Islamic Awareness have published an excellent critique of some of the more popular allegations against the Qu’ran, such as the allegation that Islam is really a heretical Jewish sect or that the Qu’ran is simply a byproduct of Syriac Christianity (popularised by Christoph Luxenberg). They explain:
As for the revisionistic views, many theories have been proposed as to how the Qur’an/Islam came about. According to these various revisionistic schools of thought, Islam was originally a Jewish sect (pace Hagarism);[2] the Qur’an was contemporaneous with the sira (pace Wansbrough);[3] Islam arose in the Negev desert somehow allegedly validating Wansbrough’s hypothesis (pace Nevo);[4] the Qur’an came after the sira and ḥadith (pace Rubin);[5] the Qur’an was an Iraqi product and predates the sira (pace Hawting)[6] and, recently, the Qur’an is a product of Syriac Christianity (pace Luxenberg).[7] It seems that these revisionistic schools often follow methodologies that do not agree with each other (whether in whole or in part) and none of them seem to agree on any one particular scenario, be it historical, social, cultural, political, economic or religious. Something that appears to be more fundamental in their analyses is that the revisionists are willing to formulate any theory to lend verisimilitude to their opinions concerning the Qur’an/Islam, no matter how much it contradicts all of the available well-established evidence, documentary or otherwise.
For those with an interest in such matters or who have come across the Luxenberg thesis, the piece is worth reading and bookmarking for future reference.
2 comments ↓
Thats great,
The problem with this type of revisionist historical (?) scholarship is that it is frequently subservient to political currents, is frequently contradictory in its methodology and not faithful in its use of primary sources.
For example, the greatest testament to the authenticity of the Quranic text is that the Shia and Sunni although bitterly opposed in just about every other matter, agree on the Quran. That places the fidelity of the text to within one generation of revelation.
That the same religious text could be independently validated (from a dubious source) after a schism is hardly credible.
actually, there is an easier way
if the Quran was part of the Arabic literary tradition then Arabs (Christians and Muslims) should have been creating out verses like this:
http://austrolabe.com/2007/05/.....-merciful/
for the last 1400 years.
And yet there has been nothing like this,
if anyone wants to post Arabic poetry of this quality (that is not from the Qu’ran) then they are most welcome to try.
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