Islam critiqued searches the manuscripts; No 7th century Quran, so what?

In answer to the video "Muslims' Worst anti-Christian Polemics: Corruption of the New Testament"

The Quran was transmitted to the next generations both verbally and in script form, on a scale never seen for any document, let alone religious, a process which is still continuing today.

But the primary source of transmission was always oral, all written texts were dependent on it and it still is the case today as all written texts must be attested by the oral tradition of transmission through a Hafiz. Writing down was only meant to consolidate the process of preservation which was mainly oral.

This is what the novices to Islam, which is the case of most its self-proclaimed critics, fail to grasp. They approach Quran authenticity with their own scriptural history in mind. This dual method of control, textual but mainly oral, which was never practiced by the transmitters of the Bible, made it impossible for any textual tampering as it would immediately be detected by the thousands of memorizers in all corners of the Muslim territories.

The number of people having transmitted the Quran is so vast that any error in the transmission became impossible. This is why the Quran is labelled "mutawattir", a level of authenticity attributed to an oral transmission when it has been related exactly the same way by countless independent sources. Extremely few ahadith have been labelled as such or reached the level of multiple independent sources as the Quran. Most ahadith are based ahad reports or singular transmissions. Further and in contrast to the Quran, the ahadith require isnad (detailed chain of transmission) to be validated, because the earliest communities often disputed and argued about the veracity of these statements. The Quran never required any isnad to gain a sense of credibility and authenticity because the text and veracity of the Quran was agreed to by a consensus of the earliest Islamic communities. Despite the abundance of 1st-2nd century hijra manuscripts, there is zero proof that the Quran was transmitted in anyway other than tawatur. Hence the position of mainstream academia as regards the authenticity of the Islamic narrative of compilation, preservation, transmission of the text and recitals. See further below.

The Quran, contrary to both hadith and sunna does not seek support because it has community consensus or reliable transmission chain. Rather, it requires one to believe in its veracity based on it clear arguments. No scripture can be accepted purely on the basis that the same community profess its Divine origins and have themselves sought to protect it.

The script chosen for the Uthman compilation was Kufic, a script still readable today thanks to the dual preservation and transmission of the Quran, textual and oral. Some misinformed and misleading critics have tried arguing that the Kufic script did not appear until the late 8th century in an effort to push forth the dating of the Uthman codices exposed at Samarkand and Topkapi, as this youtuber is trying to claim.

That assertion is totally devoid of any historical basis since it is known that Kufic is the earliest script from which the others developed. That assertion is mainly based on a misquote of Martin Lings who was actually referring to the calligraphic perfection of the script, not its genesis. The Kufic script was known in Mesapotamia at least 100 years before Kufa was even founded, which was during the period of Umar in the 17th year of hijra/638CE. The reason for the layman confusion is because the script is named after the city of Kufa, though it did not originate there. The Kufic script in fact originated in the town of Hira and the Kufans inherited and took on that script that later became known as Kufic, the adopted script of the major learning center of the Islamic world. Several rock inscriptions, as well as coinage, scattered throughout Egypt, Syria, Iraq or the Hijaz attest to the prominence of the Kufic script in Muslim lands already in the 1st century AH.

To further corroborate the point, the manuscripts found in Sanaa were Kufan manuscript, and those are dated the first century hijra. It is also well known that early Quran manuscripts are present in museums worldwide, besides those that are in private collections in the west and those that were lost or destroyed. A huge collection was kept in Germany, but destroyed during the Second World War. Even the manuscripts present in Muslim museums are available as copies in the non-Muslim countries, such as the Uthman Samarkand codex that has numerous copies disseminated worldwide in private and public hands. There are countless 1st century Hijra (622-719CE) Quran fragments, as well as a 99% complete manuscript of that period, the Huseini mosque Cairo manuscript.