Is The Bismillah Part Of The Quran?
Who has not heard the followers of Islam asserting that ALL of the Arabic text that is asserted to have come through Caliph ‘Uthman is ‘the Qur’an Muhammad gave us’, and that no-one has EVER differed on this matter? In open discussion one hears nothing but assailing of the Bible because the followers of Islam do not consider it as being something ‘absolute’like they say the Qur’an is, the latter being a text in which, we are assured, nothing but the ‘revealed’ Qur’an has EVER been inserted there. Thus the present writer was astounded to find in a recent (1999) book published by Al-Hadayyah in Birmingham, UK, a four page section acknowledging that the four Sunni ‘founding’ Imams were in fact divided (2 and 2) over whether the bismillah is part of the ‘revealed’ Qur’an! What is more astounding is that these early scholars based their decision NOT UPON THE TEXT OF THE QUR’AN as it is, but they exercised their freedom to make such an opinion (‘ijtihad) based merely on the conflicting conte
