A Critical Study of Orientalists' Objections on Mushaf-e-Usmani: In the Light of Allama Shams ul haq Afghani’s Thoughts

Abstract

مستشرقین کے مصحفِ عثمانی پر  شبہات کا تنقیدی مطالعہ: علامہ شمس الحق افغانیؒ کے افکار کی روشنی  میں

Orientalists have paid much attention to the studies of Quran, in this regard the first target of Orientalists is Quranic Codification and its Historical position, for which they tried their best to object the Historical background of Mushaf -e Usmani and its validity. While Islamic History bears an ample testimony to the validity of this Manuscript, a general trend of the orientalists has been to question the validity of such a core Islamic ideal. Maulana Shamsulhaq Afghani was a famous and great scholar of subcontinent, belonged to District Charssada Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who wrote critical evaluations on Orientalist’s Quranic objections.  He served on many important designations’ like ministry of Baluchistan Qalat, President of wifaq ul madaris al Arabia Pakistan, Vice Chancellor of Islamia University of Bahawalpur and member of Islamic ideology Council Pakistan. Among his contiribution there are works that deal with the criticism of the orientalists’ approaches to the study of Islam in general and Quran in particular. In his book”Uloom- ul- Quran” he criticize orientalist’s trends about the codification of Mushaf-e-Usmani. In this research paper some selected objections of orientalists related to the codification of Mushaf-e-Usmani, and their critical evaluation in the light of Shamsulhaq Afghani's Thoughts has been discussed.