The silence of the companions on this subject...

The silence of the companions on this subject, from the beginning till the end when Ali b. Abi Talib (‘a) became the Caliph, is an indisputable evidence that such an interpolation or omission never occurred. It is all the more difficult to accept that Tahrif was caused by Uthman, for the following reasons: (a) Islam had gained a strong foothold by the time of Uthman, and was widely spread.

It was not possible for Uthman to tamper with the Qur’an, nor for anyone else more influential and higher in status than him. (b) If it were presumed that he tampered with the verses which had no bearing on the question of wilayah or the Caliphate of his predecessors, then it would be a futile exercise.

And if he tampered with those verses which had such connections, then the Caliphate, in the first instance, would not have come to him, because the Qur’an would have guided the Muslims against him. (c) His tampering with the Qur’an would have become a major and prominent reason for his assassination. There would have been no need to ascribe to Uthman other reasons like squander­ing the Baitul Mal of the Muslims unlike his predecessors, or other such reasons.

(d) It would have become incumbent upon Ali (‘a) to restore to the Qur’an what had been interpolated or omitted, and to bring it up to date with the original as it existed during the time of the Prophet (‘s) and the first two Caliphs. In so doing he could not have been censured. In fact, Ali (‘a) could have advanced a convincing reason against those who accused him of having condoned the killing of Uthman, and sought revenge from him.

It is known that Ali (‘a) returned all the lands to their rightful owners which had been wrongfully granted to others by Uthman. In his sermon, he said: "By God, if I were to find that some women were married by that wealth or some maidservants were owned by it, I would return it to their rightful owners. Whoever finds justice stifling, must find injustice and tyranny all the more so" .[^2] This is what Ali (‘a) said in respect of the wealth.

One can easily imagine what his stand would be if he found out that the Qur’an was interpolated or tampered with. The fact that he accepted the Qur’an as it existed in his time is a convincing proof against any Tahrif.