The 'abrogation' problem

Verses 6 and 7 bring up the question of abrogation. But the key verse is #106 of Surah 2. Because this is so important, I'll give all five translations of both.

Surah 87, Verse 2:
(Shakir)We will make you recite so you shall not forget,
Except what Allah pleases, surely He knows the manifest, and what is hidden.

(Palmer)We will make thee recite, and thou shalt not forget save what God pleases. Verily, He knows the open and what is concealed;

(Pickthal)We shall make thee read (O Muhammad) so that thou shalt not forget Save that which Allah willeth. Lo! He knoweth the disclosed and that which still is hidden;

(Yussuf Ali)By degrees shall We teach thee to declare (the Message), so thou shalt not forget,Except as Allah wills: For He knoweth what is manifest and what is hidden.

(Asad) We shall teacj thee, and thou wilt not forget [aught of what thou art taught] save what God may will [thee to forget] -- for, verily, He [alone] knows all that is open to [mans] perception as well as all that is hidden [from it]

And Surah 2, Verse 106

(Shakir) Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things?

(Palmer) Whatever verse we may annul or cause thee to forget, we will bring a better one than it, or one like it; dost thou not know that God is mighty over all? Dost thou not know that God's is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth?

(Pickthal)Nothing of our revelation (even a single verse) do we abrogate or cause be forgotten, but we bring (in place) one better or the like thereof. Knowest thou not that Allah is Able to do all things ?

(Yusuf Ali)None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: Knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?

(Asad) Any message which We annul or consign to oblivion We replace with a better or similar one.
Dost not thou know that God has the power to will anything?

Now the standard interpretation of this is that when there are conflicts between verses of the Qur'an, that the 'later' one has abrogated the earlier one. (The frequently quoted example is that of the conflict between 'there is no compulsion in religion' and 'kill the unbelievers wherever you find them.' Maybe a better example, because less controversial, are the various comments made about wine and alcohol, at one point praising them and at another forbidding them.)

Asad will have none of this. To quote one sentence from a copious note to the second verse: "In short, 'the doctrine of abrogation' has no basis whatsoever in historical fact, and must be rejected." (His interpretation turns on the idea that the word 'ayah' means both 'verse' and 'message.' Thus he sees this as a declaration that the earlier 'messages,' referring to the Jewish and Christian Testaments, have been 'abrogated by the Qur'an.

As for the verses in Surah 87, which Asad connects with the opening of Surah 96 -- here I am paraphrasing a long comment -- he sees them as referring to man's empirical and rational knowledge, i.e., science, and how certain ideas are, in fact, 'forgotten' as man learns more. He is almost describing the scientific method, and if he qualifies this by saying that this method is limited and does not "in itself suffice to give us an insight into ultimate truths,' this is little more than any person who is both a scientist and a believer would hold.

Asad's point is so ingenious and tempting that it is hard to resist singing 'I think he's got it, by George he's got it,' and passing on to see how he later will reconcile the contradictions.

Unfortunately, it isn't that easy, for two reasons. First, the classical doctrine of abrogation covers at least three circumstances,
the one mentioned above,
the case where there is a conflict between hadith and Surah,
and(most importantly here) where there are 'missing verses' in the Qur'an.

(I will get to this in a moment.)

The second problem is easier to discuss. Asad may be right that there is no reliable tradition that Mohammad ever declared a verse to have been abrogated. On the other hand, there is no doubt whatsoever that to quote Christopher Melchett:
"As far back as the sources will take us, Muslim jurisprudents discerned abrogation (naskh) in the Qur'ān; that is, some verses were said to have been revealed, then their memory, their inclusion in the recited text, or at least their operation was suppressed. " (This is from the chapter "QUR'ĀNIC ABROGATION ACROSS THE NINTH CENTURY: SHĀFI'Ī, ABU 'UBAYD, MUHĀSIBĪ,
AND IBN QUTAYBAH" in STUDIES IN ISLAMIC LEGAL THEORY edited by Bernard G. Weiss -- Brill Publishers, 2002)
Melchett's statement is backed up by many other writers in various publications, but his study here seems to be the most definitive.

All the references I have found show that these Islamic scholars and legalists of the early period had no doubt at all that the principle of abrogation was valid, though they differed in their interpretation of it.

Now nobody can seriously argue that a 'revelation' must be, at all times and places, unambiguous. Certainly any revelation, to a religious person, can be misinterpreted by another without any 'responsibility' being placed on God for that misinterpretation. No one would blame Christianity because some madmen have become serial killers or suicides because of the way they read the Bible. And I've always considered that the Westerners who blamed Islam for the warped response of Bin Laden -- or even less ambiguously, the beheaders of the Indonesian schoolgirls -- were in error. Man, in the religious view, has free will and the capability to commit evil and also to simply make mistakes.

There is a difference between cases like this, though, and the case of the entire scholarship of early Islam falling into error. (And this is amplified by the supposed Divine authorship -- rather than inspiration -- of the Qur'an -- and the supposed Divine promise to protect the message.) It is hard to imagine that Allah could write his 'clear message' in such a way that such an obvious error would be made, an error it would take hundreds of years to correct, on such an important topic.

But there is even a greater problem with the question of abrogation, and that is the question of missing verses. (I am not here speaking of the supposed "Satanic verses" which I will discuss in the appropriate place of Surah 53.)

Now no Christian would think of claiming that the New Testament contained all of Jesus' teachings. (A writer has stated that all the words of Jesus in the Bible could be delivered in about three hours.) No Orthodox Jew would claim that we have the entire words of Job, Elijah, Ezra, Isaiah, Jeremiah, or any of the prophets.

In each case we have their message, as condensed and understood by their followers, to take the most literalist view.

But the Qur'an is different. Mohammad, according to Muslims, was NOT speaking his own words in any of his recitations, merely serving to pass on what Gabriel was speaking to him. Thus all these recitations were equally the 'words of God.' The Qur'an, again according to Muslims -- and ignoring the problems with the collection and arrangement of it -- is complete, and the same book on Earth as it exists in heaven.

But there are numerous reports (and my apologies for not being able to cite them by hadith, but I have yet to discover a searchable collection of hadith, even from Bukhari and Muslim. If anyone knows of any, please point me towards them.) that there are sections that the companions remembered as being a part of the recitations which are missing in the Qur'an. One Surah in particular, was supposed to be as long as "The Cow" (Surah 2, the longest surah of all) but when collected was only seventy verses. And there are other stories, including one dealing with the punishment for adultery being stoning, that were, reportedly, in the Qur'an originally but not there in its final collection. (I can produce a number of examples and citations from various sources, and will, if requested. And this does not include the discussion on abrogation on the annaqed.com website -- admittedly hardly an unbiased source. On it, and quoting from classical Muslim sources -- but not ones I am in a position to check -- stories are told of Mohammad repeatedly arguing that verses he forgot were in fact verses that had been abrogated.)

Now there are several possible responses to this. Abrogation, with all its problems can be accepted. The hadiths referring to it can be dismissed as apocryphal -- and there is a substantial body of historical thought that holds that all or most hadiths were, instead of reports on Muhammad's actions, later constructions to explain obscurities in the Qur'an. Or the most common-sense and likely -- though heretical to a Muslim -- which would be to accept that the Qur'an is in fact the work of man rather than of God.