Experts in the UK expressed opinions suggesting that the Quran manuscript of Birmingham may be older than Mohammed.

Historian Tom Holland, one of the most celebrated historians in the UK, told the Times: ‘It destabilizes, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged – and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions.’

Keith Small, from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, added: ‘This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven’.

There is no certainty regarding how the Quran came about. I wrote here and here expressing my view that the Quran was probably written over centuries rather than years, by multiple authors and probably multiple languages. There is no definitive proof but variation in style and contents of the Quran supports such an assumption. The above remarks are very significant but most likely will be rejected by all Muslim scholars and have the potential to send shockwaves across the Islamic world.

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