... were revealed in.2 By understanding the order of the verses, it allowed scholars to distinguish between those verses that were abrogating and those that were abrogated. The early Muslim scholars categorized verses into Meccan and Medinan periods. These were then further divided "into sub-periods, early, middle and later for example."3 This was significant for the concept of abrogation because a verse said to be abrogating had to have been revealed after the abrogated verse. It is important to find out why abrogation took place in the Qur'an. For this we have two perspectives: the Orientalist and the Muslim. Abrogation is the term generally used by Orientalists in a negative way. They use the abrogation concept for criticisms of the Qur'an. For them abrogation was a method of cancelling or replacing another verse because the abrogated verse was contradicting or deviating in some way.4 One of the reasons they put forward for ...

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