This Is Islam Uncovered

📕 The Qur’an That Never Existed: What Happened to the Original Codex?

Uthman’s Fires, Missing Manuscripts, and the Myth of Perfect Preservation

🧭 Introduction: A Claim in Crisis

Islam teaches:

❝ The Qur’an has been perfectly preserved — letter for letter, word for word — since the time of Muhammad. ❞

You’ve heard the Dawah script:

“Not a dot has changed since the Prophet’s time.”

But if that’s true, then here's the question they cannot answer:

❓ Where is the Qur’an that Muhammad left behind?
❓ Why did Uthman need to burn all the others?

Because the truth is:

The Qur’an as it exists today isn’t the original.
It’s a standardized version — compiled by a committee, enforced by a caliph, and born from destruction, not preservation.

📜 What the Sources Say: The Real History of the Qur’an’s Compilation

🔹 Sahih al-Bukhari 4987

After Muhammad’s death, many reciters died in battle. Umar feared the Qur’an would be lost, so he ordered Abu Bakr to compile it from scattered sources:

Bark strips
Stones
Bones
Memorization

That’s the first compilation — years after Muhammad died.

🔹 Sahih al-Bukhari 4988

Under Uthman, disagreements broke out between Muslims over recitations.
So he ordered a standard version to be compiled… and then:

❝ Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur'anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt. ❞

Burnt. Destroyed. Eliminated.

Not preserved — purged.

🔥 The Core Problem

If the Qur’an was perfectly preserved from the start:

Why were there multiple versions?
Why did Uthman need to fix it?
Why were earlier codices eliminated with fire?

Where’s:

Ibn Mas’ud’s Mushaf (who refused to use Uthman’s)?
Ubayy ibn Ka’b’s version (which had extra surahs)?
The copy that Muhammad himself supposedly had?

They’re gone. And they didn’t agree.

🧠 Let’s Break It Down Logically

🔹 Premise 1:

A perfectly preserved revelation doesn’t need standardization, burning, or reconciliation.

🔹 Premise 2:

The historical sources say:

The Qur’an was compiled after Muhammad died,
Multiple versions existed,
And Uthman ordered destruction of non-conforming texts.

✅ Conclusion:

The Qur’an wasn’t preserved — it was controlled.
Uthman didn’t preserve a perfect text — he created an official version.

That’s not transmission.
That’s religious censorship.

📉 What This Means for “Perfect Preservation”

Muslims say:

“We have the same Qur’an Muhammad had.”

But that’s false.

What Muhammad left behind was fragmented, not compiled.
The original compilation (under Abu Bakr) is gone.
The Uthmanic codex became the standard — by burning the rest.

This is not perfect preservation.
It’s authoritarian standardization — enforced by fire.

🛑 Muslim Rebuttals — and Why They Collapse

❌ “All versions said the same thing — they just differed in dialect.”

False. Ibn Mas’ud’s mushaf lacked Surahs 1, 113, and 114.
Ubayy’s mushaf had two extra surahs.

That’s not dialect — that’s textual divergence.

❌ “The Qur’an was memorized, so written copies didn’t matter.”

Then why burn them?
If everyone memorized it correctly, why were people arguing over versions?

❌ “Uthman preserved unity.”

At the expense of textual history.
Unity by fire is not divine preservation — it’s religious control.

🔥 Final Verdict

The Qur’an that Muslims hold today is not the same Qur’an Muhammad left behind.
It is the version Uthman enforced — at the cost of every other copy.

That’s not preservation.
That’s the destruction of evidence to protect the illusion of unity.

💬 Mic-Drop Closer

“If the Qur’an was perfectly preserved,
Uthman wouldn’t need to burn every other version.

The truth?
Islam doesn’t have a perfectly preserved book —
It has a politically preserved edition.”