from the time of Mohammed and for as long as Islam remains in practice in the future the opening chapter of the HQ remains guaranteed unchanged even to the most skeptical mind. The reason is, every Muslim knows, has known and needs to know the whole chapter accurately by heart and reads it aloud or hears it being read aloud several times everyday in the daily obligatory prayers. The slightest mistake will prompt an immediate correction, that has always been guaranteed. Combine that with the Muslim belief that the greater the amount of HQ one memorises the greater one’s merit and honour. Those who memorise the whole HQ are given the title Haafidh. Mosques usually have several Hooffadh (plural) in the congregation. The whole HQ is read aloud in prayers once a year. In addition in three of the five daily prayers randomly selected passages of the HQ are read aloud. Also, it is an act of merit to listen to the HQ being recited, so Muslims are for ever listening to recitations of the HQ amongst themselves, on the radio, tv, internet, personal recorded media, etc. This oral tradition of memorising, continually reading and listening to the HQ being read has in itself provided an excellent means of its preservation. The word Al Qur’an actually means The Reading, or The Recitation.

I'm not even a muslim and can easily see qhy the HQ has no other versions. Islam, unlike christianity, has a path that is easier to trace from beginning to end . The books of the bible were written over such a long period and not written as a single tome. It's not really a big deal since the reason for the HQ having this distinction is that it is so new compared to other major religions. Many old books can make the same claim but are still very wrong like the Malleus Maleficarum. It would be a lot harder to make this claim if the book were thousands of years old.

I thought I read that there was indeed a fight over the HQ, and someone actually destroyed copies belonging to another sect because they were not correct by his understanding. Something about 'Uthman tried to destroy rival codices variant readings'?

the original is a corrupted book. so i cannot even imagine the copies ? the same goes with the bible and Torah. if you analyzes these book you will find so many mistakes contradictions and even lots of hate speech that should be condemned by modern justice. i have an ongoing such law suit now with the Bible and the Koran .still in the process . we will prove these books are not what you want them to be . i am not religious , do not believe in god evil heaven or hell. but i love all humans my fight is with all religions and there organizations that are indoctrinating the masses with dogma and lies

"The study of the origins and development of the Qur’an can be said to fall into two major schools of thought, the first being a traditionalist view and the later being a non-traditionalist view. The traditionalist view, which relies on the early Islamic literature as authentic or reliable, ascribes to the view that the Qur'an began with Muhammad's claims of divine revelations in 610 AD. Most of these revelations were either memorised or obscurely written down during the lifetime of Muhammad. These revelations were subsequently collected and were standardised in today's version by the caliph Uthman c. 653/654 AD. The text was later given vowel pointing and punctuation in the seventh and eighth centuries. The non-traditionalist view covers a variety of schools of thought generally anathematised by Muslim academia. Their view generally treats the early Muslim traditions, which arose over a century post-hoc, with scepticism and evaluates the claim of the Qur'an as a text on the basis of higher critical analysis, independent evidence and source hypotheses." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_and_development_of_the_Qur'an

It's easy to explain. We see the Koran as the literal word of God. We believe that God is absolute. That means we also see the Koran as an absolute. If you look at the properties of an absolute, you see that ANY CHANGE no matter HOW SMALL changes the absolution. Take a number for example. We'll use the number 4 as our example. If you add ANYTHING to 4 or take ANYTHING away from 4, it is no longer 4. . We see the Koran the same way. If you change 1 letter of the Koran, it is no longer the Koran. It might be a great read that is based on the Koran, but a true Koran MUST be IDENTICAL IN EVERY LETTER or it is no longer the literal absolute translation of God's word.