How did Dr Shehzad Saleem come to research the history of the Quran?

you've taken out this time to really enlighten us so I have to from the bottom on my heart first and foremost sugar and sugar and I deeply appreciate I can imagine only how busy you are folks I've reached out to dr. Shahzad Salim after watching some amazing lectures on this topic and I to be fair I thought you know what I wasn't expecting you to to get I thought you know my message might be totally drowned out and it'll take forever up so I was so glad I was over the moon when dr.

sob got back to me doctors harp for our audience who are not - who some some of whom may not be too familiar with your work just a brief overview so I'll just to kind of start it up and then I'd like you to expand if you could I know doctor Saab will be humble but he's done some groundbreaking work in this field he's done a whole PhD this you can see this is major book right there that is the history of the Quran a critical study part of which is a PhD study that's you know span many

years took dr. Shahzad across you know different countries different research but from this this journey in brief doctor Saab with the deem disconnection and then on to Quran studies could you tell us a bit about about that well it all started in 1999 when I was called about to teach Quranic studies at Elmore in our Institute to graduate students so when I started teaching for on part of that teaching was to introduce the Quran to the students which of course included

the language the history the background the Aundre the arrangement the coherent saw everything but what comes by the name of Elul quran so one part of that was was the history of the quran and i thought it would be the most easiest sailing because we know that the quran that we have today is preserved to perfection Dartford odd and so that's the end of that I would not have much to say but when I started preparing that for that subject about 20 years ago I was really dismayed to use a very soft word I was shocked because I had a lot of queries that built up in my

mind and these questions arose because of the way history of the Quran was divulged in our history and Hadees books and I thought that I would not be able to teach this course because gosh I cannot answer these questions which would stare me in the eye so how can i satisfy other people so I made this commitment to myself that once I am through with the course this was about six months I would do my best to find out the answers and so from here began my journey in November of 1999 when I finished that course I said that I must have the answers not to explain it to

others but to my own self because being a believer I need to find out how and why and when of this whole thing happened why is it that we have multiple versions of the Quran we know that there are at least five of them extent one that we know ourselves which is the huffs version which is prevalent in our time seven percent of the Muslim Ummah burn death there is three percent and there are about eleven countries which include that 3 percent which have four different versions of the Quran when I say different versions of course I refer to the fact that the words are different then there is this word order at times which is different then we have although

there these differences might not be very significant as far as their meaning is concerned although there are some others as well which have a significant change of meaning as well but still the claim that the Quran was preserved word for word in one format had that claims seemed to literally shake in its foundations so this was the one of the major question that that stared me and that took me actually to one of the North African countries Morocco where we have the naphtha is Kurata or nap is reading or Napa's version of the Quran so to speak and they have been reading this Quran for 12

centuries and for them the Quran of huffs that the Quran decree read is equally good and the Quran that theory is equally good as you will be knowing in your own scholarly approach but to me and to my students and of course to many other people this was quite disturbing and alarming and then of course there were other questions as well for example we know that in hadees literature there are hadees which tell us that the quran that we have is incomplete the regime verse is a is a very typical example it is called moon soo cuute lava do no hokum when you means that it was there yeah and we have the sparkling words

which the mother of faithful i sure said that the Prophet had was had just died and they still read that verse in the Quran and we know no that is no longer in the Quran and so person like I shall reporting that and then of course there were several other questions like for example the compilation the way the Sahaba went about it seemed as if it was a haphazardly sort of done thing things would not preserve properly and if they were gathered on the basis of two witnesses on the one hand we stake this claim that every person had the same I mean it was an all / sick pervasive sort of a thing in which all people remember

the Quran and there was not even need to call on two witnesses but here we find two witnesses being testifying in words been put in and we find Omar coming up with the regime worse and because he was the only witness his witness was not accepted because he didn't have a second witness with him so the question arose that was this the way of compliation the Quran in which just to pick missus were called and and whatever they came up it was accepted and then of course the sahabas the codices for example notices ascribed to abdullah bin abdullah al masud ali ali radiyaallah on whom all of

them differed with each other as they have reported in our history books and then there's an entirely new I would say color added if you look at the Shiite version of the collection of the Quran which is diametrically opposite to the Sunni version and it has its own story to tell so these were the questions of course I have just mentioned a few of them of creativeness this quest on this is fascinating voyage and that's amazing and I have to say that you know you've this book seriously

is I feel that it's you know it's I mean it really is underrepresented I don't know how long has this been in print by the way in circulation I just got hold of it very recent yeah it's savored for about six months I would say it was published in November of 2019 so it's about seven months it is an immense study honestly and I totally i-i've got through you about you know about 40% of it and I have been loving it the amount of research and not just from the theory from the contemporary approach the transparency angle the hadith e level the the discussion on us

our need you know for anybody who I suppose there's different layers of people there's people who just want an understanding that's fine but for somebody who's a bit more serious about the topic and they want a very kind of like a whole abroad detailed overview not just an overview and analysis then definitely history of the Quran and I would inshallah you know at some point like to you know go over as much as we can off of this in the future if we if we can because there's just so much to discuss but dr.