ISLAMIC POLEMICS SERIES • ARTICLE 11

The Qur'an's Grammatical Problems

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Clear Arabic, Imperfect Grammar, and the Manuscripts They Tried to

Destroy

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① THE ARGUMENT: WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT MATTERS

The Qur'an does not merely claim to contain truth. It claims that its Arabic language is itself part of the miracle. Surah 12:2: "We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an so that you may understand." Surah 41:3: "A Book whose verses have been detailed, an Arabic Qur'an for a people who know." Surah 43:3: "We have made it an Arabic Qur'an so that you may reason." Surah 39:28: "An Arabic Qur'an, without any crookedness, that they might become righteous." The phrase "without any crookedness" (ghayra dhi iwaj) is a direct claim of linguistic perfection. The Arabic is not incidental to the Qur'an's authority; it is foundational.

This article addresses two interconnected problems. The first is grammatical: the Qur'an contains passages where the Arabic departs from the rules of classical Arabic grammar in ways that have troubled Muslim scholars for centuries. The second is textual: the physical manuscript evidence, the history of Uthman's editorial project, and the modern discovery of variant Qur'anic texts reveal that the Qur'an we have today is the product of deliberate human editorial choices---not a pristine text dropped from heaven. These two problems reinforce each other: grammatical irregularities that might be dismissed as stylistic choices become far more significant when you discover that the text was actively edited, competing versions were burned, and the earliest manuscripts differ from each other.

Why it matters: The Qur'an stakes its divine authority on its Arabic. The tahaddi challenge (Article 07) claims no one can produce anything like the Qur'an's Arabic. The i'jaz tradition declares the Arabic inimitable. If the Arabic itself contains grammatical problems---and if the text was humanly edited to produce the version we have today---then both the linguistic miracle and the preservation miracle are compromised. Researchers like Dr. Jay Smith and Hatun Tash at the Pfander Centre for the Study of Islam, along with scholars associated with textual-critical work on early Qur'anic manuscripts, have brought these issues to the forefront of contemporary Christian-Muslim dialogue.

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② THE ISLAMIC DEFENSE

Muslim scholars have engaged with grammatical questions since the earliest period of Arabic linguistic science, and they have multiple lines of defense:

• The Qur'an defines correct Arabic---it does not follow pre-existing rules. The most powerful Islamic response is that Arabic grammar was codified after the Qur'an, not before it. The earliest Arabic grammarians (Sibawayh, d. 796; al-Khalil ibn Ahmad, d. 786) derived their rules partly from the Qur'an itself. Where the Qur'an departs from "standard" grammar, the Qur'an is not wrong---the grammar books are incomplete. The Qur'an is the standard; grammarians describe the standard. You do not judge the standard by the description.

• The irregularities are rhetorical devices, not errors. Arabic rhetoric (balagha) recognises techniques like iltifat (shift of person or number), taqdim wa ta'khir (fronting and delaying), and hadhf (ellipsis/omission). What looks like a grammatical error to a novice is actually a sophisticated literary device. The Qur'an's departures from standard grammar are intentional moves that enhance meaning, emphasis, or rhetorical force.

• Variant readings (qira'at) are divinely authorised and resolve many apparent problems. Some grammatical irregularities exist in one reading but not others. The seven (or ten) canonical readings of the Qur'an were all transmitted from the Prophet and authorised by Allah. When one reading has a grammatical difficulty, another reading may resolve it---demonstrating that the system as a whole is coherent.

• Uthman's standardisation was a preservation project, not an editorial intervention. The third caliph's collection and distribution of a standard text was a necessary response to the expansion of Islam into non-Arabic-speaking regions. He did not alter the text; he ensured that the authentic text was accurately copied and distributed. The burning of other copies removed inferior, incomplete, or personally annotated versions that might cause confusion---not legitimate alternatives.

• The manuscript evidence confirms, not challenges, the Qur'an's integrity. Muslim scholars point to early manuscripts like the Topkapi codex, the Tashkent (Samarqand) codex, and Birmingham folios as evidence of remarkable consistency with the modern Qur'an. The minor variations found in manuscripts are matters of orthography (spelling conventions), not content.

• Western textual criticism applies inappropriate methods. Some Muslim scholars argue that methods developed for studying the Bible---a text with a fundamentally different transmission history---cannot be applied to the Qur'an. The Qur'an's primary transmission was oral, not written. Manuscript variations do not reflect textual instability but the limitations of early Arabic script.

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③ THE EVIDENCE: GRAMMATICAL IRREGULARITIES AND TEXTUAL PROBLEMS

The following evidence spans both the grammatical and the textual-critical dimensions.

PART A: GRAMMATICAL IRREGULARITIES

1. Surah 2:177 --- Accusative where nominative is expected. The verse lists qualities of righteousness and reads al-sabirin ("the patient ones") in the accusative case, while the surrounding nouns in the same list (al-mufun, "those who fulfil," and al-sadiqin, "the truthful") are in the nominative. Classical grammarians explained this as nasb ala al-madh ("accusative of praise")---a special construction where a word is put in the accusative to single it out for emphasis. This is a legitimate Arabic device, but it is rare, and the fact that grammarians needed to invent a special category to explain this verse illustrates that it does not follow normal syntactic rules.

2. Surah 4:162 --- The famous case-ending anomaly. This verse lists groups who will receive reward: "But those firm in knowledge among them and the believers believe in what has been revealed to you\...and the establishers of prayer (al-muqimin al-salat) and the givers of zakah." The words for "those firm in knowledge" and "the believers" are in the nominative (al-rasikhun, al-mu'minun), but "the establishers of prayer" (al-muqimin) switches unexpectedly to the accusative. This anomaly was noted by early commentators. Al-Tabari and others again invoked "accusative of praise," but Aisha herself reportedly questioned this reading according to traditions preserved by Abu Ubayd in Fada'il al-Qur'an, suggesting it was a scribal error in the Uthmanic codex.

3. Surah 5:69 --- Subject-verb agreement problem. The verse lists groups who will have no fear: "Indeed, those who have believed and those who were Jews and the Sabeans (al-sabi'un) and the Christians\..." The word al-sabi'un is in the nominative case, while the grammatical structure (following inna, which governs the accusative) requires al-sabi'in. The identical construction appears in Surah 2:62 with the correct accusative al-sabi'in. Same sentence structure, same list, same word---but different grammatical case in the two occurrences. Grammarians offered various explanations (delayed subject, parenthetical insertion), but the simplest explanation is a scribal inconsistency.

4. Surah 20:63 --- Demonstrative pronoun disagreement. The Egyptians say of Moses and Aaron: "Indeed, these two (hadhani) are magicians." In standard Arabic, the dual demonstrative pronoun after inna should be in the accusative: hadhayn(i). The Qur'an uses hadhani (nominative). Some grammarians argued this follows the Hejazi dialect or reflects a special grammatical permission for dual nouns. Others---including early authorities cited by Ibn Khalawayh---acknowledged the difficulty openly.

5. Surah 63:10 --- Verb form irregularity. The verse reads: "lest one of you should say\...and be (akun) among the righteous." The expected form after the negative particle is the subjunctive akuna (with the final alif). The Qur'an uses the apocopate (jussive) form akun. While some grammarians explained this as a permissible variant in the dialect of the Qur'an, it departs from standard classical Arabic grammar as codified by Sibawayh.

6. Pronoun shifts (iltifat) throughout the Qur'an. The Qur'an frequently shifts between first person ("We"), second person ("you"), and third person ("He") when referring to Allah, sometimes within a single verse. Muslim scholars celebrate this as iltifat---a rhetorical device. But the frequency and abruptness of these shifts exceeds anything found in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and in several cases the shifts create ambiguity about who is speaking. The question is whether a text from an omniscient Author should require its readers to invoke a special rhetorical category to explain who is talking.

PART B: THE TEXTUAL-CRITICAL EVIDENCE

7. Uthman's burning order and the destruction of competing texts. As documented in Article 01 of this series, Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (r. 644--656) ordered the compilation of a standard Qur'anic text and the burning of all other copies (Sahih al-Bukhari 4987). The codices of Ibn Mas'ud, Ubayy ibn Ka'b, and others---maintained by senior companions who had memorised the Qur'an directly from Muhammad---were destroyed. This is not disputed; it is recorded in the most authoritative Islamic sources. The implication is stark: the text we have today is the result of a political decision by the third caliph to impose one version and eliminate all competitors. Whatever was in the burned codices is lost. Dr. Jay Smith and the Pfander Centre have made this point central to their public engagement: you cannot claim perfect preservation when you burned the evidence.

8. The companion codices differed from each other and from the Uthmanic text. Before the burning, multiple codices existed that differed from one another in content. Ibn Mas'ud's codex excluded Surahs 1, 113, and 114 and contained variant wordings throughout. Ubayy ibn Ka'b's codex contained two additional surahs (al-Hafd and al-Khal'). These differences are attested in al-Suyuti's Al-Itqan fi Ulum al-Qur'an and Ibn Abi Dawud's Kitab al-Masahif. Hatun Tash, in her Speakers' Corner engagements and Pfander Films presentations, regularly challenges Muslim interlocutors to explain how the Qur'an can be perfectly preserved when the Prophet's own senior companions had different versions---and the response was not reconciliation but destruction.

9. The Sana'a palimpsest (DAM 01-27.1). Discovered in 1972 in the Great Mosque of Sana'a, Yemen, this palimpsest contains a lower text layer (scraped off and overwritten) that differs from the standard Uthmanic text in verse order, word choice, and orthography. The manuscript dates to the first century of Islam. Scholars Gérard Puin and Elisabeth Puin published initial findings; Asma Hilali's The Sanaa Palimpsest (2017) provided more detailed analysis. The lower text is not a different reading (qira'a) within the established system---it represents a genuinely different textual tradition that someone scraped off to overwrite with the standard text. This is physical evidence of an earlier Qur'anic text that was deliberately erased.

10. The 1924 Cairo edition and modern standardisation. The Qur'an that most Muslims read today is the 1924 Royal Cairo Edition (al-mushaf al-amiri), produced by a committee at al-Azhar University. It follows the Hafs reading transmitted from Asim. But this is one reading of one textual tradition. The Warsh reading (dominant in North and West Africa) differs from the Hafs reading in hundreds of places---not just pronunciation but actual consonantal differences affecting meaning. Jay Smith and the Pfander Centre's research has highlighted this extensively: when you ask "which Qur'an?" most Muslims are unaware that the Qur'an read in Cairo and the Qur'an read in Marrakesh differ from each other in the Arabic text itself, not merely in recitation style.

11. The 26+ Arabic Qur'ans currently in print. Researchers associated with the Pfander Centre, DCCI Ministries (Hatun Tash and colleagues), and independent scholars have documented that there are more than two dozen distinct printed Arabic Qur'ans in circulation today, following different canonical readings (Hafs, Warsh, Qalun, al-Duri, al-Susi, Ibn Kathir, etc.). These are not translations; they are different Arabic texts. The differences include variant consonantal letters, different words, and in some cases different meanings. The existence of multiple Arabic Qur'ans directly challenges the popular Muslim claim that there is one Qur'an, unchanged since Muhammad, perfectly preserved letter by letter.

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④ ISLAMIC DOCUMENTATION AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE CRITICAL CLAIMS

Muslim scholars and apologists have developed responses across both the grammatical and textual fronts:

• The Qur'an predates the grammar books---it cannot be judged by them. This is the most intellectually serious response. Arabic grammar was formalised in the eighth and ninth centuries, partly using the Qur'an as a source text. Judging the Qur'an by rules derived from itself is circular. Where the Qur'an departs from Sibawayh's rules, the Qur'an may preserve a broader or older Arabic usage that the later grammarians' rules failed to capture.

• Iltifat, nasb ala al-madh, and other rhetorical devices. Classical Arabic rhetoric provides categories for many of the Qur'an's unusual constructions. The accusative of praise, the rhetorical person shift, and the delayed subject are all attested in Arabic literary tradition. The Qur'an uses these devices more frequently than other texts, which is itself an evidence of its rhetorical sophistication.

• The qira'at system accounts for textual variation. Muslim scholars argue that the multiple readings are not evidence of corruption but of divinely authorised plurality. Muhammad himself taught the Qur'an in seven ahruf (modes), and the canonical readings preserve this original diversity. The Hafs-Warsh differences are part of the design, not evidence of textual instability. Ibn al-Jazari's Al-Nashr fi al-Qira'at al-Ashr provides the classical framework.

• Uthman's burning was protective, not destructive. The companion codices contained personal annotations, non-canonical arrangements, and incomplete texts. Uthman's standardisation ensured that the community rallied around the authentic, complete text as verified by multiple companions. The burning prevented confusion, not truth.

• The Sana'a manuscript is a scribal exercise, not an alternative Qur'an. Some Muslim scholars have argued that the Sana'a lower text may have been a student's practice copy, a text written from memory with mistakes, or a non-canonical personal copy---not evidence of a genuinely different Qur'anic tradition.

• Brubaker's "corrections" are normal scribal activity. All pre-modern manuscripts contain scribal corrections. A scribe who notices a copying error and fixes it is performing quality control, not altering revelation. The presence of corrections in early Qur'anic manuscripts is evidence of careful copying, not textual instability.

• The 1924 Cairo edition was a standardisation of a well-established tradition. The Hafs reading was already dominant in the Muslim world. The Cairo edition made it the standard print edition but did not create a new text. The existence of other canonical readings does not undermine the Qur'an's integrity; it reflects its authorised diversity.

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⑤ THE PROBLEM WITH THE ISLAMIC RESPONSE

The Islamic defenses are individually arguable, but they collectively face a set of problems that are difficult to resolve.

The "Qur'an defines grammar" argument cuts both ways. If the Qur'an predates grammar and cannot be judged by later rules, then the claim that the Qur'an is in "perfect Arabic" has no external standard by which it can be verified. You cannot simultaneously claim that the Qur'an's Arabic is flawless and that there is no standard by which to measure flawlessness. The tahaddi (Article 07) invites evaluation of the Qur'an's Arabic; the grammar defense says no evaluation is possible because the Qur'an is its own standard. These two positions contradict each other. Either the Qur'an's Arabic can be evaluated by independent standards (in which case the grammatical irregularities are genuine problems), or it cannot (in which case the tahaddi and the "perfect Arabic" claim are empty assertions that cannot be tested).

The rhetorical-device defense is applied inconsistently. When the Qur'an uses a construction that matches standard grammar, Muslim scholars cite it as evidence of perfect Arabic. When it departs from standard grammar, they invoke a rhetorical device. The same text cannot be praised for following the rules when it does and exempted from the rules when it does not. An objective standard must be applied consistently. If iltifat and nasb ala al-madh are legitimate devices, they should be identifiable by criteria independent of the need to defend the Qur'an. Where the categories were specifically invented or expanded to accommodate Qur'anic usage---as with the accusative of praise in Surah 4:162---the defense is circular: the device explains the Qur'an, and the Qur'an justifies the device.

The Surah 4:162 problem has a witness: Aisha herself. The grammatical anomaly in Surah 4:162 (al-muqimin in the accusative) was not identified by modern Western critics. It was identified by Aisha, Muhammad's wife, according to traditions preserved in Abu Ubayd's Fada'il al-Qur'an and attributed also to early scholars like Aban ibn Uthman. If the anomaly were simply a rhetorical device, Aisha---a native Arabic speaker from the Quraysh tribe---would have recognised it as such. The fact that she attributed it to a scribal error (khata' min al-kuttab, "mistake of the scribes") indicates that the earliest Arabic speakers did not view this as a rhetorical flourish but as a textual problem. The Islamic tradition's own most authoritative female voice identified a grammatical irregularity in the Uthmanic text.

The qira'at defense concedes that there is not one Qur'an---there are many. The moment you acknowledge that the Hafs reading and the Warsh reading contain different Arabic consonants producing different words with different meanings, you have conceded that there is no single, letter-perfect Qur'an. There are multiple Arabic Qur'ans. The qira'at framework attempts to contain this diversity by calling it "divinely authorised." But the popular Muslim claim---the one taught in mosques, repeated in da'wah, and defended in debates---is that every Muslim in the world reads the exact same Qur'an, unchanged from Muhammad's day. That claim is demonstrably false. Hatun Tash's public ministry has been built around making this visible: placing two different Arabic Qur'ans side by side and showing that they differ. The qira'at framework may explain the differences theologically, but it does not rescue the one-Qur'an narrative that most Muslims have been taught.

Uthman's burning destroyed the evidence that could verify his text. The standard Islamic defense is that Uthman preserved the authentic text. But the only way to verify this claim would be to compare his text with the codices he burned. He did not preserve them for comparison; he destroyed them. The claim that his text is authentic is unfalsifiable precisely because he eliminated the evidence that could challenge it. This is the point Jay Smith and the Pfander Centre have pressed relentlessly: in any other field of textual scholarship, deliberately destroying primary sources would be considered evidence tampering, not preservation. If Uthman's text was genuinely identical to the companion codices, there was no reason to burn them. If they differed, then the burning was not preservation---it was editorial selection.

The Sana'a palimpsest cannot be dismissed as a practice copy. The lower text of the Sana'a palimpsest is a substantial, carefully written manuscript that was later deliberately scraped and overwritten with the standard text. This is not a student's exercise. Practice copies are rough and informal; this is a formal manuscript that someone decided needed to be replaced. The very act of scraping off the lower text and overwriting it with the Uthmanic text is evidence of the same editorial process that Uthman's burning represents: an earlier text that differed from the standard was deliberately destroyed and replaced. The Sana'a manuscript survived only because the scraping was incomplete---the lower text bled through. It is a physical witness to the diversity that the standardisation process was designed to eliminate.

Brubaker's corrections are not all scribal quality control. Daniel Brubaker's Corrections in Early Qur'an Manuscripts (2019) documents hundreds of physical corrections in early Qur'anic manuscripts---letters added, removed, changed; words scraped off and rewritten; passages adjusted. While some of these are indeed ordinary scribal corrections, Brubaker demonstrates that many follow patterns suggesting deliberate editorial changes made to bring older texts into conformity with a developing standard. These are not all cases of a scribe catching his own mistake. They include cases where a later hand altered a correctly written but textually different reading. This is evidence of the text being standardised after it was written---which is precisely what the burning and the Sana'a palimpsest suggest on a larger scale.

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⑥ KEYS TO ADDRESS THIS IN A CONVERSATION

1. Start with Surah 39:28---"without any crookedness." Let the Qur'an set the standard before you introduce the evidence. "The Qur'an says it is in Arabic 'without any crookedness.' Do you believe that?" Once affirmed, you have a standard against which to measure. Everything that follows is a test the Qur'an invited.

2. Use Surah 4:162 and Aisha's testimony as your lead grammatical example. It is the strongest single case because the anomaly was identified not by Western critics but by Muhammad's own wife. Saying "Western scholars found errors" triggers a defensive reaction. Saying "Aisha identified a scribal mistake in the text" uses the Islamic tradition's own witness.

3. Carry two physical Qur'ans or use the Hatun Tash method. If you can obtain a Hafs Qur'an and a Warsh Qur'an---both available online or from Islamic bookshops---placing them side by side and pointing to differences in the Arabic text is the most powerful single demonstration available. Hatun Tash has made this technique famous at Speakers' Corner: the visual evidence of two different Arabic Qur'ans is more persuasive than any verbal argument. If physical copies are unavailable, the website of the Qur'anic corpus or images from Pfander Centre presentations can serve the same purpose.

4. Frame Uthman's burning as a historical question, not an attack. "Ibn Mas'ud was one of the first people Muhammad told Muslims to learn the Qur'an from. His Qur'an didn't include Surah 1 or the last two surahs. Instead of reconciling the differences, Uthman burned his copy. Why? If they were all the same, why burn anything?" The question is more powerful than the assertion.

5. Know the Sana'a palimpsest by name and date. Mentioning "the Sana'a manuscript discovered in 1972 in Yemen" with the detail that it contains an earlier text scraped off and overwritten gives your point specificity and credibility. Most Muslims have never heard of it. The fact that it was found in a mosque---not by Western excavators but by Yemeni restoration workers---undermines the "Western bias" dismissal.

6. Distinguish your claim carefully. You are not arguing that the Qur'an is a meaningless or chaotic text. You are arguing that it does not meet its own standard of linguistic perfection and textual preservation. A text can be historically important, literarily impressive, and influential without being flawless in grammar or unchanged in transmission. Your argument is targeted: the Qur'an's claims about itself exceed what the evidence supports.

7. Use the resources available. Jay Smith's presentations on Qur'anic manuscript evidence are available through the Pfander Centre. Hatun Tash's Speakers' Corner engagements are on the DCCI Ministries YouTube channel. Daniel Brubaker's Corrections in Early Qur'an Manuscripts is the academic-level resource. Al-Fadi's Arabic-language analysis (through Cira International) is invaluable for Arabic-literate audiences. Keith Small's Textual Criticism and Qur'an Manuscripts provides the scholarly methodology. Point your Muslim friend to these resources if they want to investigate further---the evidence is public and growing.

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