What ARE the differences between Hafs and Warsh??

[wanderer]

Can you please just tell me the differences and help me. I'm sorry for getting upset but I am really panicky and agitated right now I really need some help I'm having a lot of trouble at this point in my life and I feel very scared.

[deleted]

Peace be upon you brother.

I'll do a comparison if our Lord wills. It'll take time though.

[wanderer]

But I thought that all Hafs copies were the same?? Please help me here I am getting extremely depressed

[deleted]

Peace. It would be pre-"Hafs", wouldn't it? Hafs is stated to have been from 709, to 796.

[wanderer]

So how many copies of the Quran are floating around?? With different messages, verses,  etc. How do we know which one is the right one. What are the changes??? Everything I know has been turned around. Can anyone get Joseph Islam to help me with this?

[deleted]

Peace. I'll state again; how have you "known" it to be the truth from your Lord hitherto this discussion?

[wanderer]

Are you telling me to abandon the Quran??? I knew you were untrustworthy and trying to lead me off the right path!! Someone else try to help me please!!!

[Hassan3000]

Peace be upon you

First of all I would like to remind everyone and myself that this discussion is to please God and understand his book more, and so we should have patience and ask our Lord to increase us in knowledge.

As of what I understand, if God would have said He would protect the words of the Quran, but the meaning could have changed over time. So there would only be one Quran, but we would not have known the meanings of the words that the people at the time of Prophet Muhammad would be familiar with.

But God simply promised to protect its meaning, so we have many classical arabic lexicons that help us understand what each word meant at that time. The reason that God did not promise to protect both the words and meaning, is based on His wisdom that I don't know why, and there is much wisdom behind that which can't be understood.

And also the word differences do not have an big impact on the overall message, as the words are only having differences in spelling, as no word or verse is added to create a new law or story, thus also proving the fact that God fulfilled the promise of guarding its meaning and message.

Hope that answers the question , sorry if I made any mistake, and if I did please tell me

[wanderer]

So the words in the Hafs Quran aren't the original words of revelation and they have been changed?? Honestly,  at this point I don't know what anything means anymore. I am dead inside. I know already that I am destined to Hell and that Allah despises me as one of the disbelievers and that my existence is utterly worthless but I still want an answer

[wanderer]

What is the point of continuing tolive as a disbelievers anyway....

[Hassan3000]

Peace be upon you

I never said the words are different, I just mean there could be different spelling differences that don't have an overall impact on the message of the Quran. If a muslim only reads the Hafs version, and another muslim reads only the Warsh version, will you ever see a difference in their practices? No major sects are created from the variations of the Quran due to its very minor differences.

And please don't say like that , just because you don't understand this, and your trying to find answers doesn't make you a disbeliever and despised by God? Despised by the most loving and merciful?

And again maybe I am wrong as I am not very educated on this subject, but to what I know, yes there is differences, but firstly the do not bring anything new, as in a new law or of that sort, and again God already fulfilled the promise to protect its meaning.

[Joseph Islam]

What is the point of continuing tolive as a disbelievers anyway....

Dear Wanderer,

As-salamu alaykum

My humble advice to you would be to really calm down, take a step back and allow yourself to slowly re-learn. No one can help you, if you are not first prepared to help yourself and be respectful to others.

I have come to learn that some of your posts / comments were so crude / rude, that they had to be removed from this thread. I have now sighted the comments thanks to the moderators. I noted that some were even aimed at me which others have found offensive. I would respectfully urge / like to ask you to please, please, calm down. I or anyone else can only help you better in a calm, considered state. Please.

Please kindly remember that you are not the only one that has or is going through a process of relearning, with the shock when they have found things are out of kilter from their old convictions / beliefs. Even mighty prophets have had doubts and have endured mental anguish in the process whilst their Lord slowly showed them a clearer path. With respect, you are not the first and arguably, will not be the last.

Quran, Scriptures aside, I assume you believe in some sort of intelligent designer, so please reach out to it, call it 'Rab', God or any beautiful name and please say:

"My Lord!, Increase me in knowledge" (20:114)

"Perhaps that my Lord will guide me to a nearer way than this to the right way" (18:24)
"...asa an yahdiya rabbi li-aqraba min hadha rashadan"

Now, I have written this note quickly and I will try to afford some time slowly to assist you in any way I can, despite me having written extensively on this topic. But you have to be patient with me (because of my immense time constraints) and more importantly, patient with yourself.

How can anyone expect God to provide one with truth (or through others like the wonderful members of this forum who have already tried to assist you) when one almost impatiently demands it from God? Please, give it time and you will see the woods from the trees and be able to discern, God willing. Allow God to teach you, please don’t be impatient with Him.

I will come back to this thread as soon as I have a chance, but I will have hoped that by then your demeanour will have changed.

With hope ...

Regards,
Joseph

[wanderer]

Thank you for responding to my posts. I am deeply regretful of any hurt I may have caused with my comments. It is just that for the last couple of months I have been in an extremely nervous and depressed state. I come from a Secular Muslim family in America, and I used to be like every other American child (I'm currently 14) Play games, have friends, watch movies, etc. I didn't really know or care much about Islam. Over the last year, however, I started to grow more and more interested in religion, and began studying Islam. After seeing all the atrocious things in the Hadith and how poorly compiled it was, I soon became a Quranist, and let me tell you, finding your site was a real lifesaver. It was the only good website I could find that operated from a Quranic perspective.  Lately, I've been reading more and more Quran and thinking about. However, what has happened to me is that it has completely taken over my mind. I can't think of anything else anymore, leaving me in a permanent state of severe anxiety and depression. Sometimes, I have trouble breathing, or just moving around and talking. It's really scary for me and my family, especially since they don't know whats going on.  Right know I'm just trying to get some answers on this Hafs/Warsh situation,  but if anyone can help me, please do.
Peace,
Wanderer

[deleted]

Peace brother.  You're just 14, and you seem to have the fear more than a lot of people who have claimed to be in submission to the god for 30, 40, 50 years. The fear is good. God tells us a lot about the people that fear Him, essentially that if you fear him He'll be by your side, and'll guide you to a path in which He'll be pleased with you, and you with Him. I'm unsure, but I don't think it should make you depressed, or too anxious that you can't do things anymore, but I haven't quite figured out myself how to handle it either. You're doing the right thing by approaching these difficult topics head on, it's the only way to get past them, and when you do your connection with your god will increase significantly. You don't want them to pile up, because if they do it might seem impossible to overcome, or just not worth it. As for it completely taking over your mind, that's great, it's the connection with god that matters most, right? Once you've went through the words of your Lord a few times though it'll slow down, and wont be so overwelming, and you'll beable to get back to a lot of your activities, although you probably wont spend nearly as much time on them. Also you'll likely get different things from them, outside of just entertainment. I think it's still important to have that part of your life, where your exposed to society and how it is, to have a balance of mind, so that you don't become delusional, and so that you can see how much god has truly given you, and how much you should be grateful.

The variations between Hafs and Warsh are fairly insignificant, they usually just cause pronounciation changes, and hence change who it was talking about, changing meanings like "dont you know God knows whats in the hearts of people" to "don't they know God knows what's in the hearts of people",  although I do think (I seek forgiveness if I incorrect about this) there are a few where the word is entirely different, though a synonym of the word, like say "he pardoned her" instead of "he forgived her". I don't think it is ever more significant than that with these two variations. These variations can also be attributed to scribal errors. I know I make mistakes constantly when trying to copy things word for word. As for why our god allowed this to happen? We can only speculate, but I think you can take it as a trial of the heart. And you'll have a lot of these throughout you life. I knew nothing about god, or this book I now hold dear to my heart until less than two years ago, and I assure you it feels like every month I hit a point where I am like "well that's it, how can I get past this" then within a short time God reassures my heart and it becomes stronger and stronger.

Now besides the Hafs and Warsh transmissions, there are many variations out there — I'm unsure if anyone really uses them though — that do have more significant variations, entire sentences, or paragraphs changed, and the likes of that. However noone really deems them significant, and they aren't really accessible in English because noone cares to even translate them. It would be difficult to obtain them even in Arab countries. Therefore I don't think those hold much credibility. Anyone can copy out a book and write in little additions, which is likely what happened with those.

As for the anchient manuscripts, a lot I think have again these small variations that you see between Hafs and Warsh, however some seem to be very close to, if not exactly the same as those we have today. I didn't mean to frighten you yesterday with what I said, I just meant to provide you with correct answers. And it is the truth that you can find many manuscripts that include variations. If your interested, last night I went through some of the Tübingen manuscript, it is one of the oldest, and very close to Muhammads time, it might even have been written by a companion of Muhammad, and I have yet to find any issues. It doesn't have taskeel though, so really I don't expect to see very many, if any. I'll update you again on that once I am finished the comparison. As I stated though, I am fairly new to all of this myself. I'm not very good with Arabic, so it'll take a little while to get through it.

And I'm sorry if I seemed like I was beating around any bushes, when I asked you to elaborate I just wasn't sure what you wanted, and I felt like people were repeating themselves, so I wanted you to be more specific. I truly would like to help you get through this. If it's a list of variations you need, translated to English, then I'll do my best to provide it to you, god willing, but it'll take a while, likely at least a few months. And I'm sorry for my question of what made you know the book is from the god, I didn't realise you were so young, or new to this all, and I just wanted to push you to realise that the reasons you believe in it, or at least some of them haven't changed. As you learn more you'll have more and more reasons that you know it to be from god, and things like the variations between Hafs and Warsh won't but be like a flick on the arm.

If I can help you further with anything, I'll try my best.

Peace be upon you brother. 

PS. If you can learn Arabic, it'll open a lot of doors for you, even if it's just how to read and write the Arabic script. Once you can read it you'll pick up a lot just from here and there in your studies.

[wanderer]

Hi Elijah
Thank you for your kind words. When I say that I am feeling like it is taking over my mind, I don't mean that I'm getting closer to God, just that I'm becoming obsessed with all these details and it's clouding my mind with all these terrible thoughts, making me anxious and depressed.  It's definitely not good. I am actually taking courses in Arabic right now, although I am terrible at languages. I just wish I could be confident and firm in myself and my faith instead of scared and weak. Sometimes, I feel as if I'm just one of the hypocrites that they talk about in the Quran. As for the Hafs/Warsh issue, my problem is, how do we know our version that we read and quote today is the correct one and all the others are the aberrations?? Please respond and thanks again
Wanderer