Page:William Goldsack-The Qurān in Islām (1906).djvu/32

 Rh word to the passage. Thus Baizāwi informs us that in some copies of the Qurān the word “لا” “No” is added in this place, so that the meaning becomes: the sun has no place of rest!

Before we conclude this chapter we shall give yet one more example of the corruption of the text of the Qurān as furnished by Kāzi Baizāwi. In the first verse of Sūra Kamar the current Qurān reads,

“The hour approacheth; and the moon hath been split in sunder.” It is well known that controversy long and bitter has taken place between different sections of Muslims over the meaning of this passage. Some affirm that we have here clear testimony to a wonderful miracle performed by Muhammad in the splitting of the moon. Others, instead, contend that the whole passage has a future signification, and that all that the passage teaches is that at the judgment day the moon will be split asunder. What was needed to make the passage undoubtedly refer to a past event was the addition of some word having that meaning. Now, strange to relate, Baizāwi tells us that precisely this has taken place and in some copies the word “قد” “now” or “just now ” appears; so that the passage reads “the moon has now been split asunder.” Is it not clear as the day that some Muhammadan controversialists, in order to fortify their own opinion, and at the same time glorify the prophet, have here inserted in their copies of the Qurān this word “قد”? If this inference, to which we are surely shut up, be correct, does not the whole incident throw a lurid light on the treatment to which the scriptures of Islām have been subjected in the past; and does it not show the baselessness of the extravagant claims which are sometimes made by Muslims regarding the integrity of the Qurānic text? Examples similar to those