Akhbari Shiite Sect Belief in Tahrif (Distortion) of Quran

بســم اللــه الرحمــن الرحيــم

والصلاــة والسلاــم علــى نبيــه الكريــم

وعلــى اهــل بيتــه الطيبيــن الطاهريــن المظلوميــن

 

Allah Azza wa Jalla says: 

إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ۝

Verily, We have sent down the Dhikr and verily We are its Guardians

(Sura 15:9)

Consequently, it is one of the fundamentals of our Faith to believe and have certainty in the fact that the holy Qur’an is the pristine and undistorted Words of Allah. Anyone who believes the holy Qur’an has been tampered with, that it has not been maintained in its original form or sequence, that either parts of it were fabricated or removed, has become an apostate from the Religion of Islam and is guilty of outright kufr. Incidentally, the books of the Ithna Ashari sect of Shi’a contain numerous reports attributed to the twelve Imams and others that apparently state that the Qur’an has been distorted. The doctrine of tahrif (distortion) of the Qur’an is quite evident in the well known books of the Ithna Ashari sect. For example, in a previous entry I cited an Ayah (25:74) which absolutely demolishes the false doctrine of Imamate held to by the Ithna Asharis and other Imamiyya sects. Unable to answer this powerful Qur’anic proof, the Ithna Ashari texts found no other avenue except to claim that the Ayah was distorted and put forward the alleged original text of the Verse. Nevertheless, the mainstream Ulama of the Ithna Asharis fiercely deny this doctrine and maintain that they fully believe in the Qur’an as it is. These tend to belong to the Usuli school of thought, but there is another group of Ithna Asharis known as the Akhbari school. The Usuli school, from the word Usul meaning “principles” cite one of their principles that any Hadith or Khabr (report) which opposes the holy Qur’an ought to be rejected. However, the Akhbari school apparently give preference to the Akhbar (reports) of their twelve Imams over anything else. The axis of the Akhbari sect is therefore the alleged sayings of the twelve Imams and not the holy Qur’an, i.e., the Word of God. In the Indian subcontinent, the Akhbari sect is based in Hyderabad, India. The now deceased Moulana Syed Riyaz Uddin Hyder Jaffery played a major role in disseminating the Akhbari ideology among the Shi’a community there. At present, the movement seems to be led by Moulana Syed Waheed Uddin Hyder Jaffery. They maintain a website which has devoted an entire section to openly proclaiming their doctrine of tahrif of the holy Qur’an. However, one should not imagine that among the Ithna Ashariya it is only the Akhbaris who openly believe in tahrif while none of the Usulis do. The truth is there are a growing number of Usulis among the Shi’a community who have ditched their taqiya in favor of no longer concealing their belief in tahrif. This is because it is no longer possible for the Usulis to hide the fact that some of their heavyweights and classical scholars, the likes of Mulla Baqir Majlisi (1627-1699) openly believed in the doctrine of tahrif. I shall, within the course of time, update this website with references from their books exposing this doctrine of tahrif (in sha Allah).