Yasir Qadhi’s Divine Permission Model and the Seven Ahruf — Ali Shukri Amin
First published on my writing site: www.aliamin.info/2026/02/yasir-qadhis-divine-permission-model-and-the-seven-ahruf/
By Ali Shukri Amin. I first wrote this as a comment on r/MuslimAcademics, in the thread “Sh. Yasir Qadhi: The Divine Permission Model”, copied here as written.
While there is no doubt paraphrasing & word interpolation occurred, I don’t think this explains the Seven Ahruf hadith. In fact, it directly contradicts it. The hadith says the Quran was Revealed upon Seven Ahruf, and this view of Qadhi’s is saying, “actually the Quran was Revealed on one Harf & then people were allowed to add any number of variants.”
It seems more likely that the dispensation of paraphrasing had nothing to do with the Ahruf & was moreso a product of some of the Arabs not having a conceptualization of verbatim transmission.
I personally think shaykh Uthman Khan’s view (who taught Qadhi the Qira’at) is a lot better. His opinion is that the Ahruf are literally Huruf (letters), referring to 7 letters that are not present across all of the dialects of Arabic. So that means the Quran was Revealed accomodating these 7 letters so all of the Arabs could pronounce it.
Posted February 28, 2026. Read it on Reddit.
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