text: how does a certain religion prosper? is it popular choice, or divine intervention? and depending on what you chose, how do you explain the steadily rising numbers of muslims, and declining numbers of christians?  (there are 12 million christianity to islam converts a year, and about 3 million vice versa) the perversion of qur’an and   the loss of many parts of it  on page 131 of his book, "el-sheaa and correction", the contemporary muslim scholar, dr. mosa-el-mosawy, makes this frank confession,  "those who adopt the notion of the perversion of the qur’an are present among all different islamic groups, but the majority of them come from the el-sheaa scholars."    perversion of qur’an is an unimaginable notion to the lay muslim because the scholars of islam are hiding this truth from being published or becoming known.   of course, we weren’t just satisfied with what dr. el-mosawy has already mentioned, but we went back to the most popular ancient scholars and to muhammad’s relatives and companions to investigate this notion concerning the perversion and loss of several parts of the qur’an because those are the trustworthy people regarding the history and development of islam.  upon examining the testimonies of these great companions, the answer was positive. they clearly stated that perversion and loss of large fragments of the qur’an did occur. let us scrutinize their testimony in order to present to deluded muslims the truth as it is proclaimed by their trusted spiritual leaders and scholars. the deceptive veil must be removed so people can see the true face of the qur’an.  ’ibn umar al–khattab explicitly admits,  "let no one of you say that he has acquired the entire qur’an for how does he know that it is all? much of the qur’an has been lost, thus let him say, ‘i have acquired of it what is available"’ (suyuti: itqan, part 3, page 72).   a’isha (also page 72) adds to the story of ibn umar and says,   "during the time of the prophet, the chapter of the parties used to be two hundred verses when read. when uthman edited the copies of the qur’an, only the current (verses) were recorded" (73 verses).  the same statement is made by ubay ibn ka’b, one of the great companions. on page 72, part 3, the suyuti says,   "this famous companion asked one of the muslims, ‘how many verses in the chapter of the parties?’ he said, ‘seventy-two or seventy-three verses.’ he (ubay) told him, ‘it used to be almost equal to the chapter of the cow (about 286 verses) and included the verse of the stoning.’ the man asked, ‘what is the verse of the stoning?’ he said, ‘if an old man or woman committed adultery, stone them to death."’  this same story and same dialogue which took place between the companion and one of the muslims is recorded by ibn hazm (volume 8, part 11, pages 234 and 235). then ibn hazm said,   "’ali ibn abi talib said this has a reliable chain of authority (the sweetest [al mohalla] vol. 8.)."  the zamakh-shari also cited it in his book, "al-kash-shaf’ (part 3, page 518).  these are unquestionable statements made by the pillars of the islamic religion who transmitted muhammad’s sayings and biography, "the tradition", and who interpreted the qur’an— among them ibn ’umar, a’isha, ubay ibn ka’b and ’ali ibn abi talib. ibn ’umar states that a large part of the qur’an was missed. a’isha and ubay ibn ka’b assert that dozens of verses from the "chapter of the parties" have been lost. ’ali confirms that, too. in regard to this particular verse, the following incident is recorded in "the itqan" by suyuti (part 1, page 168),   "during the collection of the qur’an, people used to come to zayd ibn thabit (with the verses they memorized). he shunned recording any verse unless two witnesses attested to it. the last verse of chapter of repentance was found only with khuzayma ibn thabit. zayd said, ‘record it because the apostle of god made the testimony of khuzayma equal to the testimony of two men.’ ’umar came with the verse of the stoning but it was not recorded because he was the only witness to it."  one can only wo