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Listening to Chapters 2 and 4 recently, I couldn't help but notice that both start out with affirmation of robustness. Chapter 2 starts out declaring the Quran as a book "in which there is no doubt." Chapter 4 starts out with a command from God to fear Him whom we beseech and that God is observing what they do.

Yet, these two chapters carry the bulk of abrogation claims, 113 by my last count!!

Don't the pro-abrogation scholars heed this? It is serious.

God strikes a parable in this verse,


In which God mocks those of the Children of Israel who failed to uphold the teachings of the Torah. While a donkey has an excuse, people haven't! This parable is not told for entertainment purpose; it is told so that Muslims do not do likewise. Have we been "loaded up with the Quran" but failed to carry it?

We do if we accept the abrogation doctrine! Because, the doctrine means that some of what God ordered us to do we don't have to do, and some of what God ordered us to not do we may do. It is that simple and that dangerous to faith. Did you notice the ending of the verse? It charges such people that they belie the signs of God and are wrongdoers whom God will not guide!

Why would any Muslim in his right mind take such a risk?

Since it is established without dispute that neither God nor His Messenger have ever explicitly stated that any verse of the Quran, or a ruling thereof, has been abrogated, and the entire abrogation doctrine is a theory, it follows that the abrogation doctrine is a novelty in the religion. The Prophet (PBUH) has made it clear that novelties in the religion are rejected:

Translation: Whoever innovates in this matter of ours what is not in it, is turned back.

This hadeeth is narrated by `Aa'isha (RA) and reported authentic by Al-Bukhaari and Muslim. In Muslim's narration the wording is "what is not of it."

The abrogation doctrine should be turned back.

And God made that clear, for instance:

If God or His Messenger (PBUH) have explicitly given scholars a license to debate about the verses of the Quran, it would be another matter. But that never happened.

In discussing why the first and second generations of the Salaf poured on the subject of abrogation, Dr. M. Ibrahim Faaris, in his book صفوة الراسخ في علم المنسوخ والناسخ, page 53, says that the reason is:

Translation: "So that they avoid complying with lifted rulings and comply with those of them that stayed."

In other words, not because they wanted to know if some rulings have been canceled but because they assumed that some rulings have been canceled and they set out to classify them! But if rulings have been canceled, wouldn't God or His Messenger have said so unambiguously?

Of course. And God never said once that any of His rulings has been canceled. And the Prophet (PBUH) did say that some of his rulings he has canceled and said so unambiguously. For instance, he told us that he had once allowed temporary marriage, but "God and His Messenger are forbidding it till the Day of Resurrection", narrated by Sabra Al-Juhani and reported and authenticated by Muslim.

Rulings of God cannot be canceled by man. Only God, or His delegate Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) have that authority. And no guess from a mortal as to validity of God's rulings is binding on anyone.

I submit that the first generation, the Sahaaba, wrote about naskh and not about abrogation, and their reason was not to avoid complying with some rulings, but rather to understand all aspects of a ruling, which is what naskh does. It was the second generation that changed the word naskh to mean abrogation.

Afaana, in his book الرأي الصواب في منسوخ الكتاب, pages 80-84, writes a chapter on "the gates of evil opened by claiming there are abrogated verses in the Quran!"

On page 81, he says "When God tells us in the Quran that He abrogated verses, we must believe Him. And when He says that He has replaced the abrogated verses with other verses which are as good or better, then it would be blasphemy for us to deny that!" Problem is, He never did. Afaana's explanation of verses 2:106 and 16:101 is that there were verses recited as Quran then abrogated in words and ruling, made to be forgotten and never written down. That is his primary thesis. Problem is that narrations that make that perspective are all singles and the vast majority of them are weak or even fabricated.

He summarizes the gates of evil opened by the abrogation doctrine as follows:

1. Accusing God of realizing better ideas. Termed Al-Badaa'. That was the argument put forth by the Jews of the time as they rejected that God would reveal new scriptures after the Torah. Afaana, just like the majority of the early scholars, could not confound that argument except by saying that God is omniscient and therefore His verses and rulings fit the situation, people and time best and that is why they may get replaced. They all miss two fundamental points IMHO,
   
   
   • The Torah was humanly edited. That is why God abrogated it, first by the Gospel, which too was lost, then by the Quran, which God vowed to protect.
   • God's ability to do anything does include abrogation, but it also includes setting rulings that can work for all situations, people and times! Isn't that what the Quran is for?
   
   
2. Suspending some rulings. He gives the example of the penalty for homosexual sex, a penalty stated clearly in 4:16, yet scholars diverted the meaning of the verse to mean adultery and that it was abrogated!
   
   
3. Opening the field to claim two verses contradictory, without a well-defined control. He confesses that he himself almost fell into that trap. He says that what saved him was a rule set by Ash-Shaafi`i "No mandate is abrogated except by another mandate." A rule that actually has no evidence to support it. In fact, many abrogation claims are made about rulings thought to be a mandate and eased out by the abrogating ruling, such as the "big three".
   
   
4. Opening the field to doubt the finality of verses containing permanent rulings, because "how can a believer know that a given verse is not abrogated?"