In this video, I will prove this Quran, the Hafs version is false and unreliable and therefore the Islamic world is misguided and wrong for trusting it. In the process I will be answering the following questions.
1. What is the most dominant Quran version used in the world today?
2. What are the conditions used to authenticate any version of the Quran?
3. Who was Hafs?
4. Was Hafs an honest and trustworthy man?
Let’s begin. Question number one – what is the most dominant Quran version used in the world today? For the answer, we turn to the book An introduction to the sciences of the Quran by Muslim scholar Yasir Qadhi, which says “Today the majority of the Muslim world reads the Hafs Quran only.” More specifically on page 199 it says “This Quran version is used by about 95% of the Muslim world”. So the overwhelming majority of the approximately 1.7 billion Muslims are in unity using this one version of the Quran known as Hafs. That’s a pretty amazing uniformity.
Question number two. What are the conditions used to authenticate any version of the Quran? For the answer, I turn your attention again to Yasir Qadhi’s book. Page 187 mentions three specific conditions it says “Every qirat or reading that conforms to the rules of Arabic, even if by one manner, and matches with one of the mushufs of Uthman, even if such a match is not an obvious one and has an authentic chain of narrators back to the Prophet (meaning Muhammad) is an authentic qirat. Did you notice that third condition – a Quran version or reading must have an authentic or reliable chain of narrators? In fact, page 189 of this book further states “this is the most important condition”.
Question number three. Who was Hafs? Well we already know the Hafs Quran is a Quran version. But why is it famously named Hafs? To answer that, I will simply show you the chain of narrators for this Quran version. As you see, I’ve underlined it for you in red. So basically the individual known as Hafs became famous for transmitting a particular reading of the Quran named after the leader of a particular school of reciters. In this case the leader was Aasim. In fact, Yasir Qadhi informs us on page 196 of his book that Hafs was the most knowledgeable person of the qirat or reading of Aasim. And as you just saw from the chain of narrators, this Quran version or reading allegedly originates from Muhammad himself.
Question number four. Was Hafs an honest and trustworthy person? In other words, can the Muslim world trust Hafs as an honest, trustworthy and reliable person to transmit the for Quran. This is our most important question. I answer by using the following Islamic source. In the Musnad of Imam Ahmad volume one hadith number 1268 or 1267 in an online Arabic Edition, Muhammad is quoted saying “Whoever reads Quran and learns it by heart, he will be granted intercession for 10 of his family for whom hell was due.” Now let’s look at the comments below this hadith. We see there is a serious problem here. Its chain of narration is graded as “da’eef jiddan” or very weak. Why is that? It’s because of the presence of Hafs in the chain of narration for this hadith. In fact here are more comments on this same hadith in arabic that provide us with more information why the presence of Hafs in a chain of narration makes a narration unreliable. It says “he is rejected in hadith.” It says great Muslim scholars such as Imam al bukhari likewise claimed Hafs is rejected. Next we read other charges against him. Hafss used to take books from people and copy them and not return them. And more importantly we read here “and he was a liar.” Actually for those of you who don’t know arabic, you can still find some information about his dishonesty in english also. For example in the book Studies in early hadith literature by M. M Azami, it says on page 128 “He copied other scholars books and put their material in his own. He borrowed a book from Shu’bah but did not return it.” In other words, according to these Islamic sources, Hafs was unreliable, untrustworthy, a thief and a plagiarist who took materials or narrations from others but made it appear like they were his own. And worse than that, he was a liar. In ending this video my conclusion is the Hafs Quran is false. It cannot be trusted nor be considered the Word of God. Therefore the Muslim world is seriously misguided for blindly accepting the Quran transmitted by a known liar and dishonest thief.