قرآن کے متن پر مستشرقین کے چند تبصروں کا تنقیدی جائزہ

A Critical Review of Orientalists' Commentaries on the Text of the Holy Qur'an

Abstract

It is the belief of all Muslims that the Holy Quran is a revealed book whose text has not been edited by any human being. Rather, it is the word of God that was revealed to the Holy Prophet through revelation. Contrary to this general belief of Muslims, some Orientalists have tried to prove in their research that the text of the Qur'an is not the revelation; rather, it is a book that has gone through several stages in its editing. They also claim that the Quran’s text is quoted from pre-Quran holy texts.

 In this paper  an attempt has been made to examine how orientalists use a specific method of analysis "Historical Criticism", while evaluation of the text of the Qur'an and what conclusions have they drawn from their criticism. This paper concludes that the method under which the Orientalists have tried to research the text of the Qur'an is, in fact, incorrect in itself because it can not be applied to the text of the Testaments and not to the text of the Qur'an. According to this paper, the revelatory status of the Qur'an has been not only weakened, but also strengthened by Orientalist research and studies on its text.