Thread by @abdullahadam

How Islam Has Changed Since Muhammad Died thread

Islam has clearly changed over the centuries. The 'Islam' of today is NOT what Prophet Muhammad practiced, by any means. What did he even practice is a bit of a mystery. The only records we have are from the seerah and the hadith which come hundreds of years after.

During Muhammad's time, there was no compiled Quran. There was 7 ahruf (variant readings) that people would recite according to their local dialects, sometimes written down on bones and bark of trees.

When a lot of the huffaz (memorizers of the Quran) died in the battle of Yamama (450 according to Ibn Kathir) the companions got scared about losing parts of it and decided to compile it into a book.

Then, much later, because of fighting between Muslims and the battle in Azerbaijan, Uthman decided to to destroy the manuscripts of all the dialects and leave only one dialect (the Qurayshi one, Muhammad's tribe).

There wasn't even dots in the Quran. All of the dots and symbols were added later.

The communal praying of taraweeh in Ramadan is another example that Muhammad did not perform, but was done after his time. Shias do not pray taraweeh.

Muhammad allowed temporary marriage (muta') but Omar forbade it after his death. Shias still do it to this day.

When hadith says after using washroom wipe your private parts with an odd number of stones, this sounds foreign and strange. In fact, most Muslims wash with water, but it's not actually an obligation in the religion. Water is optional.

Muslims think it's mandatory to wash and don't know anything about odd number of stones.

Reza Aslan argues that the hijab was not implemented on Muslim women until much after Muhammad's death. He argues that it was not 'part of Islam' early on. In fact he claims large numbers of the hadith literature were fabricated to please rulers and score theological points.

Muslims who think they are following the authentic religion of Muhammad should ask themselves, "How much of the hadith is really true? Do I really know what Muhammad did and how he lived?"

What other examples can you think of where we are living differently than Muhammad did?