A Critical Analysis of James Bellamy’s Viewpoint Regarding the Qira’t of the Word “Ummah

The subject of this article is the criticism of James Bellamy’s viewpoint regarding the word “Ummah” in two verses of Surah Hud and 45 of Surah Yusuf. By criticizing the text, he changed, modified and corrected the words of the Quran. Citing some evidence, James Bellamy has claimed that the word “Ummah” in these two verses is a mistake and has replaced the word “Ummad” which, according to his claim, has a lot of similarities with each other and is more compatible with the context of the verse. The reasons cited by him to prove this claim are the explanation of the meaning of “Hin” and “Muddat” by commentators in verse 8 of Surah Hud and the existence of a difference in reading between commentators in verse 45 of Surah Yusuf. These claims and their evidence were analyzed and criticized by the phenomenological method and using interpretive and lexical sources. Criticisms were explained in detail in three sections, linguistic review, textual suitability review, and review of similar cases. The results of these three investigations showed that no change or spelling was missing in this word that needed to be corrected, and James Bellamy’s studies in the field of criticizing and correcting the words of the Quran are the result of damages such as the influence of the presuppositions of the Bible, incomplete understanding of the characteristics of the Quran, incomplete search and lack of mastery of Quran and Arabic literature that have led to tasteful comments and far from scientific evidence and reasons in correcting some words