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[quote=Anonymous]The Koran is unchangeable, much as the Bible is unchangeable.  Thpugh the latter is subject to new interpretations of what certain phrases meant in the context of the times in light of scholarship.  The Koran also once was in its earlier years, but most Muslims believe all the scholarship necessary for that took place in the early centuries of Islam.

Orthodox Islamic belief today is that the Koran is co-eternal with God.  However, that was not orthodox Islam in the early centuries.  There were many theologians who posited the Koran did not exist until it was revealed to Muhammed.  This strand of thinking is more consistent with a view that many passages in the Koran had a context particular to various events in the early Islamic community and had a message limited to that context.  However, around the tenth century the weight of opinion shifted to the co-eternal view, which became the orthodox view.

Orthodox Islam is far less dogmatic even today about the hadith.  There was a great deal of cataloguing of these sayings of the prophet in the early centuries as to which had a strong provenance and which a weak one, with many in between.  Even the strong ones have far less authority than the Koran because, unlike the Koran, they are the word of a man, not of God.

Many hadith contradict other hadith, but people are relatively comfortable with that ambiguity and feel free to pick and choose the hadith from which they draw inspiration.  As I recall, at one point in his career as dictator, Qaddafi published his Green Book, which set forth a view that rejected all authority in Islam other than the Koran.  This was seen as idiosyncratic, but not as heresy.[/quote]

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