Perfect Preservation of the Quran

Kung Fu

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You had to bring up the Comma to underhandedly disparage Christian theology and like a broken record call the Trinity polytheistic even though that has been refuted on both a logical and theological level. Christian theologians have provided, or tried to provide, answers to divine mysteries, how God can be human yet divine, immanent yet transcendent, temporal yet spiritual. I ask you a simple question to try and theologically deal with a certain Islamic conundrum, but you call it pointless nitpicking as if Islam shouldn't be contemplated, questioned or rationally scrutinized at the same level as Christianity.

Saying things like "God knows best" or "we don't need to know this for our salvation, therefore God doesn't explain" is just lily-livered stubbornness.
You're sounding a little desperate. You're trying to compare God impregnating His own creation to give birth to Himself only for Him to die at the hands of His own creation but yet He's also God while being a man. Conundrums are all on your side of the field, mate. You're trying to compare your whole mess, which you will never be able to explain, to how God raised Jesus in the Quran.

In before you compare Jesus to a VC account or an egg.

God raised Jesus. That's the end of the story when it comes to Islam. Simple and easy to understand.
 
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God raised Jesus. That's the end of the story when it comes to Islam. Simple and easy to understand.
Don't blame me or Christianity for your own shortcomings. If you haven't understood by now, you never will, so I won't recommence another futile attempt at trying to make you understand.
 
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The popularity of said premise itself was an indication of how widely muslims blindly submitted to authority rather than showing independent thought and intellectual integrity.
You had to bring up the Comma to underhandedly disparage Christian theology and like a broken record call the Trinity polytheistic even though that has been refuted on both a logical and theological level. Christian theologians have provided, or tried to provide, answers to divine mysteries, how God can be human yet divine, immanent yet transcendent, temporal yet spiritual. I ask you a simple question to try and theologically deal with a certain Islamic conundrum, but you call it pointless nitpicking as if Islam shouldn't be contemplated, questioned or rationally scrutinized at the same level as Christianity.

Saying things like "God knows best" or "we don't need to know this for our salvation, therefore God doesn't explain" is just lily-livered stubbornness.
The Quran does not appeal to blind belief, but to evidence ('clear signs'). It in fact denigrates those who would not use reason:
Indeed, the worst of living creatures in the sight of Allah are the deaf and dumb who do not use reason. (8:22)

The Quran's unceasing appeal to reason:
Among His Signs in this, that He created you from dust; and then,- behold, ye are men scattered (far and wide)! (30:20)
And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variations in your languages and your colours: verily in that are Signs for those who know. (30:22)
[It is He] who has made for you the earth as a bed [spread out] and inserted therein for you roadways and sent down from the sky, rain and produced thereby categories of various plants. Eat [therefrom] and pasture your livestock. Indeed, in that are signs for those of intelligence. (20:53-54)
When Jesus came with clear signs he said, ‘I have brought you wisdom; I have come to clear up some of your differences for you. Be mindful of God and obey me: God is my Lord and your Lord. Serve Him: this is the straight path.’ (43:63-64)

Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the day and night there are signs for people of reason. (3:190)


'Blind submission to authority' would suggest a poor, gullible fool (the Muslim), who does not deign to question his tyrannic, monolithic dictator (Islam). Yet Muslims are exhorted to seek knowledge, and to dedicate themselves to the study of their religion. The first word revealed by God to Muhammad was in fact, 'Read!'* -- what is that but a call to action, an urgent command, an appeal to reason? A religion that had something to hide would not encourage such persistent investigation, for fear that it would collapse under the weight of its own deception, let alone exhort its believers to the faithful pursuit of all knowledge concerning it. Islam does not only invite its own followers to investigate it, but invites all people to do so: the Quran is addressed to mankind as a whole, not merely to believers. You say that Muslims bear no tradition of 'independent thought and intellectual integrity', but that could not be further from the truth: the Islamic world flourished in a golden age at the time of Europe's dark age. It was this Islamic golden age that later contributed to a resurgence and renewal of European thought during the Renaissance, in mathematics, chemistry, physics, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, etc. This occurred not in spite of Islam and the Quran, but because of it.

* (96:1-5)
1. Read! In the Name of your Lord, Who has created (all that exists),
2. Has created man from a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood).
3. Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous,
4. Who has taught (the writing) by the pen [the first person to write was Prophet Idrees (Enoch)],

5. Has taught man that which he knew not.
 
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The Quran does not appeal to blind belief, but to evidence ('clear signs'). It in fact denigrates those who would not use reason:
Indeed, the worst of living creatures in the sight of Allah are the deaf and dumb who do not use reason. (8:22)

The Quran's unceasing appeal to reason:
Among His Signs in this, that He created you from dust; and then,- behold, ye are men scattered (far and wide)! (30:20)
And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variations in your languages and your colours: verily in that are Signs for those who know. (30:22)
[It is He] who has made for you the earth as a bed [spread out] and inserted therein for you roadways and sent down from the sky, rain and produced thereby categories of various plants. Eat [therefrom] and pasture your livestock. Indeed, in that are signs for those of intelligence. (20:53-54)
When Jesus came with clear signs he said, ‘I have brought you wisdom; I have come to clear up some of your differences for you. Be mindful of God and obey me: God is my Lord and your Lord. Serve Him: this is the straight path.’ (43:63-64)

Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the day and night there are signs for people of reason. (3:190)


'Blind submission to authority' would suggest a poor, gullible fool (the Muslim), who does not deign to question his tyrannic, monolithic dictator (Islam). Yet Muslims are exhorted to seek knowledge, and to dedicate themselves to the study of their religion. The first word revealed by God to Muhammad was in fact, 'Read!'* -- what is that but a call to action, an urgent command, an appeal to reason? A religion that had something to hide would not encourage such persistent investigation, for fear that it would collapse under the weight of its own deception, let alone exhort its believers to the faithful pursuit of all knowledge concerning it. Islam does not only invite its own followers to investigate it, but invites all people to do so: the Quran is addressed to mankind as a whole, not merely to believers. You say that Muslims bear no tradition of 'independent thought and intellectual integrity', but that could not be further from the truth: the Islamic world flourished in a golden age at the time of Europe's dark age. It was this Islamic golden age that later contributed to a resurgence and renewal of European thought during the Renaissance, in mathematics, chemistry, physics, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, etc. This occurred not in spite of Islam and the Quran, but because of it.

* (96:1-5)
1. Read! In the Name of your Lord, Who has created (all that exists),
2. Has created man from a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood).
3. Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous,
4. Who has taught (the writing) by the pen [the first person to write was Prophet Idrees (Enoch)],

5. Has taught man that which he knew not.
I'm not gonna get baited into a cock-measuring contest between Islam and Christianity.

When I said what I said, I was speaking of the proponents of the perfect preservation argument, not muslims as a whole. I say the same about Christians that say the Bible was written by God. The Islamic argument is that God guarded the Quran from corruption. 'Not a word - nay! - not a single dot' has been changed. Not only is this not true for those with eyes to see, it's also a claim that damages the credibility of Islam for the reason just mentioned, and because it gives the fearful impression that the faith itself would not survive against any form of divergence from its authentic message. Belief in the perfect preservation of the Quran is thus not only irrational and a serious case of denial in face of observable evidence, it's also a sign of weakness. If anything, Muslims should support this thread.

So I'll ask you again, do you believe the Quran has been perfectly preserved?

If you say no, then we're in agreement.
If you say yes, then I know I shouldn't engage with you in anything relating Islam.
 
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I'm not gonna get baited into a cock-measuring contest between Islam and Christianity.

When I said what I said, I was speaking of the proponents of the perfect preservation argument, not muslims as a whole. I say the same about Christians that say the Bible was written by God. The Islamic argument is that God guarded the Quran from corruption. 'Not a word - nay! - not a single dot' has been changed. Not only is this not true for those with eyes to see, it's also a claim that damages the credibility of Islam for the reason just mentioned, and because it gives the fearful impression that the faith itself would not survive against any form of divergence from its authentic message. Belief in the perfect preservation of the Quran is thus not only irrational and a serious case of denial in face of observable evidence, it's also a sign of weakness. If anything, Muslims should support this thread.

So I'll ask you again, do you believe the Quran has been perfectly preserved?

If you say no, then we're in agreement.
If you say yes, then I know I shouldn't engage with you in anything relating Islam.
When you talk about so-called "variants"/changing of dots, you are referring to the different qira'at. As other posts have described, the qira'at are all legitimate readings of the Quran spoken of in hadeeth. They do not diverge from the morpho-skeletal structure of words, and are all legitimate readings as long as they have a 'mutawaatir' reported chain of transmission back to the Prophet himself, and the correct vocalisation. Here is a reddit post from r/Islam that explains concisely what the qira'aat are:
https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/2nnma0/_/cmf7eq3

FaridResponds also talks about it in a video already posted in this thread (perhaps you have already watched it):



And here are two pages from the book 'the History of the Qur'anic Text' that I had already posted before (perhaps you have already read it):
This is from an entire book that examines the argument, and provides evidence for the qira'at, it is free to download from the 'kalamullah' website:
https://www.kalamullah.com/history-of-the-quranic-text.html


Further information about variant readings, the 'qira'at':
In these classical sources, the variant readings are well documented and they were discussed extensively from the point of view of grammar and their origin. Hence more than 1000 years ago, even before the Biblical criticism was conceived, Muslims knew what the variant readings of the Qur'an were and from where they originated. And it is the Christian missionaries who really had the "advantage" and have used the Qirâ'at dishonestly to assert that the Qur'an is corrupted.

It is clear from the sources quoted above that Muslims were neither scared nor uncomfortable with dealing with the variant readings. They were rather professional in their approach towards dealing with the variant readings and also developed an elaborate science called "cUlûm al-Qirâ'at". Bernard Lewis in his book Islam in History writes:
From an early date Muslim scholars recognized the danger of false testimony and hence false doctrine, and developed an elaborate science for criticizing tradition. "Traditional science", as it was called, differed in many respects from modern historical source criticism, and modern scholarship has always disagreed with evaluations of traditional scientists about the authenticity and accuracy of ancient narratives. But their careful scrutiny of the chains of transmission and their meticulous collection and preservation of variants in the transmitted narratives give to medieval Arabic historiography a professionalism and sophistication without precedent in antiquity and without parallel in the contemporary medieval West. [...]
So, long before the textual criticism of the Bible originated, Muslims already went through the process of textual criticism. The Qirâ'at were well-known among the Muslims. It is also worthwhile to point out that even to this day Muslims recite the Qur'an in various Qirâ'at. Moreover, these are also available in printed editions.

Adrian Brockett after studying the Hafs and Warsh Qirâ'at says ( See his article "The Value of Hafs And Warsh Transmissions For The Textual History Of The Qur'an"):
The transmission of the Qur'an after the death of Muhammad was essentially static, rather than organic. There was a single text, and nothing significant, not even allegedly abrogated material, could be taken out nor could anything be put in.[5]
In conclusion it can be said that the Muslims had the 'critical text' right from the time of the Prophet(P).


From: http://www.al-mawrid.org/index.php/articles/view/collection-and-transmission-of-the-quran-part-1-3
Once the Qur'an was collected in the lifetime of the Prophet (sws) and memorised by many of his companions, it was transmitted to the next generations both verbally and in script form. In fact, the verbal transmission superseded the written one. For it is this transmission that has actually safeguarded the Qur'anic text which can be read variously if the actual vocalization is not known. Hundreds and thousands of the Prophet's companions learnt it by heart and then passed it on verbally to the next generation, which in turn memorised the text in great numbers and this process is still continuing. This generation to generation transmission is so overwhelming and all-embracing that the transmitted text has been rendered safe and secure from any alteration. Consequently, such is the prodigious nature of this transmission that solitary reports which convey even a slight difference are of no value. In other words, like established historical events which are also conveyed through such generation to generation transfer and which as result cannot be challenged, the text of the Qur'an we have with us, on similar grounds, is also established beyond any doubt. For example, the facts that Napolean was defeated at Waterloo by the Duke of Wellington or that Genghiz Khan ravaged Baghdad are reports that have been transmitted from the generations that saw and witnessed these events to the next to the extent that no one can challenge the established nature of these reports. Similar is the case of the mechanism of the transmission of the Qur'an. The Qur'an we have with us today has been transferred by thousands of the companions of the Prophet (sws) with a consensus on the report that this was the very Qur'an revealed to Muhammad (sws). In turn, this generation transferred this Qur'an and this report to the next generation. So, just as the contentions that Napolean never met his fate at Waterloo or that Baghdad was never devastated by Genghis Khan cannot be entertained in the world of reason and rationality since they belie established history, the contention that the Qur'an we have today is not the same as what was revealed to Muhammad can in no way be accepted.11

Also, in this regard, the following points need to be appreciated:

(i) All written texts of the Qur'an are actually compiled and written on the basis of the oral transmission. In other words, written texts are not the real source of the transmission of the Qur'an. They are totally dependent on the oral tradition of transmission, which is the real mode of transmission of the Qur'anic text. Even today, each written text must be attested by the oral tradition of transmission through a Hafiz who has learnt the Qur'an.

(ii) It is the oral transmission which was used later on by the Ummah to write the vowel sounds on the Qur'anic text for the benefit of non-Arab readers.

(iii) The often undertook quest for the oldest written codex of the Qur'an has academic importance only since this has no role in determining the original text of the Qur'an, which, as pointed out, is not dependent on written texts.
12


Here is another article from the Yaqeen Institute on this:
The different modes of recitation are named after the most famous early reciter known for teaching that mode, and individuals who master a mode and receive ijāzah (license to teach) in it become part of an unbroken chain of transmission of that mode back to the Prophet ﷺ. While the majority of the Muslim world is accustomed to hearing the Qur’an recited in the mode of ʿĀṣim ibn Abī al-Najūd (d. 127 AH) according to his student Ḥafs ibn Sulaymān (d. 180 AH) (frequently referred to simply as Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim), other modes continue to be recited such as that of the Medinan Nāfiʿ (d. 169 AH) (transmitted by his students Qālūn (d. 220 AH) and Warsh (d. 197 AH)), which remains the dominant mode in many regions of North Africa. Specialists in Qur’anic recitation will be familiar with seven or ten canonical modes of recitation.[2] All of these modes of recitation adhere to the muṣḥaf (codex) of the Qur’an compiled under the supervision of the Caliph ʿUthmān (d. 35 AH) in the year 30 AH (650 CE), which was written without diacritics, thus accommodating the variations. The vast majority of these differences are quite subtle, although in certain cases they add nuances in meaning, complementing one another.

Some other of Farid's reponses, e.g. on the Sanaa manuscript
 
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You're sounding a little desperate. You're trying to compare God impregnating His own creation to give birth to Himself only for Him to die at the hands of His own creation but yet He's also God while being a man. Conundrums are all on your side of the field, mate. You're trying to compare your whole mess, which you will never be able to explain, to how God raised Jesus in the Quran.

In before you compare Jesus to a VC account or an egg.

God raised Jesus. That's the end of the story when it comes to Islam. Simple and easy to understand.
its not really outlandish when u find the torah truthful and yet there was a talking snake, and fallen angels that mated with humans created giants as offspring is it?
 
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Any student in uloom-ul-Quran, the science of the Quran, who has even perfunctory knowledge of their field will tell you of the different qira'at of the Quran. My mother's teacher is in fact endeavouring to learn 10 qira'at of the Quran.

Another thing: about 'mutawatir'. This means that the oral transmission of the Quran is such that every student can, from his own teacher, trace back each teacher that taught his teacher, and his teacher, and his teacher, and so on, in an unbroken chain of teachers and students, back to the Prophet himself, who was the first teacher of the Quran, as revealed by God through Jibril (Gabriel). When a student of the Quran has completed his/her memorisation of the Quran to such a standard that they are now considered to have the ability to teach the Quran themselves, they are given an 'ijaaza', a certificate that names them as the student of such and such a teacher, who were themselves the student of such and such a teacher, et cetera, et cetera. Even then, a student will often be taught by multiple teachers of the Quran, and so many of the links between students and teachers are redundant, so the ijaaza will name only the most prominent of the many teachers that the student learnt from. Every teacher in this link is a well-known person, whose existence cannot have been fabricated, as each teacher may be documented in the ijaaza of many memorisers of the Quran, from all over the world. It is no easy feat to obtain an ijaaza: each student must undergo many years of study, until the number of mistakes he/she makes while reciting the entire Quran (>600 pages) can be counted on the fingers of one hand, or even less than that. By any other standard they are not considered to have completed their studies. Any mistake in the recitation of the Quran can be immediately noticed by a memoriser of the Quran, even to the extent of small vocalisations, lengths of certain elongated letters, etc. There is in fact a whole science dedicated to the pronounciation of the letters of the Quran: tajweed. The accusation that the Prophet and his successors did not faithfully preserve the Quran is then absurd; the Prophet dedicated his life to its preservation, and to the teaching of the Quran to his companions. Indeed, his wife was reported to say that he embodied the Quran itself; he was the walking, talking Quran.

A mutawwatir transmission is one which is passed on by so many narrators directly from source that it is inconceivable that they could have come to be agreed upon a falsehood with regards the information they collected from the primary source. Therefore, the veracity of what is being narrated by them is unquestionable. The Quran calls itself a 'Hasan Hadith' (The best hadith) and its oral transmission remained 'mutawwatir'.
The Quran has reached us both by a rigorous oral transmission and a written form of transmission in tandem. So there was not only a written codex (book) from the time of the Prophet but also a powerful mutawwatir transmission in oral form. This is possibly why no major sect in Islam disagrees with the contents of the Quran whereas there is huge disagreement with the veracity of Hadith between the sects.
 
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I'm not gonna get baited into a cock-measuring contest between Islam and Christianity.

When I said what I said, I was speaking of the proponents of the perfect preservation argument, not muslims as a whole. I say the same about Christians that say the Bible was written by God. The Islamic argument is that God guarded the Quran from corruption. 'Not a word - nay! - not a single dot' has been changed. Not only is this not true for those with eyes to see, it's also a claim that damages the credibility of Islam for the reason just mentioned, and because it gives the fearful impression that the faith itself would not survive against any form of divergence from its authentic message. Belief in the perfect preservation of the Quran is thus not only irrational and a serious case of denial in face of observable evidence, it's also a sign of weakness. If anything, Muslims should support this thread.

So I'll ask you again, do you believe the Quran has been perfectly preserved?

If you say no, then we're in agreement.
If you say yes, then I know I shouldn't engage with you in anything relating Islam.
I ought to have clarified: I was responding specifically to the claims: 'Muslims blindly submit to authority' and 'Muslims display no intellectual integrity or independent thought'. However, I have responded to your OP directly in other posts.
 
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oh no thats write its the word of mouth tradition that cant be validated, an abstract concept, that can basically bend itself to any presenting evidence, how convenient almost like its been purposefully crafted that way.

if u cant see the problem with that, ur heart simply just does not want the truth.
 

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its not really outlandish when u find the torah truthful and yet there was a talking snake, and fallen angels that mated with humans created giants as offspring is it?
That is such a weird thing to say. Do you see God as just like an angel but simply bigger?
 
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That is such a weird thing to say. Do you see God as just like an angel but simply bigger?
Not really, its an example of how supernatural events like angels produce foreign results to us, and it is a mystery in itself why giants would be spawned from angels, the two seem unrelated to me. Hence there are mysteries, like the mystery of iniquity. And to fully understand the incarnation of Gods divine and human nature in Christ.

John 3:12
I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

and yet interestingly enough Muslims are happy with not understanding fully Allah and all his 99 names. Or someone who is a theist is quite comfortable with not fully understanding Gods nature, yet when u are told of Gods nature and fail to wrap ur human brain around it, that simply cannot be true?

Do you really think u fully understand the concept of an eternal being beyond time, is very hard to conceive for our minds, to truly have no concept of time, to live in an eternity and how our bodies would be represented, would we have growth would children be forever children? how does a realm where sin no longer exist actually work, is it possible to sin still and remain autonomous, and yet apparently that kind of lack of full comprehension is acceptable, where as we apparently need to be able to explain in a resounding manner as if its an everyday occurence the fully divine and human nature of Christ.

Ya understand my point?
 

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Or someone who is a theist is quite comfortable with not fully understanding Gods nature, yet when u are told of Gods nature and fail to wrap ur human brain around it, that simply cannot be true?

Do you really think u fully understand the concept of an eternal being beyond time, is very hard to conceive for our minds, to truly have no concept of time...
You basically are stating on one hand that you have to be completely Agnostic yet strongly uphold the belief that you know for certain what the nature of God is? the two positions cannot be reconciled, yet here you are claiming that they can.

Start with not being able to know God, if you believe that then why do you even believe in God? doesn't the belief become redundant?
Then you make specific historical truth claims about the nature of God and reality through some incarnation in the 1st century. Further with the unverifiable, unfalsifiable Catholic belief that God is three in one - which itself is just philosophical sophistry.
So now you've gone from agnosticism to making very specific truth claims about the nature of God while defending your specific truth claims with the agnosticism you had before.
 
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oh no thats write its the word of mouth tradition that cant be validated, an abstract concept, that can basically bend itself to any presenting evidence, how convenient almost like its been purposefully crafted that way.

if u cant see the problem with that, ur heart simply just does not want the truth.
How else would you conserve a text, word for word, from the 7th century to the modern day? There weren't printing presses until the 15th century, and reading and writing were not widespread. There was no new evidence because the transmission was based on a static, not a dynamic/organic, source. The parallel written/oral transmission is less falsifiable.
How was your Bible kept intact over the millenia?
 
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You basically are stating on one hand that you have to be completely Agnostic yet strongly uphold the belief that you know for certain what the nature of God is? the two positions cannot be reconciled, yet here you are claiming that they can.

Start with not being able to know God, if you believe that then why do you even believe in God? doesn't the belief become redundant?
Then you make specific historical truth claims about the nature of God and reality through some incarnation in the 1st century. Further with the unverifiable, unfalsifiable Catholic belief that God is three in one - which itself is just philosophical sophistry.
So now you've gone from agnosticism to making very specific truth claims about the nature of God while defending your specific truth claims with the agnosticism you had before.
U can know God, and u can know his nature to an EXTENT. How do Muslims really know Allah, we have the best representation of the Lord in Christ, he was the rep of his being the Bible tells u that. Muslims dont have that. Dont u think God would want to be personal with his creation?
 

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U can know God, and u can know his nature to an EXTENT. How do Muslims really know Allah, we have the best representation of the Lord in Christ, he was the rep of his being the Bible tells u that. Muslims dont have that. Dont u think God would want to be personal with his creation?
Christians pray to their view of God, as do Muslims. Just because you think that you're superior doesn't actually make you. You both have personal practices and salvation theologies. Muslims are usually far more devoted to God than you Christians usually are, who are scared of devotion and only pray speaking in monotone usually sitting on your couch or bed. Do you actually go into altered states or anything? or do you just "feel" Jesus-emotions?

As for me, no I think your question is deeply flawed. We are the personal, that's why we exist.
 
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