Refuting Islam

🧨 Why the First Muslims Couldn’t Agree on What Belonged in the Quran

“Perfect preservation”? That myth falls apart before the ink was even dry.

One of Islam’s boldest claims is that the Quran has been “perfectly preserved” since the time of Muhammad—letter for letter, word for word. But the historical record from within Islam itself tells a far messier, inconvenient truth.

If this book came straight from God, you’d expect total clarity and consensus from the very beginning. Instead, what we find is confusion, contradiction, and cover-up—even among the Prophet’s closest companions.

Let’s break down why the earliest Muslims themselves didn’t agree on what actually belonged in the Quran.

🚫 1. Muhammad Never Compiled the Quran

Let’s start with a glaring red flag: Muhammad never compiled a Quran.

Despite claiming to receive divine revelations for 23 years, Muhammad left behind no final written version, no canon, and no list of chapters or verses. Instead, bits and pieces were memorized, scribbled on bone, leather, palm leaves, and stored chaotically—if at all.

👉 Sahih al-Bukhari 6:61:509 admits that verses were lost because the only person who memorized them died in battle.

Why would the messenger of a final revelation not ensure it was preserved during his lifetime? If God could reveal the Quran verse by verse, surely He could have ensured a table of contents.

🔥 2. Early Companions Had Contradictory Qurans

After Muhammad’s death, multiple companions compiled their own versions of the Quran—and they did not match.

🔹 Ibn Mas‘ud's Quran:

He was one of Muhammad’s most trusted reciters. But his version of the Quran excluded Surah Al-Fatiha and the last two chapters (113 and 114)—which are in today’s Quran.

💥 Ibn Mas‘ud even told his students to tear up any Mushaf that included them. That’s how strongly he believed they were falsely added.

🔹 Ubayy ibn Ka‘b's Quran:

Another close companion, Ubayy included two extra surahs in his version: Surat al-Khal‘ and Surat al-Hafd, both now missing from today’s Quran.

📚 Sources: Ibn Nadim’s al-Fihrist, as well as Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti’s al-Itqan fi ‘Ulum al-Qur’an, both mention these extra chapters.

If even the top-tier companions couldn’t agree on what was scripture, how is this divine preservation?

🔥 3. Uthman’s Quran Was a Political Purge

Two decades after Muhammad died, Caliph Uthman found the Muslim world in chaos over competing Quran versions. His solution?

🔥 Burn every other version.

👉 Sahih al-Bukhari 6:61:510 documents Uthman ordering Zayd ibn Thabit to compile a single version and destroy all others.

So let’s get this straight: the “perfect” Quran required a violent standardization campaign? If divine preservation was real, why did it require state-sponsored censorship?

🧨 4. The “Official” Quran Relied on Memory—Not Manuscripts

Zayd ibn Thabit admitted that certain verses weren’t written down anywhere and had to be recovered by memory from a single man.

🧾 Sahih al-Bukhari 6:61:509:
“I found the last two verses of Surah At-Tawbah with Abi Khuzaimah Al-Ansari and with no one else.”

That means a chunk of your “eternally preserved book” existed in the memory of one person—and could’ve disappeared if he died early. That's not divine preservation. That’s luck.

📉 5. Even the Standardized Quran Wasn’t Really Standard

You’d think once Uthman created his official version, that’d be the end of it. Not even close.

Different dialects and pronunciations (known as Qira’at) continued to spread, with differences in wording, grammar, and even meaning. These weren’t dialect quirks—they were variant texts.

It took centuries before Islamic scholars canonized the “seven readings” (then ten, then fourteen) of the Quran. These differences still exist today.

❗ Example:
In Surah 2:184, one reading says “a ransom of feeding a poor person”, another says “feeding poor people”. Singular vs. plural. Tiny? Maybe. But in law, that matters.

🚪 6. Entire Verses and Surahs Were Lost

Multiple hadiths confirm that some verses were lost or eaten, and others were abrogated but still recited.

📜 Sunan Ibn Majah 1944:
A verse about stoning adulterers was once part of the Quran but later "forgotten."

🐐 Sunan Ibn Majah 1944 (also):
Aisha says a verse was written and kept under her bed—until a goat came and ate it.

This isn’t satire. This is canonical Hadith.

🔥 Bottom Line: Preservation Is a Manufactured Myth

When you look at the evidence—not theology, not apologetics—the idea of a “perfectly preserved Quran” collapses under its own weight:

The Prophet didn’t finalize it.
His companions disagreed on its content.
The state burned dissenting copies.
Verses were lost, abrogated, or preserved by memory alone.
Even today, there are multiple versions in circulation.

And yet, Muslims are told to believe this book is “unchanged since the time of Muhammad.” That’s not reverence—that’s denial.

💣 Mic-Drop Truth:

The first Muslims couldn’t agree on what belonged in the Quran—because there was no definitive Quran. What we have today is a politically standardized, human-edited anthology of disputed texts presented as divine perfection.

“Perfect preservation”? That was the first lie ever told about the Quran.