New Podcast Let Us Reason - A Christian/Muslim Dialogue

Al Fadi and Dr Jay continue there discussion from  Shoemaker's book Creating the Quran.  They name some scholars  including Montgomery, Patricia Corona and others who point out that Mecca was insignificant and Medina (Yathrib was a small date oasis with few hundred people living there, and there is no mention of Jews living there as the S.I.N. mentions.  They also say that most scholars conclude t...

Al Fadi and Dr Jay Smith continue there review of Shoemaker book; creating the Quran .  Today they focus on where was the origin of the Quran.  They say that there was some rock inscription in Northern Arabian not in the Hijaz. Some of the reasons why the inscription doesn't fit the Hijazi dialect of central Arabia are three distinctive features: 1. The distinctive form of the relative pronoun.  2...

Al Fadi and Dr Jay continue there discussion from  Shoemaker's book Creating the Quran.  They name some scholars  including Montgomery, Patricia Corona and others who point out that Mecca was insignificant and Medina (Yathrib was a small date oasis with few hundred people living there, and there is no mention of Jews living there as the S.I.N. mentions.  They also say that most scholars conclude t...

Al Fadi and Dr Jay Smith continue there review of Shoemaker book; creating the Quran .  Today they focus on where was the origin of the Quran.  They say that there was some rock inscription in Northern Arabian not in the Hijaz. Some of the reasons why the inscription doesn't fit the Hijazi dialect of central Arabia are three distinctive features: 1. The distinctive form of the relative pronoun.  2...

Muslims claim that Mecca is in Saudi Arabia, that Mohammad was born there, and that he also received his revelation of the Quran there.  If that is true where is Mecca? Steven Shoemaker in his book Creating the Quran on page114 mentions that there is no mention of a mecca in any of the great civilizations of the time .  Not only that,but another scholar; Patricia Corona said that there were no tra...

This manuscript was found in Damascus and was moved to Germany.  It looks a lot like the upper layer of the Sana manuscript.  There are three reasons why this manuscript is 8th century and not 7th century: 1. The dots , the circles ,and the verse markings suggests that the text is a later text.  2. .  The page layout and illuminations parallels the 8th century manuscripts.  3.  The ornamentations...

Dr Jay and Al Fadi continue the comparison between the upper and the lower layers of the Sana manuscripts of the Quran with the 1924 Hafs edition of the Quran. They point out differences that changes the meaning of the text; for example Sura  9: 9 in the lower layer of the manuscripts states" the way of Allah while the Hafs Quran of 1924 says 'His way".  Another difference in the upper layer  as a...

Dr Jay Smith discusses the book that Dr Asma Hilali wrote on the Sana Palimpsest manuscripts.  He talks about the conclusions that she came up with by comparing it to todays Hafs Quran; she says that there are seventy variants in sixty three verses.  She also believes that it is a student text.  Jay says that that shuts down the idea of the preservation of the Quran which both Muslim and the Quran...

The Sana manuscripts is a palimpsest manuscripts ; which means that there is a lower and upper layers of writing . Scholars say that the two writings are late seventh and early eighth century respectively.  They think that it is two versions of the Quran; the first is a pre- standard Quran which was erased and rewritten as the canonical version.  On comparing the two writing , it was found that th...

The Sana'a manuscript was discovered in Yemen in 1975, it is very old with no dots and vowels.  It is a palimpsest (It has two layers of writings). It had late 7th to 8th century scripts.  It was carbon tested at the university of Arizona in 2007, and was dated to mid 7th century. The same segment was taken to four Europeans labs and they did not agree with the Arizona dating.  Shoemaker concludes...

Al Fadi and Dr Jay discuss the challenges of carbon dating of manuscripts.  They say that carbon dating gives the age of the material that is written on not the ink.  There is no method found that dates ink because the way ink is mixed to make colors.  Animal skin is costly and it takes time to cure.  Shoemaker argues that carbon dating is not entirely accurate .  That is why scholars had to look...

Today Al Fadi and Dr Jay continue to talk about three more major qur'anic manuscripts :4. The BNF/ Petropolitanus manuscripts, and it has three fragments, the largest fragment is 26% of the Quran of today (Hafs). 5. Al Husseini manuscripts in Egypt.  It is very large, and has a lot of taping over words.  6. The Sana manuscripts. It is most recent discovery,  1975 in Yemen.  In conclusion;the six m...

Today Al Fadi and Dr Jay talk about  three Quranic manuscripts:  1. The Topkapi Manuscripts: it is kept in the Topkapi palace museum in Istanbul, Turkey. It is dated to early to mid 8th century due to the presence of vowels and dots.  It is not the private copy of Utthman or one of the copies that he sent to various centers. 2. The Samarkand Manuscript, found in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; it is not a c...

Al Fadi and Dr Jay Smith continue discussing Shoemaker's book; Creating the Quran.    Today they are wondering what happened to the Al Hajjaj- Abd Al Malik paradigm. They are not convinced with Shoemaker's answer, but they think it is a political reason since Abd Al Malik is an Umayyad , and the Abbasid came after them.  They continue to talk about another scholar Robert Hoyland who said that none...

Al Fadi and Dr Jay  continue to discuss the book creating the Quran . Today the focus on    1. The dialogue of Abraham of Tiberias, a Christian, with Amir Abdul Al Rahman Al Hashemi, in Jerusalem in the 9th century, during the Abbasid period,mentioning that Al Hajjaj produced the final authoritative version of the Quran. 2. The Apology of Al Kindy, is another Christin work written during the 9th c...

Al Fadi and Dr Jay Smith discuss the book written by Daniel Janosik, John of Damascus; The First Apologists to the Muslims.  John of Damascus is a Christian monk and apologist whose father served in the Umayyad Caliphate  in Damascus.  John does not use the word Islam, but instead he calls it the heresy of the Ishmaelites. Al and Jay also talk about Emperor Leo the third correspondent letters with...

This paradigm focuses on the Umayyad caliphate in particular Abd Al- Malik bin Marwan and his governor Al Hajjaj.  Abd Al Malik built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and was anti trinitarian. He attacked the trinity, the divinity and the sonship of Christ.  Al Hajjaj formed a committee  to produce a new collection of the Quran. Dr Jay Smith gives the 12 reasons from Shoemaker's book; creating th...

The Noldeke/Schwallian Paradime  states that the Uthmanic Quran is the standard Quran and does not question it .  In this episode Al Fadi and Dr Jay Smith discuss some scholars that say otherwise.  They are discussing Steven Shoemaker book; Creating the Quran.  They conclude that the Quran ascribed to Uthuman was really established by Abd Al Malik which they will discuss in a coming episode. See o...

Al Fadi Dr Jay discuss what the two German scholars say about the Quran. Noldeke and Schwallie say that the Quran was written in 652 AD in its entirety of 114 Suras, and it should not be criticized.  Al Fadi and Dr Jay going back to Shoemaker's book; creating the Quran discuss ten different possibilities of who really wrote the Uthmanic Quran.  Abu Bakir, Omar, Aisha, just to name a few.  Al Fadi...

Al Fadi and Dr. Jay Smith discuss what the Muslim leaders of early centuries of Islam and what Muslim leaders of today say about the Preservation of the Quran.  Today's leaders including Shabir Ali, Abdula Yusef Ali, and Yasir Qadi, to name a few, claim the perfect preservation of the Quran; They say that today's Quran is the same exact Quran of Othman days to the letter.  Going back to the first...

Al Fadi and Dr. Jay raise more questions about the origin of the Quran which create more problems about the Quran: 6. How can you have a dialectic problem in the mid 7th century unless you have a written text? 7.Why did Othman burn the other copies? 8. How can you burn a dialect? 9. If the Quran that Othman asked Zaid ibn Thabit to write in the Qurashi dialect was the second compilation of the Qur...

Al Fadi and Dr Jay discuss what Sahih Al Bukhari say in volume 6, Hadith # 109, page509-510.  They ask the following questions: Why would God chose a language (Arabic) that can not accommodate the Quran(no vowels or dots)? Why did God choose a man who couldn't read or write? If Mohammad was illiterate, he had 22 years to learn to read and write. Why didn't Abu Baker make more copies of the Quran?...

Al and Jay continue their discussion on Shoemaker book; the creating of the Quran . While Wilfred Smith took the side of the religious person, the naturalistic approach takes the opposite side.  Shoemaker says that you need to not take either extreme by studying the impact on the believer and study the history.  Shoemaker points out 5 important approaches that Bruce Lincoln points out: 1.Who is th...

Al and Jay continue their discussion on Shoemaker book; the creating of the Quran . While Wilfred Smith took the side of the religious person, the naturalistic approach takes the opposite side.  Shoemaker says that you need to not take either extreme by studying the impact on the believer and study the history.  Shoemaker points out 5 important approaches that Bruce Lincoln points out: 1.Who is th...

Al Fadi and Dr, Jay Smith continue their discussion of Shoemaker book creating the Quran . Today they talk about how this censorship affected the department of defense. After world war two the west came up with a policy of not accepting any criticism of Islam .  Westerners and western academic Islamic scholars came up with a form of Islam to agree with western values. This form of Islam is not tru...