I’ve read many books, posts, comments, emails regarding the corruption of the Qur’aan, on that note I’ve read the same about the Bible, moreso about the New Testament. Yet, something’s appeared to me that hasn’t been discussed much, if at all before. In discussing the reliability of the Graeco-Roman New Testament, the easiest claims to digest are those of the floating passages, either emendations or interpolations – their presence qualifies the argument of the unreliability of the New Testament.

When it comes to the Qur’aan however, there is a very strange occurrence, it says of itself:

Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an and indeed, We will be its guardian. – Al Hijr 15:9.

The most popular argument against the Qur’aan being the Sana’aa Manuscripts has been debunked by studies that have only been partially quoted by Orientalists, and the argument concerning the differing number of ayat don’t consider that you can stop, pause or continue through many verses – thus giving varying lengths to one verse. Yet, we must ask ourselves a very important question concerning the corruption of the Qur’aan.

If it is so easy to have corrupted the Qur’aan, then why, after 1434 years (as of the time of this posting), has no extant edition of the Qur’aan, put the basmallah (bismillahir rahmanir raheem) at the top of Surah 9 (at-Tawbah/ al-Bara’ah). Thinking clearly for a moment, in comparison to the New Testament, the addition of a few verses (Mark 16:9-20) or the addition of a chapter after its clear ending (see John 20:30-31 vs John 21) or the dispute of entire books, see the Revelation of John vs the Revelation of Peter, it has always been easy to spot where scribes have found it all to easy to make a correction (emendation) or addition (interpolation) into the text which eventually found its way into the standard text of the New Testament.

Yet, if a scribe is copying the Qur’aan and for 113 Surahs of a possible 114, you write the basmallah before them, except one, wouldn’t it have occurred to make this correction? Wouldn’t it seem like an error that 1 of 114 is missing the basmallah? Surely, if atleast one scribe thought so, wouldn’t many others have also thought so? Seeing as we recite the basmallah before the start of Surah 9, wouldn’t that give the scribe even more credence to include the basmallah? Therefore, the question stands before us, if the Qur’aan has been corrupted, then why hasn’t the most obvious change yet to manifest itself? It bemoans me to think that a scribe would be so intelligent to change entire ayat (verses), alter words (as claimed by some Orientalists), yet forget to make the most simple of changes – adding the basmallah.