“There is no blame on you if you seek bounty from your Lord during the seasons of pilgrimage.”

Among the variants they attribute to ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb is that he recited:
“not those who have incurred wrath, nor those who are astray,”
—and many similar readings exist. Yet the scholars have never transmitted them as permissibly recited in prayer, nor as legitimate grounds to oppose the codex of ʿUthmān, because they are readings which, were someone to deny that they belong to the Qur’an, he would not thereby become an unbeliever. The Qur’an that ʿUthmān compiled with the unanimous approval of the Companions, however—whoever rejects any part of it is an unbeliever; he is judged like an apostate: he is asked to repent, and if he refuses, his neck is struck.

Abū ʿUbayd said: ʿUthmān’s achievement in compiling the Qur’an has always been counted among his greatest merits. Some deviants have maligned him for it, but their disgrace has been exposed and their scandals laid bare.

He also said: I was told—by Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ, from ʿImrān ibn Jarīr, from Abū Mijlaz—that the latter said: “Some people, in their folly, criticised ʿUthmān, may Allah have mercy on him, for collecting the Qur’an, yet they went on to recite what had been abrogated.”

Abū ʿUbayd added: Abū Mijlaz held that ʿUthmān knowingly omitted what he omitted, just as he knowingly preserved what he preserved.

Abū Bakr said: In Allah’s words—
“Indeed, it is We who sent down the Reminder, and surely We shall guard it” (Q 15:9)—
there is proof of the unbelief of such a person, for Allah, Mighty and Exalted, has protected the Qur’an from alteration, substitution, addition, and omission.

Thus, if a man recites:
“Perish the hands of Abū Lahab—and he has perished! His wealth and all he earned did not avail him; he will burn in a fire of flame, and his woman is the carrier of firewood, with a rope of palm-fiber round her neck,”
then he has lied against Allah the Majestic, attributing to Him what He did not say; he has altered and distorted His Book, and sought to tamper with what Allah has preserved and kept from intermixture. By this deed he paves the way for the people of impiety to insert into the Qur’an whatever might blemish the honour of Islam, and then to ascribe it to people like these who foist falsehoods upon them. In it lies the negation of the consensus by which Islam is safeguarded: upon that consensus the prayers are established, the zakāt is paid, and all devotional acts are regulated.

Likewise, in Allah’s saying,
“Alif Lām Rā. A Book whose verses have been perfected” (Q 11:1),
there is an indication of this man’s innovation and his descent into unbelief, for “whose verses have been perfected” means that creation has been prevented from adding to them, subtracting from them, or producing anything like them. Yet we have found this person inserting into it:
“And Allah spared the believers the fighting by means of ʿAlī; and Allah is All-Strong, All-Mighty.”
He has thus spoken outrage in the Qur’an and mentioned ʿAlī in a passage where, had ʿAlī heard him do so, he would have enforced the prescribed punishment upon him and ruled that he be put to death. And he has excised from Allah’s Speech