version, before they were corrected. These individual errors and confusions have nothing to do with the issue of Quran authenticity. The hadith itself says they were corrected in their recital, meaning the true and final Quran left by the prophet was present among the people
"Then, when Allah’s Messenger died these words were among what was recited in the Qur’an"
Another important thing to note is that the compilers of the Quran after the prophet's death, included even verses they deemed abrogated based on the fact that they were part of the final recital they heard from the prophet
"Narrated Ibn Az-Zubair: I said to `Uthman bin `Affan (while he was collecting the Qur'an) regarding the Verse:-- "Those of you who die and leave wives ..." (2.240) "This Verse was abrogated by an other Verse. So why should you write it? (Or leave it in the Qur'an)?" `Uthman said. "O son of my brother! I will not shift anything of it from its place".
Abrogation was thus not a criteria for the compilers, rather the last prophetic recital was. Had the prophet recited what is stated about the 5 sucklings, it would have been integrated in its precisely defined place.
We do not have competing texts that sprung up after the prophet, as was the case with the Judeo-christian scriptures until very late in their finalization process. What is also important to note is that Aisha in that hadith doesnt quote the prophet. She might have been quoting someone else or reporting what some people thought.
Another important issue often missed by those approaching hadith literature is that, besides the many motivations to create forgeries, the language and various versions of the same hadith with extra information, or the weakness of a reporter, the most important thing to consider before drawing any conclusion on a hadith's meaning, and which is probably forever lost, are the intricacies of the context of a hadith, as with any discussion between individuals. For example it is possible that while the prophet was reciting a certain surah he broke up his recitation in the midst and gave an explanation which some might have thought to be actually part of the Quran.
Aisha once asked her scribe to add "and the asr prayer" or according to Tabari "and it is the asr" in the known verse
2:238"Guard the prayers carefully and the middle prayer [and it is the Asr] and stand obedient to Allah".A similar report is attributed to Hafsa. The verse was known unanimously in the time of Aisha, who quotes it as is known today. She might have wanted to add in her own personal manuscript, an exegesis the prophet had made while commenting on the verse and which Aisha wrongly thought was part of it. It is interesting to note that we find the same type of elaboration in the following hadith
"We were in the company of the Prophet on the day (of the battle) of al-Khandaq. The Prophet said, "May God fill their graves and houses with fire, as they have kept us so busy (in battle) that we could not offer the middle prayer till the sun had set; and it is the 'asr prayer".
The last part is supposed to be an insertion by the prophet, although it obviously runs against the flow of the speech. It could have been an addition by the narrator the same way the addition in 2:238 is attributed to the prophet. As already noted, some others might mix up a prophet's hadith with the Quran even though it remained orally transmitted. Then they might imagine it to be part of a larger sura. For example, the statement attributed to Ubayy ibn Kaab where he speaks of a verse he heard the prophet recite from sura 98
"If the son of Adam had a valley of wealth..".
The "verse" clearly has hadith wording and expressions not found in the Quran (yahudiyyah, nasraniyyah and hanifiyyah etc). Besides, this "verse" is found in ibn Majah solely as a hadith, without any mention of sura 98. We also find many ahadith where the prophet recites sura 98 to Ubayy without any mention of the missing "verse". Some might remember a particular verse in a flawed manner, or even mix up several verses together and think that they were originally as they remembered. For example Maslamah ibn Khalid al Ansari claimed 2 verses were absent from the Quran, which clearly seem to be 8:74 and 32:17 and joined together.
Even AbuBakr and ibn Abbas once recited 50:19 and 90:1 respectively slightly differently than is found in the Uthmanic recension. But witnesses stated they heard them at other occasions reciting with the same wording that has reached us. They, like any other companion, and the prophet himself, were of course not immune to momentary memory lapses.
All these cases, again, are irrelevant in regards to the question of preservation of the Quran. In each case, as it occured even to the prophet himself when he had a memory lapse, the consensus of the community was thereto safeguard the correct transmission.
There are other relevant things to consider when evaluating such reports. Including, the many known motivations to forge ahadith, their language and various versions of the same hadith with extra information, or the weakness of a reporter.
Hadith interpretation is a delicate science and Muslims never take any report for granted simply because it is compiled in a book deemed "authentic". No human being is faultless, except the prophets who were preserved in a single aspect; receiving, communicating and practicing the divine revelation. In fact the prophet himself stated that
"lies will spread after me, so whatever hadith comes to you compare it with the Book of God".Content of a report thus supersedes even the reliability of the transmitters.
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