Evidence of the Deviance of the Umayyads from Othmanic Islam

We might expect the Umayyads, not only to alter the text of the Quran, or, rather, promote the already-existing, particular variant, texts of the Quran which best accorded with their interpretation, but also to downplay even the resulting text’s actual significance, since, after all, it was the Quran itself, in the original form or otherwise, which was the foundation of the Hashimites’ claims. This is precisely what we find occurring when the Umayyads, shortly after Othman’s decease, founded the first Muslim dynasty in Damascus. The Umayyad kings are acknowledged to have been, in the standard, orthodox, Islamic authorities, and from their particular perspective, little better than pagans, and to have demonstrated contempt even for the Othmanic Quran, which their own Umayyad Caliph had handed down to them. A contemporary, and reliable, account represents the first Umayyad king, Muawiya, as professing Christian beliefs in public and in an official capacity, not Muslim beliefs in the generally accepted sense of that term. This shows the milieu in which the earliest Muslims operated was predominantly a Christian one. The same picture is confirmed by other scraps of contemporary historical accounts that have survived from that era. It was only later, when Islam was on the defensive, and threatened by the Christian Crusades (early eleventh century AD on), that the mutilated Othmanic Quran was staunchly and unequivocally upheld as the sole authentic voice of Islam. The original Hashimite hostility to Othman’s interpretation was forgotten and the strange doctrines of the Othmanic edition imposed on the whole of the Near East by the sword. Nevertheless in Al Kindi’s time, as late as c. AD 820, there was still a variety of different texts of the Quran in circulation, including Ali’s original, based on the Nestorian Gospel of Sergius.

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