they would immediately realize that the muṣḥaf had been tampered with, for they have the Qur’an preserved in their hearts without having to check it against a written copy, and they would reject the forgery.

By contrast, a member of the People of the Book can produce numerous copies of the Torah and the Gospel, alter some portions, show them to many of their scholars, and those scholars would not detect the changes unless they compared the new copies with the manuscripts already in their possession.

Thus, when a scribe once altered the Torah, the corruption spread among several of their groups and they never noticed it.

(Moreover, Muslims possess uninterrupted chains of transmission upheld by upright, reliable narrators for the minute details of the religion, just as the masses have conveyed its more obvious aspects—something the People of the Book do not enjoy.)

Furthermore, their own claim that their scriptures exist in seventy-two languages actually makes them more susceptible to alteration than a single Book preserved in one language; a lone text is memorized by great multitudes, leaving no room for anyone to change it.

As for books disseminated in seventy-two tongues, if some of the extant copies in a given language were altered, the speakers of the remaining languages would not know of it—indeed, even the custodians of the other manuscripts would remain unaware. Alteration in such circumstances is entirely possible, just as it is with similar works.

Their assertion that gathering all the copies together is impossible is in fact evidence against them, for