There is no part* of a Muhammad time Koran in Birmingham - only some random Judeo-Christian texts copied god knows when! But there is an eager effort to cheat ignorant Brits!
* You don't call Old Testament texts cited in the New Testament New Testament, do you. And whereas the New Testament is an independent text, the Koran is just a patchwork of previous texts found useful for the Saracens. This is why much in the Koran is hard to distinguish from same type of original Christian texts.
Brits, you used to be down to earth people culturally and genetically strongly connected to Fennoscandia (Goths, Kvens, Vikings, Normans etc). You talk a Scandinavian language although you spell and pronounce it in a funny way. As a person with Swedish as one of his native languages Klevius use to point out common old Nordic words still in use in Fennoscandia, such as (just a tiny tip of the iceberg): hand, finger, arm, fot, knä, bröst, navel, huvud, skalle, hår, öra, näsa, nacke, socka, sko, hatt, hus, land, yxa, såg, hammare, kniv, etc etc etc. Then there are myriads of words which are rooted in old Nordic but have slightly changed usage, such as, for example: Swe. 'ben' (bone or leg), Swe. bord (table). The rest is mostly latin or Greek based loanwords similar to those used in Swedish. Moreover, culturally Fennoscandia shares "British values" in the form of Human Rights equality. Islam does not! So how come that you Brits got so entangled in a non-British culture most of your immigrants have escaped?!
Klevius islam/Koran/Muhammad tutorial
What so many (Human Rights violating sharia) muslims and normal people (i.e. believing in Universal Human Rights equality) have not fully digested, is the inevitable fact that there was no such a person as Muhammad hanging around at his alleged time because he never shows up in any official records before Malik.
Moreover, it's proven beyond any doubt that the alleged Muhammad's death date is a historical impossibility by several years (no, for you stupid no references are given, unless, of course, you nicely ask for it via comments - Klevius second most important duty after hunting bias, is to fight dangerous ignorance).
Carbon-dating usually gives too early dates. Moreover, there is no certain
connection between the time of the leather on which the text is written and the text itself. One may also consider the effects of later changes or additions to the original text.
However, nothing of this really matters in the case of the Birmingham "Koran" pages because they are just Jewish/Christian inspired texts what we already have lots of and which only connection to a later Koran is that the latter is based on these pre-islamic texts.
There was no Muhammad nor any Koran back then
Islam, seen as a Muhammad/Koran complex was a much later invention (Malik).
Of course there were robbers or warlords/rebels if you like, and some of them may even had become the main "Godfather", but, as Wittgenstein said, whereof one can't talk one must keep silent. Official records certainly do.
The origin of islam was the historical precedents for local rebels defying the ruling elite which was later transformed by a new ruling elite to justify the submission of local rebels - plus, of course, justifying islamic sharia finance through enslavement and booty.
The earliest known fragments of the Koran are called Hijazi script, and under Abd al-Malik’s reign 685-785, Abu’l Aswad al-Du’ali, who died 688, founded the Arabic grammar and invented the system of placing large colored dots to indicate the tashkil. Meaning texts before this period can't be reliably translated. The dots on the Birmingham fragments are either later additions or proof that the text isn't even close to "Muhammad's time". Moreover, separated chapters was not a habit of the time but came much later.
The so called "close match" to the Koran of today is hence a deeply unfounded statement and should be called what it is, i.e. historical falsification. The laughable British Piltdown man springs to mind.
We can be reasonably sure that the Koran is a patched collection of Jewish/Christian texts authorized by Malik some half a century after the alleged Muhammad's death.
The key to the origin of islam is rooted in three words: parasitism, racism and sexism (rapetivism).
Islamic parasitism started with Arab bedouins robbing caravans, some of them becoming influential and parting with already powerful Jewish/Christian outliers.
This developed into a religiously "justified" Arab jihad where the "infidels" either didn't speak Arab or didn't share the basic tenets of this particular Jewish/Christian sect. These tenets were extremely simple, effective - and evil, seen from our Human Rights perspective today. Arab muslims segregated themselves from the "infidels" for the purpose of sponging on them in different ways including booty, women, taxes etc. that interested poor bedouin boys and wealthy Jewish/Christian outgroups whose sectarianism became what we know as islam.
Enslavement was the very core of islam. Islam means submission in two ways: Submission to the Arabic Allah and thereby building a racist wall against the "infidel" who then accordingly had to be submitted under slavery in three main forms, i.e. as humiliated taxpayers, as sex slaves or as ordinary slaves for work or to be sold.
An inscription attributed to the first Umayyad caliph -- Muawiya -- in 677 or 678 CE makes reference to belief in God but gives no indication of belief in Muhammad as his messenger or the Koran as "revealed scripture".
On coins from this period, we do find the word "Muhammad" inscribed, but the inscription comes under kingly figures bearing a cross.
The inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock -- completed in 691 CE and often thought to be the first inscribed sign of islam refers to Tayyaye d-Mhmt who was a honorific Jewish/Christian title, rather than a proper name. Tayyaye’ is a Syriac name for the Arab nomads.
Mhmt can not be translated as ‘the Arabs of Muhhamad’ because the right transcription into Syriac would have been Mhmd. Moreover, the text does not say anything about this alleged person.
Contemporary non-Muslim sources of the 7th century do not corroborate the canonical story. For example, the Doctrina Jacobi (a document dating to 634-40 CE and probably written by a Christian living in Palestine), an account of the Arab conquest of Jerusalem by Sophronius -- the patriarch who is said to have surrendered the city in 637 -- and a letter written in 647 by the patriarch of Seleucia make no reference to the Arab conquerors as muslims, or show any awareness of a religion called Islam.
The earliest account that can reliably be taken to refer to Muhammad is a chronicle by the Armenian bishop Sebeos, dating either to the 660s or 670s but containing material that sharply diverges from the traditional Islamic accounts: thus he has Muhammad "insisting on the Jews' right to the Holy Land -- even if in the context of claiming that land for the Ishmaelites, acting in conjunction with the Jews" (p. 32).
Only by around 730 CE, nearly one hundred years after Muhammad's death in 632 CE according to the canonical story, do we see an account by John of Damascus make detailed reference to parts of the Qur'an, but even then he does not name the Qur'an or allude to the existence of a complete holy book for those he calls "Hagarians," "Ishmaelites" or "Saracens" (but not Muslims).
Instead, we have reference to Qur'anic chapter titles like "The Women" (this is the fourth Sura of the Qur'an today), implying that he was drawing on fragments of text that were later incorporated into the Qur'an.
Arabic epigraphic evidence from the 7th century similarly fails to validate the canonical account. An inscription attributed to the first Umayyad caliph -- Muawiya -- in 677 or 678 CE makes reference to belief in God but gives no indication of belief in Muhammad as his messenger or the Qur'an as revealed scripture.
It's alleged that the significance of Birmingham’s leaves was missed because they were bound together with another text, in a very similar hand but written almost 200 years later. Really, same hand two centuries later.
Robert Spencer: The only thing it actually establishes is that this portion of suras 18-20 existed near or during the time Muhammad is supposed to have lived. That it was part of the Qur’an at that time is taken for granted by Holland and the Times, but there is actually no evidence for it: there isn’t even any mention of the Qur’an’s existence in the contemporary literature until some fifty years after the outer-limit date of 645 for this fragment — a fact that is extremely uncomfortable for those who accept the canonical Islamic account that has the Qur’an complete by 632 and collected and circulating by 653. If it was known in this period, why does no one ever quote or even refer to it? - See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2015/07/you-wont-believe-todays-the-new-york-times-front-page.html/#sthash.VgsGJOBC.dpuf
The name Muhammad actually appears in the Qur’an only four times, and in three of those instances it could be used as a title—the “praised one” or “chosen one”—rather than as a proper name. By contrast, Moses is mentioned by name 136 times, and Abraham, 79 times. Even Pharaoh is mentioned 74 times. Meanwhile, “messenger of Allah” (rasul Allah) appears in various forms 300 times, and “prophet” (nabi), 43 times. Are those all references to Muhammad, the seventh-century prophet of Arabia? Perhaps. Certainly they have been taken as such by readers of the Qur’an through the ages. But even if they are, they tell us little to nothing about the events and circumstances of his life.
Indeed, throughout the Qur’an there is essentially nothing about this messenger beyond insistent assertions of his status as an emissary of Allah and calls for the believers to obey him. Three of the four times that the name Muhammad is mentioned, nothing at all is disclosed about his life.
1
The first of the four mentions of Muhammad by name appears in the third chapter, or sura, of the Qur’an: “Muhammad is nothing but a messenger; messengers have passed away before him” (3:144). The Qur’an later says that “the Messiah, the son of Mary, is nothing but a messenger; messengers have passed away before him” (5:75). The identical language may indicate that in 3:144, Jesus is the figure being referred to as the “praised one”—that is, the muhammad.
2
In sura 33 we read that “Muhammad is not the father of any one of your men, but the Messenger of God, and the Seal of the Prophets; God has knowledge of everything” (33:40). This is almost certainly a specific reference to the prophet of Islam and not simply to a prophetic figure being accorded the epithet the “praised one.” It is also an extremely important verse for Islamic theology: Muslim scholars have interpreted Muhammad’s status as “Seal of the Prophets” to mean that Muhammad is the last of the prophets of Allah and that anyone who pretends to the status of prophet after Muhammad is of necessity a false prophet. This doctrine accounts for the deep antipathy, often expressed in violence, that traditional Islam harbors toward later prophetic movements that arose within an Islamic milieu, such as the Baha’is and Qadiani Ahmadis.
3
Less specific is Qur’an 47:2: “But those who believe and do righteous deeds and believe in what is sent down to Muhammad—and it is the truth from their Lord—He will acquit them of their evil deeds, and dispose their minds aright.” In this verse, “Muhammad” is someone to whom Allah has given revelations, but this could apply to any of the Qur’an’s designated prophets as well as to Muhammad in particular.
4
Qur’an 48:29, meanwhile, probably refers only to the prophet of Islam: “Muhammad is the Messenger of God, and those who are with him are hard against the unbelievers, merciful one to another.” Although the “praised one” here could conceivably refer to some other prophet, the language “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” (Muhammadun rasulu Allahi) within the Islamic confession of faith makes it more likely that 48:29 refers specifically to the prophet of Islam.
That is all as far as Qur’anic mentions of Muhammad by name go. In the many other references to the messenger of Allah, this messenger is not named, and little is said about his specific actions. As a result, we can glean nothing from these passages about Muhammad’s biography. Nor is it even certain, on the basis of the Qur’anic text alone, that these passages refer to Muhammad, or did so originally.
Abundant detail about Muhammad’s words and deeds is contained in the Hadith, the dizzyingly voluminous collections of Islamic traditions that form the foundation for Islamic law. The Hadith detail the occasions for the revelation of every passage in the Qur’an. But (as we will see in the next chapter) there is considerable reason to believe that the bulk of the hadiths about Muhammad‘s words and deeds date from a period considerably after Muhammad’s reported death in 632.
Then there is the Sira, the biography of the prophet of Islam. The earliest biography of Muhammad was written by Ibn Ishaq (d. 773), who wrote in the latter part of the eighth century, at least 125 years after the death of his protagonist, in a setting in which legendary material about Muhammad was proliferating. And Ibn Ishaq’s biography doesn’t even exist as such; it comes down to us only in the quite lengthy fragments reproduced by an even later chronicler, Ibn Hisham, who wrote in the first quarter of the ninth century, and by other historians who reproduced and thereby preserved additional sections. Other biographical material about Muhammad dates from even later.
This is chiefly the material that makes up the glare of the “full light of history” in which Ernest Renan said that Muhammad lived and worked. In fact, arguably none of the biographical details about Muhammad date to the century in which his prophetic career was said to unfold.
The earliest records offer more questions than answers. One of the earliest apparent mentions of Muhammad comes from a document known as theDoctrina Jacobi, which was probably written by a Christian in Palestine between 634 and 640—that is, at the time of the earliest Arabian conquests and just after Muhammad’s reported death in 632. It is written in Greek from the perspective of a Jew who is coming to believe that the Messiah of the Christians is the true one and who hears about another prophet arisen in Arabia:
When the candidatus [that is, a member of the Byzantine imperial guard] was killed by the Saracens[Sarakenoi], I was at Caesarea and I set off by boat to Sykamina. People were saying “the candidatus has been killed,” and we Jews were overjoyed. And they were saying that the prophet had appeared, coming with the Saracens, and that he was proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ who was to come. I, having arrived at Sykamina, stopped by a certain old man well-versed in scriptures, and I said to him: “What can you tell me about the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens?” He replied, groaning deeply: “He is false, for the prophets do not come armed with a sword. Truly they are works of anarchy being committed today and I fear that the first Christ to come, whom the Christians worship, was the one sent by God and we instead are preparing to receive the Antichrist. Indeed, Isaiah said that the Jews would retain a perverted and hardened heart until all the earth should be devastated. But you go, master Abraham, and find out about the prophet who has appeared.” So I, Abraham, inquired and heard from those who had met him that there was no truth to be found in the so-called prophet, only the shedding of men’s blood. He says also that he has the keys of paradise, which is incredible.
In this case, “incredible” means “not credible.” One thing that can be established from this is that the Arabian invaders who conquered Palestine in 635 (the “Saracens”) came bearing news of a new prophet, one who was “armed with a sword.” But in the Doctrina Jacobi this unnamed prophet is still alive, traveling with his armies, whereas Muhammad is supposed to have died in 632. What’s more, this Saracen prophet, rather than proclaiming that he was Allah’s last prophet (cf. Qur’an 33:40), was “proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ who was to come.” This was a reference to an expected Jewish Messiah, not to the Jesus Christ of Christianity (Christ means “anointed one” or “Messiah” in Greek).
It is noteworthy that the Qur’an depicts Jesus as proclaiming the advent of a figure whom Islamic tradition identifies as Muhammad: “Children of Israel, I am the indeed the Messenger of God to you, confirming the Torah that is before me, and giving good tidings of a Messenger who shall come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad” (61:6). Ahmad is the “praised one,” whom Islamic scholars identify with Muhammad: The nameAhmad is a variant of Muhammad (as they share the trilateral root h-m-d). It may be that the Doctrina Jacobiand Qur’an 61:6 both preserve in different ways the memory of a prophetic figure who proclaimed the coming of the “praised one” or the “chosen one”—ahmad or muhammad.
The prophet described in the Doctrina Jacobi “says also that he has the keys of paradise,” which, we’re told, “is incredible.” But it is not only incredible; it is also completely absent from the Islamic tradition, which never depicts Muhammad as claiming to hold the keys of paradise. Jesus, however, awards them to Peter in the Gospel according to Matthew (16:19), which may indicate (along with Jesus’ being the one who proclaims the coming of ahmad in Qur’an 61:6) that the figure proclaiming this eschatological event had some connection to the Christian tradition, as well as to Judaism’s messianic expectation. Inasmuch as the “keys of paradise” are more akin to Peter’s “keys to the kingdom of heaven” than to anything in Muhammad’s message, the prophet in the Doctrina Jacobi seems closer to a Christian or Christian-influenced Messianic millennialist than to the prophet of Islam as he is depicted in Islam’s canonical literature.
Was That Muhammad?
In light of all this, can it be said that the Doctrina Jacobirefers to Muhammad at all? It is difficult to imagine that it could refer to anyone else, as prophets who wielded the sword of conquest in the Holy Land—and armies acting on the inspiration of such prophets—were not thick on the ground in the 630s. The document’s departures from Islamic tradition regarding the date of Muhammad’s death and the content of his teaching could be understood simply as the misunderstandings of a Byzantine writer observing these proceedings from a comfortable distance, and not as evidence that Muhammad and Islam were different then from what they are now.
At the same time, there is not a single account of any kind dating from around the time the Doctrina Jacobiwas written that affirms the canonical Islamic story of Muhammad and Islam’s origins. One other possibility is that the unnamed prophet of the Doctrina Jacobi was one of several such figures, some of whose historical attributes were later subsumed into the figure of the prophet of Islam under the name of one of them, Muhammad. For indeed, there is nothing dating from the time of Muhammad’s activities or for a considerable period thereafter that actually tells us anything about what he was like or what he did.
One apparent mention of his name can be found in a diverse collection of writings in Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic common in the region at the time) that are generally attributed to a Christian priest named Thomas and dated to the early 640s. But some evidence indicates that these writings were revised in the middle of the eighth century, and so this may not be an early reference to Muhammad at all.5 Nonetheless, Thomas refers to “a battle between the Romans and the tayyaye d-Mhmt” east of Gaza in 634.6 The tayyaye, or Taiyaye, were nomads; other early chroniclers use this word to refer to the conquerors. Thus one historian, Robert G. Hoyland, has translated tayyaye d-Mhmt as “the Arabs of Muhammad”; this translation and similar ones are relatively common. Syriac, however, distinguishes between t and d, so it is not certain (although it is possible) that by Mhmt, Thomas meant Mhmd—Muhammad. Even if “Arabs of Muhammad” is a perfectly reasonable translation of tayyaye d-Mhmt, we are still a long way from the prophet of Islam, the polygamous warrior prophet, recipient of the Qur’an, wielder of the sword against the infidels. Nothing in the writings or other records of either the Arabians or the people they conquered dating from the mid-seventh century mentions any element of his biography: At the height of the Arabian conquests, the non-Muslim sources are as silent as the Muslim ones are about the prophet and holy book that were supposed to have inspired those conquests.
Thomas may also have meant to use the word Mhmt not as a proper name but as a title, the “praised one” or the “chosen one,” with no certain referent. In any case, the Muhammad to which Thomas refers does not with any certainty share anything with the prophet of Islam except the name itself.
Sunni Shia
It is notable that the invocation of Muhammad's example begins with the same caliph who had the Dome of the Rock built and issued the first coins invoking Muhammad as the "prophet of Allah": Malik, whose successors would do likewise.
Since the invention of Muhammad became such an important part of islam, there arose a need for people to know what the "prophet" said and did in various matters of life. The Ahadith in particular then became political weapons, liable to be completely fabricated. Even in the first half of the 8th century, one islamic scholar wrote that the "emirs forced people to write hadiths".
For example, in the midst of the dispute between the followers of the caliph Muawiya, who Shi'a believe usurped the place of Ali's son and designated successor Husayn, and Ali's followers who would later become the Shi'a, a hadith arose in which Muhammad declared that Ali's father was burning in hellfire, while Ali's partisans invented a hadith in which Muhammad declared, "I go to war for the recognition of the Koran and Ali will fight for the interpretation of the Koran."
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