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 | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (September 2016) |
TO DO
*READ and CHECK https://www.academia.edu/1447032/THE_QURAN_SCIENCE_AND_THE_RELATED_CONTEMPORARY_MUSLIM_DISCOURSE *FINISH WATCHING Apostate Prophet (10 October 2018). "43 Scientific Mistakes in the Quran". YouTube. Retrieved 17 April 2019. *Trim Satanic verses *read and add http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=histfacpub *CHECK MUSLIM WORLD https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1993.tb03571.x
*check HCL databases for "The battle of the books, The business of marketing the Bible and the Koran says a lot about the state of modern Christianity and Islam
FINISH WHY IM NOT- https://www.namb.net/apologetics-blog/has-the-qur-an-been-perfectly-preserved/ good summary of christian criticism
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBUhCG3Fbck What are the seven different readings (qira'at) of the Qur'an? Dr. Shabir Ally explains
- TOOLS/REFERENCES
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Islam-related_articles
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_Quran
- multiple Quranic translations: https://www.islamawakened.com/quran/2/219/default.htm
- 56:78
The Quran is viewed to be the scriptural foundation of Islam and is believed by Muslims to have been been sent down by Allah (God) and revealed to Muhammad by the angel Jabreel (Gabriel). The Quran has been subject to criticism both in the sense of being studied by secular, (mostly) Western scholars who set aside doctrines of its divinity, perfection, unchangeability, etc. accepted by Muslim Islamic scholars;[1] but also in the sense of being found fault with by those — including Christian missionaries and other skeptics hoping to convert Muslims — who argue it is not divine, not perfect and/or not particularly morally elevated.
In "critical-historical study" scholars (such as John Wansbrough, Joseph Schacht, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook) seek to investigate and verify the Quran's origin, text, composition, history,[1] examining questions, puzzles, difficult text, etc. as they would non-sacred ancient texts. Opponents of Islam (such as Ibn Warraq, Sam Shamoun) have worked to find internal inconsistency and scientific errors in the holy book, and faults with its clarity, authenticity, and ethical message.[2] The most common criticisms concern various pre-existing sources that Quran relies upon, internal consistency, clarity and ethical teachings.
(REWRITE THat last SENTENCE WITH SUMMARY OF CRITICISMS)
Many Muslims find not only the religious fault-finding but also Western scholarly investigation of textual evidence "disturbing and offensive".[1]
(END)
OLD/ALTERNATIVE VERSION
The Quran is viewed to be the scriptural foundation of Islam and is believed by Muslims to have been sent down by Allah/God, revealed, without issue, to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. Questions, puzzles, difficulties, criticisms of the Quran have been raised by pious Islamic scholars trying to sort out the meaning of words and phrases; by Western non-Muslim scholars who do not assume divine origin, seeing to decipher its text, composition, history, to understand and verify the claims of Islamic thought as stated in the Quran; and by antagonistic non-Muslims questioning its accuracy and authenticity.[2] Both critics and some scholars of western, eastern and secular backgrounds claim to have discovered scientific errors adding allegations of contradictions in the Quran while questioning interpretations of its moral and ethical message. The most common criticisms concern various pre-existing sources that Quran relies upon, internal consistency, clarity and moral teachings.
Background
Traditional Islamic view of Quran
(USED in Quranic text)
According to Islamic tradition, which criticism may question or contradict, the Quran followed a passage from heaven down to the angel Gabriel (Jabreel) who revealed it in the seventh century CE over 23 years to an Hejazi Arab trader, Muhammad, who became the Prophet of Islam.[3][Note 1]
Muhammad shared these revelations -- which brought uncompromising monotheism to humanity -- with his companions who wrote them down and/or memorized them. From these memories and scraps a standard edition was carefully complied and edited under the supervision of Caliph Uthman not long after Muhammad's death.[5]
Copies of this codex or "Mus'haf" were sent to the major centers of what was by this time a rapidly expanding empire, and all other incomplete or "imperfect" variants of the Quranic revelation were destroyed. In the next few centuries, the religion and empire of Islam solidified, and an enormous body of religious literature and laws were developed, including commentaries/exegeses (Tafsir) to explain the Quran.
(USED in Quranic text)
Thus, according to Islamic teaching, it was insured that the wording of the Quranic text available today corresponds exactly to the literal, infallible,[6] "perfect, timeless", "absolute"[1] unadulterated word of God revealed to Muhammad.[7] That revelation in turn is identical to an eternal “mother of the book”[Note 2] the archetype[8]/prototype[9] of the Quran. This was not created/written by God, but an attribute of Him, co-eternal and kept with Him in heaven.[10][Note 3]
(USED Questions about Quranic text)
The Quran itself states that its revelations are themselves "miraculous 'signs'"[6] -- inimitable (I'jaz) in their eloquence and perfection[11] and proof of the authenticity of Muhammad's prophethood.
[Note 4]
Several verses remark on how the verses of the book set clear or make things clear,[Note 5] and are in "pure and clear" Arabic language [Note 6]
At the same time, (most Muslims believe) some verses of the Quran have been abrogated (naskh) by others and these and other verses have sometimes been revealed in response or answer to questions by followers or opponents.[10][15][16]
NOT USED
In contrast, Muslim consider the contents of the Quran "are a source of doctrine, law, poetic and spiritual inspiration, solace, zeal, knowledge, and mystical experience."[17] "Millions and millions" of Muslims "refer to the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations",[Note 7] and in recent years many consider it the source of scientific knowledge.[18][19] Revered by pious Muslims as "the holy of holies",[20] whose sound moves some to "tears and esctasy",[21] it is the physical symbol of the faith,[17] the text often used as a charm[22] on occasions of birth, death, marriage. Consequently, "It must never rest beneath other books, but always on top of them, one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster.[20][23]
The monotheist oneness of God; Judgement Day and the delights of paradise that await believers and torments of hell that await those who have rejected God's word are described in repeatedly and in detail.[24]
As in the bible, God reveals his will to humanity through prophets — such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus — bringing holy books. Unlike the bible, it is (thought to be) not simply divinely inspired, but the literal word of God;[25] the last and complete message from God, from his final messenger (Muhammad)[26] superseding the Old and New Testament and purified of "accretions of Judaism and Christianity".[27][28] It has been called "the Word of God made text", the Islamic equivalent not of the bible but of Jesus Christ — "the Word of God made flesh".[1][29][30]
Slightly shorter than the New Testament,[31] it is organized in 114 "surahs" or chapters — not according to when they were revealed (nor by subject matter), but according to length of surahs (with some exceptions) under the guidance of divine revelation.[3]
Revered by pious Muslims as "the holy of holies",[20] whose sound moves some to "tears and esctasy",[21] it is the physical symbol of the faith,[17] the text often used as a charm[32] on occasions of birth, death, marriage. Consequently
It must never rest beneath other books, but always on top of them, one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster.[20][23]
Traditionally great emphasis was put on children memorizing the 6200+ verses of the Quran, those succeeding being honored with the title Hafiz. "Millions and millions" of Muslims "refer to the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations",[Note 8] and in recent years many consider it the source of scientific knowledge.[18][19]
Muslim views of criticism
For Muslims the contents of the Quran have been "a source of doctrine, law, poetic and spiritual inspiration, solace, zeal, knowledge, and mystical experience."[17] "Millions and millions" of whom "refer to the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations",[Note 9] and in recent years many consider it the source of scientific knowledge.[18][19] Revered by pious Muslims as "the holy of holies",[20] whose sound moves some to "tears and esctasy",[21] it is the physical symbol of the faith,[17] the text often used as a charm[33] on occasions of birth, death, marriage. Consequently, "It must never rest beneath other books, but always on top of them, one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster."[20][23] Unlike the bible, it is (thought to be) not simply divinely inspired, but the literal word of God;[25] the last and complete message from God, from his final messenger (Muhammad)[26] superseding the Old and New Testament and purified of "accretions of Judaism and Christianity".[27][28]
Muslims have developed their own Quranic studies or "Quranic sciences" (‘ulum al Qur’an)[34] over the centuries,[35] following the Quranic encouragement "Will they not contemplate the Quran?"(4:82).[36] There are two types of exegesis to explain and interpret the Quran: tafsir (literal interpretation) and ta’wil (allegorical interpretation). Other issues studied are kalimat dakhila (the investigation of the foreign origin of some Quranic terms);[37] naskh (studying contradictory verses[Note 10] to determine which should be abrogated in favor of the other), study of "occasions of revelation" (connecting Quranic verses with "episodes of Muhammad's career based on hadith and biographies of him -- which are known as sira), chronology of revelation,[34] the division of quranic chapters (surahs) into "Meccan surah" (those believed to have been revealed in Mecca before the hijra) and "Medinan surah (revealed afterward in the city of Medina).[38] According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, these traditional religious sciences
"provide all the answers to questions posed by modern western orientalists about the structure and text of the Koran, except, of course, those questions that issue from the rejection of the Divine Origin of the Koran and its reduction to a work by the prophet. Once the revealed nature of the Koran is rejected, then problems arise. But these are problems of orientalist that arise not from scholarship but from a certain theological and philosophical position that is usually hidden under the guise of rationality and objective scholarship. For Muslims there has never been the need to address these 'problems' ..."[35]
In contrast, many of the original non-Muslim scholars of the Quran worked "in the context of an openly declared hostility" between Christianity and Islam, with an eye to debunking Islam or proselytizing against it.[1] The nineteenth-century orientalist and colonial administrator William Muir, wrote that the Quran was one of "the most stubborn enemies of Civilisation, Liberty, and the Truth which the world has yet known."[39] In the twentieth century, scholars of the early Soviet Union working in the context of dialectical materialism and fighting the "opium of the people" went on about how Muhammad and the first Caliphs were "mythical figures" and that "the motive force" of early Islam was "the mercantile bourgeoisie of Mecca and Medina" and "slave-owning" Arab society.[40]
At least in part in reaction, some Muslim opposition to "The Orientalist enterprise of Qur'anic studies" has been intense.[1] In 1987 Muslim critic S. Parvez Manzoor, denounced it as conceived in "the polemical marshes of medieval Christianity".
At the greatest hour of his worldly-triumph, the Western man, coordinating the powers of the State, Church and Academia, launched his most determined assault on the citadel of Muslim faith. All the aberrant streaks of his arrogant personality—its reckless rationalism, its world-domineering phantasy and its sectarian fanaticism—joined in an unholy conspiracy to dislodge the Muslim Scripture from its firmly entrenched position as the epitome of historic authenticity and moral unassailability.[41]
In recent twenty first century, some Muslim Islamic scholars have warned against lending "legitimacy to non-Muslim scholars’ understanding about Islam" by engaging with them, and that even a rigorously scholarly academic work on Islam such as the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam "is filled with insults and disparaging remarks about the Qur’an".[42]
Textual criticism of the Quran, the structure and style of the surahs, has been opposed on grounds that it questions the divine origin of the Quran.[3] Seyyed Hossein Nasr has denounced the “rationalist and agnostic methods of higher criticism” as similar to dissecting and subjecting Jesus to “modern medical techniques” to determine whether he was born miraculously or was the son of Joseph,[43][18][1] In his influential Orientalism, Edward Said declared Western study of the Middle East — including the religion of Islam — inextricably tied to Western Imperialism, making the study inherently political and servile to power.[44]
These complaints have been compared to those of other religious conservatives (Christian) against textual historical criticism of their own sacred text (the bible).[Note 11] Non-Muslim scholar Patricia Crone acknowledges the call for humility towards the scared of other cultures — "who are you to tamper with their legacy?" — but defends challenging of orthodox views of Islamic history, saying "we Islamicists are not trying to destroy anyone's faith."[1]
Not all Muslims oppose criticism; Roslan Abdul-Rahim writes that critical study of the Quran "will not hurt the Muslims; it will only help them" because "no amount of criticism can change that fact" that the "Quran is truly a divine piece of work as the Muslim theology stipulates and as the Muslims have so strongly defended".[45] But among those who have suffered in the process of attempting to apply literary or philological techniques to the Quran are Egyptian "Dean of Arabic Literature" Taha Husain (lost his post at Cairo University in 1931),[Note 12] Egyptian professor Mohammad Ahmad Khalafallah (dissertation rejected),[49][50] a non-Muslim German professor Günter Lüling (dismissed),[51][50] and perhaps most notably Egyptian professor Nasr Abu Zaid (forced to seek exile in Europe after being declared an apostate and threatened with death for violating a "right of God").[Note 13]
Not all non-Muslim scholars of Islam are interested in critical examination/analysis. Patricia Crone and Ibn Rawandi argue that Western scholarship lost its critical attitude to the sources of the origins of Islam around the time of the First World War." Andrew Rippin has expressed surprise that
students acquainted with approaches such as source criticism, oral-formulaic composition, literary analysis and structuralism, all quite commonly employed in the study of Judaism and Christianity, such naive historical study seems to suggest that Islam is being approached with less than academic candor.[52]
Scholars have complained about "'dogmatic Islamophilia' of most Arabists" (Karl Binswanger);[53] that in one western country (France as of 1983) "it is no longer acceptable to criticize Islam or the Arab countries" (Jacque Ellul);[54] that among some historians ("like Norman Daniel") understanding of Islam "has given way to apologetics pure and simple" (Maxime Rodinson).[55][56]
Questions about Quranic text
FIRST PART OF THIS ADDED
The Quran itself states that its revelations are themselves "miraculous 'signs'"[6] -- inimitable (I'jaz) in their eloquence and perfection[11] and proof of the authenticity of Muhammad's prophethood. (For example 2:2, 17:88-89, 29:47, 28:49) [Note 14] Several verses remark on how the verses of the book set clear or make things clear,[Note 15] and are in "pure and clear" Arabic language [Note 16] At the same time, (most Muslims believe) some verses of the Quran have been abrogated (naskh) by others and these and other verses have sometimes been revealed in response or answer to questions by followers or opponents.[10][15][16]
Early Western scholars often attacked the literary merit of the Quran. Orientalist Thomas Carlyle, [Note 17] called the Quran "toilsome reading and a wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite" with "endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement" and "insupportable stupidity."[59] Salomon Reinach wrote that this book warrants "little merit ... from a literary point of view".[Note 18]</ref> (Even one early Muslim-turned-skeptic Ibn al-Rawandi (d.911) dismissed the Quran as "not the speech of someone with wisdom, contain[ing] contradictions, errors and absurdities".[60]
More specifically, "peculiarities" in the text have been alleged.[61] Iranian rationalist and scholar Ali Dashti points out that before its perfection became an issue of Islamic doctrine, early Muslim scholar Ibrahim an-Nazzam "openly acknowledged that the arrangement and syntax" of the Quran was less than "miraculous".[62]
Ali Dashti states that "more than one hundred" aberrations from "the normal rules and structure of Arabic have been noted" in the Quran.[63]
sentences which are incomplete and not fully intelligible without the aid or commentaries; foreign words, unfamiliar Arabic words, and words used with other than the normal meaning; adjectives and verbs inflected without observance of the concords of gender and number; illogically and ungrammatically applied pronouns which sometimes have no referent; and predicates which in rhymed passages are often remote from the subjects.[64]
Scholar Gerd R. Puin puts the number of unclear verses much higher:
The Koran claims for itself that it is 'mubeen,' or 'clear,' but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn't make sense. Many Muslims—and Orientalists—will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Koran is not comprehensible—if it can't even be understood in Arabic—then it's not translatable. People fear that. And since the Koran claims repeatedly to be clear but obviously is not—as even speakers of Arabic will tell you—there is a contradiction. Something else must be going on.[1]
Scholar of the Semitic languages Theodor Noldeke collected a large quantity of morphological and syntactic grammatical forms in the Quran[65] that "do not enter into the general linguistic system of Arabic".[66] Alan Dundes points out the Quran itself denies that there can be errors within it, "If it were from other than Allah, they would surely have found in it many contradictions". (Q.4:82)[67]
Obscure words and phrases
The Quran "sometimes makes dramatic shifts in style, voice, and subject matter from verse to verse, and it assumes a familiarity with language, stories, and events that seem to have been lost even to the earliest of Muslim exegetes", according to journalist and scholar Toby Lester.[1]
The Quran is known to contain a number of words the meaning of which is not clear and for which Muslim commentators (and Western scholars) have created "a welter of competing guesses".[68]
- qaḍb (8:28) possible meaning "green herbs" of some kind.[69]
- ʿābb (8:31), possible meaning "pasture"[69]
- Jibt (4:51), "no explanation has been found" guesses include "idol or priest or sorcerer, or sorcery, or satan, or what not".[69]
- Ghislīn (69:36), unknown. guess: "what exudes from the bodies of the inmates" of Hell.[69]
- Iram (89:7), unknown. foreign word, possibly a name of city or country.[69]
- Qurbān (46:28), evidently means "sacrifice", but maybe "favorites of a prince" or then again "a means of access to God"[69]
- ṣābiʿīn (2:62), literally "the baptizers", but does not make sense in that context.[70]
- abābīl (105:3)[68]
- sijjīl (105:4)[68]
- samad (112:2)[68]
- kalāla (4:11-12, 4:176)[71]
- an yadin (9:29) usually translated as "out of hand" as a means of payment, but what this means has not been agreed upon.[71]
- ar-raqim (18:9) quesses by exegetes include "books", "inscription", "tablet", "rock", "numbers", or "building", or a proper name for "a village, or a valley, a mountain, or even a dog".[72]
Michael Cook argues that there may be more obscure words than has been recognized.[73]
- Quran 106:1–2: "For the accustomed security of the Quraysh - Their accustomed security [in] the caravan of winter and summer",
Contains the word ilaf -- interpreted to mean arrangements with local tribes for protection ("accustomed security"); and the word rihla -- thought to mean the caravan journey. According to hadith, the foundation of Mecca's trade were two annual commercial caravans by the Quraysh tribe from Mecca to Yemen and back in the winter and another to Syria in the summer. But the Arabic word rihla simply means journey, not commercial travel or caravan; and there was uncertainty among commentators as to how to read the vowels in ilaf or how the term was defined. Consequently Cook wonders if Quran 106:1–2 is brief mention of Mecca's basic commerce or if the hadith about the two caravans (many hadith being known to be fabricated) was made up to explain Quranic passages whose meaning was otherwise unclear.[73]
Explanations include that God is "making the point that He knows something we don't" (for example qāriʿah in Q:101), or that in some cases the words are used to rhyme a verse.[68]("The use of many rare words and new forms may be traced to the same cause (comp. especially Q.9:8-9, 11, 16)."[61]
- Arabic words
Several verse -- Q.16:103, 12:2, and 42:7 -- state the Quran is revealed in Arabic, pure and clear.[74][75][76] However the scholar al-Suyuti (1445–1505 C.E.) enumerated 107 foreign words in the Quran,[77] and Arthur Jeffery found about 275 words that of Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic, Perisan, and Greek origin[78] according to Ibn Warraq.[79] Andrew Rippin states that not only Orientalists but medieval Arabs admitted the Quran contained foreign words. Al-Jawālīqī (Abu Mansur Mauhub al-Jawaliqi), a 12-century Arab grammarian, spoke of "'foreign words found in the speech of the ancient Arabs and employed in the Quran' without any cautious restrictions."[80][81] Defending against these charges, Ansar Al 'Adl of "call to monotheism" states that "pure arabic" actually really refers to the "clarity and eloquence" of the arabic language in the Quran, and that the foreign words "had actually been naturalized and become regular Arabic words before they came to be used in the Qur'an"[74]
- "Mystery letters"
Another mystery is why about one quarter of surahs of the Quran begin with a group of between one and four letters that do not form words. These are known as Muqattaʿat ('disjointed letters'):
- Alif Lam Ra – Q. 10, 11, 12, 14, 15.
- Alif Lam Mim – Q. 2, 3, 29, 30, 31, 32.
- Alif Lam Mim Ra – Q. 13.
- Alif Lam Mim Sad – Q. 7.
- Ha Mim – Q. 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46.
- Ha Mim ‘Ain Sin Qaf – Q. 42.
- Sad – Q. 38.
- Ta Sin – Q. 27.
- Ta Sin Mim – Q. 26, 28.
- Ta Ha – Q. 20.
- Qaf – Q. 50.
- Ka Ha Ya 'Ain Sad – Q. 19.
- Nun – Q. 68.
- Ya Sin – Q. 36.
According to the Muslim translator and expositor Muhammad Asad:
"The significance of these letter-symbols has perplexed the commentators from the earliest times. There is no evidence of the Prophet's having ever referred to them in any of his recorded utterances, nor any of his Companions having ever asked him for an explanation. None the less, it is established beyond any possibility of doubt that all the Companions - obviously following the example of the Prophet - regarded the muqatta'at as integral parts of the suras to which they are prefixed, and used to recite them accordingly: a fact which disposes effectively of the suggestion advanced by some Western orientalists that these letters may be no more than the initials of the scribes who wrote down the individual revelations at the Prophet's dictation, or of the Companions who recorded them at the time of the final codification of the Qur'an during the reign of the first three Caliphs.
"Some of the Companions as well as some of their immediate successors and later Qur'anic commentators were convinced that these letters are abbreviations of certain words or even phrases relating to God and His attributes, and tried to 'reconstruct' them with much ingenuity; but since the possible combinations are practically unlimited, all such interpretations are highly arbitrary and, therefore, devoid of any real usefulness …" [82][83]
Asad quotes Abu Bakr as saying : ‘In every divine writ (kitab) there is [an element of] mystery - and the mystery of the Qur'an is [indicated] in the openings of [some of] the suras.’" [82]
- Mystery religion
The Quran mentions the "Jews, Christians, and Ṣābiʼūn" three times (2:62, 5:69, 22:17). But while the identity of the first two religions is/was widely known among Muslims and non-Muslims, the Ṣābiʼūn (usually Romanized as Sabians) was not[84] even among the earliest Quranic commentators of the 7th and 8th century.[85] [Note 19]
Narrative voice: Mohammed or God as speakers
Since the Quran is God's revelation to humanity, critics have wondered why in many verses, God is being addressed by humans, instead of Him addressing human beings. Or as sympathetic Western scholars Richard Bell and W. Montgomery Watt point out, it is not unheard of for someone (especially someone very powerful) to speak of themselves in the third person, "the extent to which we find the Prophet apparently being addressed and told about God as a third person, is unusual", as is where "God is made to swear by himself".[87].)[87]
Folklorist Alan Dundes notes how one "formula" or phrase ("... acquit thou/you/them/him of us/your/their/his evil deeds") is repeated with a variety of voices both divine and human, singular and plural:
- `Our Lord, forgive Thou our sins and acquit us of our evil deeds` 3:193;
- `We will acquit you of your evil deeds`, 4:31;
- `I will acquit you of your evil deeds`, 5:12;
- `He will acquit them of their evil deeds`, 47:2;
- `Allah will acquit him of his evil deeds`, 64:9;[88]
While some (Muhammad Abdel Haleem) have argued that "such grammatical shifts are a traditional aspect of Arabic rhetorical style",[Note 20] Ali Dashti (also quoted by critic Ibn Warraq) notes that in many verses "the speaker cannot have been God". The opening surah Al-Fatiha[92] which contains such lines as
Praise to God, the Lord of the Worlds, ....
You (alone) we worship and from You (alone) we seek help. ...
is "clearly addressed to God, in the form of a prayer."[93][92][94] Other verses (the beginning of 27:91, "I have been commanded to serve the Lord of this city ..."; 19:64, "We come not down save by commandment of thy Lord") also makes no sense as a statement of an all-powerful God.[95]
Many (in fact 350) verses in the Quran[92] where God is addressed in the third person are preceded by the imperative "say/recite!" (qul) -- but it does not occur in Al-Fatiha and many other similar verses. Sometimes the problem is resolved in translations of the Quran by the translators adding "Say!" in front of the verse (Marmaduke Pickthall and N. J. Dawood for Q.27.91,[96] Abdullah Yusuf Ali for Q.6:114).[92]
Dashti notes that in at least one verse
- 17:1 -- Exalted is He who took His Servant by night from al-Masjid al-Haram to al-Masjid al-Aqsa, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him of Our signs. Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
The point-of-view of God changes from third person ("He" and "His" in Exalted is He who took His Servant by night from al-Masjid al-Haram to al-Masjid al- Aqsa), to first person ("We" and "Our" in We have blessed, to show him of Our signs), and back again to third ("He" in Indeed, He is the Hearing) all in the same verse. (In Arabic there is no capitalization to indicate divinity.) Q.33:37 also starts by referring to God in the third person, is followed by a sentence with God speaking in first person (we gave her in marriage ...) before returning to third person (and God's commandment must be performed).[97] Again in 48:1 48:2 God is both first (We) and third person (God, His) within one sentence.[98]
WAS THIS AN ISSUE OF IT NOT SOUNDING LIKE GOD TALKING?
Ibn Masud — one of the companions of Muhammad who also wrote down revelations to Muhammad and is considered a reliable transmitter of ahadith — did not believe that Surah Fatihah (or two other surah — 113 and 114 — that contained the phrase "I take refuge in the Lord") to be a genuine part of the Quran.[99] He was not alone, other companions of Muhammad disagreed over which surahs were part of the Quran and which not.[92] A verse of the Quran itself (15:87) seems to distinguish between Fatihah and the Quran:
- 15:87 -- And we have given you seven often repeated verses [referring to the seven verses of Surah Fatihah] and the great Quran. (Al-Quran 15:87)[100]
Al-Suyuti, the noted medieval philologist and commentator of the Quran thought five verses had questionable "attribution to God" and where likely spoken by either Muhammad or Gabriel.[92]
The Jewish Encyclopedia, for example, writes: "For example, critics note that a sentence in which something is said concerning Allah is sometimes followed immediately by another in which Allah is the speaker (examples of this are Q.16.81, 27:61, 31:9, 43:10) Many peculiarities in the positions of words are due to the necessities of rhyme (lxix. 31, lxxiv. 3)."[61] The verse 6:114 starts out with Muhammad talking in first person (I) and switches to third (you).
- 6:114 Shall I seek other than Allah for judge, when He it is Who hath revealed unto you (this) Scripture, fully explained? Those unto whom We gave the Scripture (aforetime) know that it is revealed from thy Lord in truth. So be not thou (O Muhammad) of the waverers.
Cases where the speaker is swearing an oath by God, such as surahs 75:1–2 and 90:1, have been made a point of criticism.[citation needed] But according to Richard Bell, this was probably a traditional formula, and Montgomery Watt compared such verses to Hebrews 6:13. It is also widely acknowledged that the first-person plural pronoun in Surah 19:64 refers to angels, describing their being sent by God down to Earth. Bell and Watt suggest that this attribution to angels can be extended to interpret certain verses where the speaker is not clear.[101]
Grammar
Examples of lapses in grammar include 160:4 where the word "performers" should be in the nominative case but instead is in the accusative; 66:20 where "these two" of "These two are sorcerers" is in the nominative case (hādhāne) instead of the accusative case (hādhayne); and 9:49 where "have started to fight is in the plural form instead of the dual like the subject of the sentence.[64] Dashti laments that Islamic scholars have traditionally replied to these problems saying "our task is not to make the readings conform to Arabic grammar, but to take the whole of the Quran as it is and make Arabic grammar conform to the Quran."[63]
- Phrases, sentences or verse that seem out of place and were likely to have been transposes.
An example of an out-of-place verse fragment is found in Surah 24 where the beginning of a verse — (Q.24:61) "There is not upon the blind [any] constraint nor upon the lame constraint nor upon the ill constraint ..." — is located in the midst of a section describing proper behavior for visiting relations and modesty for women and children ("when you eat from your [own] houses or the houses of your fathers or the houses of your mothers or the houses of your brothers or the houses of your sisters or ..."). While it makes little sense here, the exact same phrases appears in another surah section (Q.48:11-17) where it does fit in as list of those exempt from blame and hellfire if they do not fight in a jihad military campaign.[102][103][104]
Theodor Nöldeke complains that "many sentences begin with a 'when' or 'on the day when' which seems to hover in the air, so that commentators are driven to supply a 'think of this' or some such ellipsis."[105] Similarly, describing a "rough edge" of the Quran, Michael Cook notes that verse Q.33:37 starts out with a "long and quite complicated subordinate clause" ("when though wast saying to him ..."), "but we never learn what the clause is subordinate to."[97]
ALREADY ADDED IMPROVED VERSION TO ARTICLE
- Reply
A common reply to questions about difficulties or obscurities in the Quran is verse 3:7 which unlike other verses that simply state that the Quran is clear (mubeen) states that some verses are clear but others are "ambiguous".
- 3:7 It is He who sent down upon thee the Book, wherein are verses clear that are the Essence of the Book, and others ambiguous. As for those in whose hearts is swerving, they follow the ambiguous part, desiring dissension, and desiring its interpretation; and none knows its interpretation, save only God. And those firmly rooted in knowledge say, 'We believe in it; all is from our Lord'; yet none remembers, but men possessed of minds.
Intended audience
The Quran describes itself as a book of guidance for mankind (2:185), but just as the speaker often seems to be someone other than God, so the audience often seems to be other than humanity in general, i.e. many verses are obviously addressed to contemporaries of Muhammad. Some are directed specifically towards Muhammad and his wives, while others only make sense if directed towards Muhammad's followers at the time of revelation.(33:28, 33:50, 49:2, 58:1, 58:9, 66:3). One surah (Surah al-Masad) is devoted to informing a relative and opponent of Muhammad (Abū Lahab) that he will go to hell. (111:1–5)
In defense, one scholar (Barbara Freyer) has argued that Muhammad's wives "specific divine guidance, [is] occasioned by their proximity to the Prophet (Muhammad)", which gives them "special responsibility to overcome their human frailties and ensure their individual worthiness",[106] another has argued that the Quran must be interpreted on more than one level.[107]
Questions of interpretation
The connection between the Islamic origin story -- where an illiterate camel trader from an important and prosperous trading hub and pagan pilgrimage site in the deserts of Western Arabia (Hejaz), is blessed with the revelation of the Quran and then forced to emigrate by the city's wealthy pagan elite, etc. -- and what the text of the mushaf Quran actually says, is another issue raised by both historians[108] and by Christian antagonists of Islam.[109]
The Quran is sometimes described as "referring" or "alluding to" events rather than "narrating" them,[108][110] (or alternately as being "succinct" in its writing style).[111] Narration of these events, and thus much of the "classical Muslim understanding" of the Quran, comes from the interpretation of its contents provided by commentaries written several generations after the Quran was revealed.[112]
Few names of places, people, etc. are given in the Quran; in the entire book, four religious communities (Jews, Christian, Magians, Sabians), three human beings, three Arabian deities, two ethnic groups (Quraysh, Romans), and nine places are named (according to Michael Cook), often only a few times -- Muhammad, for example is named only four or five times. Consequently, "identifying what the Quran is talking about in a contemporary context is ... usually impossible without interpretation".[108] Fredrick Paxton agrees: "The Qur'an itself is historically incomprehensible without commentary"[113] (Muslims believe more are mentioned, although often not by name.)
(This process, which ultimately involves "stripping way the great cladding of commentary that has been woven tightly around the the holy text since the early ninth century",[114] involves analysis /"criticism" of the Quran but in doing so raises doubts about the hadith, sira, tafsir commentary, rather than the Quran itself.)
Interpretation using commentaries
However, the reliability of the historical commentaries is very much in question. Examining them, Patricia Crone found a pattern, where the farther a commentary was removed in time from the life of Muhammad and the events in the Quran, the more information it provided, despite the fact it depended on the earlier sources for its content. This defied logic, since later commentary, if it differed from earlier work, should be briefer as some facts about the early days were lost or forgotten. Crone attributed this phenomenon to storytellers' embellishment.
If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next storyteller would know the date of this raid, while the third would know everything that an audience might wish to hear about.[115]
An example was the oldest prophetic biography, that of Ibn Ishaq (died 767), which was much smaller than the commentary of Al-Waqidi (d.823), despite the fact that Waqidi's later works covered a shorter periods of time (only Muhammad's period in Medina).[116]
Waqidi will always give precise dates, locations, names, where Ibn Ishaq has none, accounts of what triggered the expedition, miscellaneous information to lend color to the event
making him a popular source for scholars. The implication is that not only should Waqidi not be considered a reliable source, but that it is likely the same myth creation process contaminated Ibn Ishaq's accounts.
... given that this information was all unknown to Ibn Ishaq, its value is doubtful in the extreme. And if spurious information accumulated at this rate in the two generations between Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that even more must have accumulated in the three generations between the Prophet and Ibn Ishaq.[115][117]
Examining the Quraysh chapter in Quran, Crone finds the traditional exegesis contradictory and "concludes the Islamic commentators had no more idea of what it means than we do today.[118] "The numerous purported historical events that are supposed to have occasioned a revelation (Badr, Uhaud, Hudaybiyya, Hunayn, and so on) owe many of their features and often their very existence to the Quran itself. That is to say, wherever the Quran mentions a name or an event, stories were invented to give the impression that somehow, somewhere, someone, knew what they were about. This means that `much of the classical Muslim understanding of the Quran rests on the work of popular storytellers, such storytellers being the first to propose particular historical contexts for particular verse`"[119] in short: `What tradition offers is a mass of detailed information, none of which represents straightforward facts'"[120] Crone believes that there is no core of actual events underneath the embroidery of storytellers, "it was the storytellers who created the tradition".[121]
BELOW DOES NOT MENTION MUSLIMS ONLY MUIR A NONMUSLIM
(Non-Muslims like Crone are not alone in this criticism. And testimony that religious works passed down over time in the first two or three centuries of Islam have been corrupted is also verified by "the fact that Muhammad al-Bukhari, the great collector of reports of the saying and doings of the Prophet Muhammad (hadith), "who traveled from land to land to gather from the learned the hadith ... came to conclusion, after many years sifting, that out of 600,000 traditions, ascertained by him to be then current, only 4000 were authentic! And of this selected number the European critic is compelled without hesitation to reject at least one-half," according to Orientalist scholar William Muir.)[122]
- Outside the commentary
Reading the Quran but being ignorant of commentary we could "probably" infer that
"the protagonist of the Quran was Muhammad, that the scene of his life was in western Arabia, ... But we could not tell that the sanctuary was in Mecca, or that Muhammad himself came from there, and we could only guess that he established in Yatrib. We might indeed prefer a more northerly location altogether, on the ground that the site of God's destruction of Lot's people (i.e. Sodom) is said to be one which those addressed pass by "morning and night" (37:137–138).[108]
Cook's former co-author Patricia Crone agrees references in the Quran suggest a more northerly location for Muhammad's homeland than central Hejaz since, "the Qur'an describes the polytheist opponents as agriculturalists who cultivated wheat, grapes, olives, and date palms" (80:27–31 and 6:99) -- which cannot be grown in Mecca[123] -- and living near the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah (Q.37:137-8), also not believed to be located nowhere near Mecca.[124]
Historian Tom Holland writes that the Quran does not mention pagan idols, goddesses, pagan sanctuaries or shrines and that revelation seems to be attacking the mushrikun practice of asking angels for intercession. (chapter about what we don't know. page77-79) Similarly Judith Koren and Yehuda D. Nevo also claim that "the most elementary stylistic and analysis" demonstrates that readers or listeners of the Quran were "expected to be familiar with the stories of Judiaic-Christian scripture" rather than polytheist pagans.[125]
Another hint of the location is verse 30:1 "The Romans have been defeated in a nearby land, and yet after their defeat they shall be victorious in a nearby land." Q.30.1 Holland notes "it is hard to know what this is referring to if not the loss of Palestine to Khusrow II".[126]
Questions about history and origins
See also: History of the Quran and Historicity of Muhammad
According to Islamic narrative/historical tradition, the Quran -- bringing a message of uncompromising monotheism to humanity -- was passed down from heaven and revealed to Muhammad, an illiterate Arab trader, by the the angel Gabriel (Jabreel), in the pagan society and desert environment of Western Arabia from 610 to 632 CE.[3][Note 21] Muhammad became the Prophet of Islam, who despite persecution of the pagan ruling class, built up a following many of whom wrote down his revelations and/or memorized them. From these memories and written scraps the Quran was carefully complied, edited and codified under the supervision of Caliph Uthman (the third successor of Muhammad) not long after Muhammad's death.[5] Unlike early persecuted Christians, Arab Muslims, armed with religious conviction, conquered the Persian Sasanian Empire and most of the Byzantine empire, and according to tradition, seven copies of this standard codex edition or "Muṣḥaf" were made and sent to the major centers of this rapidly expanding empire,[85] and all other incomplete or "imperfect" variants of the Quranic revelation were destroyed, and the same Quran has been preserved and cherished by Muslims as ever since.[127]. In the next few centuries, the religion and empire of Islam solidified, and an enormous body of religious literature and laws were developed, including hadith, commentaries/exegeses (Tafsir) to explain the Quran.
Thus, according to Islamic teaching, it was insured that the wording of the Quranic text available today corresponds exactly to the literal, infallible,[6] "perfect, timeless", "absolute"[1] unadulterated word of God revealed to Muhammad.[128] That revelation in turn is identical to an eternal “mother of the book”[Note 22] the archetype[8]/prototype[9] of the Quran. This was not created/written by God, but an attribute of Him, co-eternal and kept with Him in heaven.[10][Note 23]
Historical criticism may question or contradict the Islamic historical tradition, and according to Firas Alkhateeb (writing in "Lost Islamic History" posted in Islamicity website), "one of the most dangerous aspects of Orientalism was the European study of the origins of the Quran."[129] "Muslims believe that Allah has already promised to protect the Quran from the change and error that happened to earlier holy texts," quoting Quran 15:9:
- إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ
- "Indeed, it is We who sent down the Quran and indeed, We will be it's guardian."[129]
Until the early 1970's,[130] non-Muslim scholars — while not accepting the divinity of the Quran — did accept its origin story[131] "in most of its details".[132] Ernest Renan famously declared that "Islam was born, not amid the mystery which cradles the origins of other religions, but rather in the full light of history."[133]
But starting in the late 1970s, secular scholars (such as Günter Lüling, John Wansbrough, Yehuda D. Nevo and Christoph Luxenberg)[134] began to question much of "what the Muslim historical tradition can tell us about the origins of Islam",[135][136] specifically questioning the link between the Quran and the traditional beliefs about the life of Muhammad.[36]
Those Quranic studies scholars doubting the traditional Islamic history of the Quran point to the lack of supporting historical evidence for the Islamic historical tradition's date of canonization of the Quran. This includes the lack of mention of the "Quran" nor "Islam",[137] nor "rightly guided caliphs", nor any of the famous futūḥ battles by Christian Byzantines in their historical records describing the Arab invaders advance, leaders or religion; the lack of any surviving documents by those Arabs who "lived through the establishment of the Caliphate";[138] the fact that coins of the region and era did not use Islamic iconography until sometime after 685 CE.[139][140] The "mystery letters" and unintelligible words and phrases mentioned above, unexplained/accounted for by Islamic historical tradition, suggests there was a break in the transmission of the knowledge of the meaning of much of the Quran -- i.e. a break somewhere after the time of the Quran's revelation and before it's earliest commentators.
Academic scholars who support "the position of the classical Islamic tradition that the Quran as it exists today is a seventh-century document,” point to the carbon dating of parchment and infrared photography of original ink of palimpsest parchment of the Birmingham Quran manuscript[141] to the time of Muhammad,[141] which "render[s] the vast majority of Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran untenable."[142]
PUT THIS SOMEWHERE
"... the idea, ubiquitous in Islamic though, that the closer an individual is to the source of an event, the more authoritative is their interpretatnon of that event; becuase they were closest to the event of revelation, prophets are naturally its most capable interpreters".[143]
Problems with traditional history
Secondary evidence and textual history and their lack
The traditional secular Quranic studies has been criticised for not challenging the received wisdom of Islamic historical tradition and lacking supporting evidence such as archaeological findings or non-Muslim literary sources.[124] What has been described as a "wave of sceptical scholars" (later known as the revisionist school of Islamic studies) argued that the Islamic historical tradition had been greatly corrupted in transmission. They tried to correct or reconstruct the early history of Islam from other, presumably more reliable, sources (i.e. secondary archaeological and textual evidence) — such as archaeological coins, inscriptions, and non-Islamic sources[144]: 23 — to address the question "when did the Quran first appear". They argue that evidence suggests it appeared later than Islamic historical tradition maintains, i.e. later than circa 650 CE.
Non-Muslim Islamic historians Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, John Wansbrough, and archaeologist Yehuda D. Nevo all argue that all the primary Islamic historical sources which exist are from 150–300 years after the events which they describe, leaving several generations for events to be forgotten, misinterpreted, distorted, garbled, etc.[145][146][147][Note 24]
(Michael Cook wonders why the heavenly archetype of the Quran is a book, the Muṣḥaf Quran on Earth is a book, but between these came a revelation to Muhammad that was oral, piecemeal, and not in the same order as the book -- the verse first revealed to Muhammad reputed to be not Q.1:1 but Q.96[8] -- but mainly his concern was with other issues.)
Cook and Crone argue (as of 1999) that "there is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century,"[149] about 40 year later than traditional Islamic history. Referring to the obscure words and phrases and the "mystery letters" and mystery of the Sabians in the Quran, Cook (and Christopher Rose) argue that "someone must once have known" what these mean, and that their meaning was forgotten now suggests the Quran may have been "off the scene for several decades".[150][151][85] (Pious Muslims argue that there are many things in Islam known only to God.)
The "earliest Arabic Islamic literary sources" of Islamic origins are the "biographical, exegetical, jurisprudential and grammatical texts written" during the Abbasid Caliphate, according to Fred Donner, leaving a gap of some decades between the traditional date for codification of the Quran and when the "full light of history" of the Abbasids shown, according to historian John Wansbrough (1928–2002).[144]: 38 (The claim that the Abbasid Islamic literary texts were simply transmitting earlier sources from the time of Muhammad has been questioned by another scholar, Ignác Goldziher).[152]
Archaeologist Nevo and researcher Judith Koren note coins of the region and era used Byzantine -- not Islamic -- iconography until the reign of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (646-705 CE).[153][140]
Tradition tells us the Quran was composed in the early 7th century CE, but according to historian Tom Holland, "only in the 690's did a Caliph finally get around to inscribing the Prophet's name on a public monument; only decades after that did the first tentative references to him start to appear in private inscriptions".[138] The earliest biographer whose complete work has survived is Ibn Hisham, who died in 833, 200 years after Muhammad.[Note 25] Of the victories over the Persian and Byzantine Empire of the first 200 years of the Islamic empire (futūḥ), "not a single record" has survived to this day. "Neither letters, nor speeches, nor journals, if they were ever so much as written, have survived; no hint as to what those who actually lived through the establishment of the Caliphate thought, or felt, or believed."[138] (In contrast, historical records were being written "even on the most barbarous fringes of civilisation" in Dark Ages era Britain.[155] One fragment of papyrus found that can be dated to a time relatively soon after the time of Muhammad (around 740 CE) and makes mention of a key event in the Islamic historical tradition (decisive victory of the Battle of Badr), contradicts the tradition -- indicating that the battle was not fought during Ramadan.[156][157]
Examining 7th century Byzantine Christian sources commentary on the Arab "immigrants" (Mhaggraye) who were invading/settling in formerly Byzantine territory at that time, historian Abdul-Massih Saadi found the Christians never mentioned the terms "Quran" nor "Islam" nor that the immigrants were of a new religion.[137][Note 26] The Christians used secular or political, not religious terms (kings, princes, rulers) to refer to the Arab leaders. Muhammad was "the first king of the Mhaggraye", also guide, teacher, leader or great ruler. They referred to the immigrants in ethnic terms -- "among them (Arabs) there are many Christians...".[158] They did however mention the religion of the Arabs. The immigrants' religion was described as monotheist "in accordance with the Old Law (Old Testament)".[137] When the Emir of the immigrants and Patriarch of the local Christians did have a religious colloquium there was much discussion of the scriptures but no mention of the Quran, "a possible indication that the Quran was not yet in circulation."[137] The Christians reported the Emir was accompanied by "learned Jews", that the immigrants "accepted the Torah just as the Jews and Samaritans", though none of the sources described the immigrants as Jews.[137] The Byzantine Christians did mention "First and Second Civil Wars" among "Arab political and tribal factions" which they saw as destroying the immigrants.[137]
Nevo and Koren argue early Christian sources do not mention the "rightly guided caliphs" nor any of the famous futūḥ battles (i.e. the early Arab-Muslim conquests which facilitated the spread of Islam and Islamic civilization).[153][140]
Cook and Crone believe hints from the Quran are more reliable than the narrative of tafsir, sira and hadith and that (as mentioned above) they believe the evidence from the Quran indicates an area around the south Dead Sea and not Mecca and Medina of Hijaz were the area Muhammad lived in. Wansbrough claims that Islamic traditions were often created (i.e. fabricated) "to demonstrate the Hijazi origins of Islam."[159]
Michael Cook argues Jerusalem, not Mecca, is the geographic focus of Muhammad's religious movement rather than just the area Muslims first expanded into after establishing control of Mecca. Cook cites an Armenian chronicler of the era who writes that Muhammad told the Arabs that "as descendants of Abraham through Ishmael, they too had a claim" to Palestine, which "God had promised the to Abraham and his seed".[160]
Scholar Gerd R. Puin claims that 20% of the Quran "simply doesn't make sense" and thinks this one fifth could not have been "understood even at the time of Muhammad".[1]
Also problematic is the reliability of isnads, i.e. the chains of people who transmitted a hadith from Muhammad to when it was collected by a compiler (such as Muhammad al-Bukhari, or Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj), and have been an important part of evidence for dating the Quran from the time of Muhammad.[161] But as mentioned above, the phenomenon of commentaries on Islamic history becoming larger and more informative the farther away they were from the time they wrote about does not inspire confidence in their historical accuracy;[116] and according to Stephen Humphreys, while a number of "very capable" modern scholars defended the general authenticity of isnads, most modern scholars regard isnads with "deep suspicion".[162]
The Quran is the highest ranking source of sharia (Islamic law), according to Islamic teaching, but some aspects of sharia seem to ignore or contradict the Quran. The most notable example of this conflict is that the traditional, universally accepted punishment for zina (adultery) under sharia was stoning to death (rajm), yet Michael Cook point out that the Quran clearly states the perpetrators should be given 100 lashes and says nothing about stoning.
- 24:2 — The [zina committing] woman or [zina committing] man found guilty of sexual intercourse — lash each one of them with a hundred lashes.[150]
An earlier Western scholar, Joseph Schacht, also noted that Sharia "often diverged from the intentions and even the explicit wording of the Koran", and that his evidence showed the law "did not derive directly from the Koran but developed ... out of popular and administrative practice under the Umayyads" (661-750 CE). "Norms derived from the Koran were introduced into Muhammadan law [i.e. sharia] almost invariably at a secondary stage."[163]
- Questions of Quranic studies
According to scholar Fred Donner, while it is generally agreed the Quran was intended as "a source of religious and moral guidance" for its readers, "we simply do not know ... things so basic"[132] about the Quran as
How did [it] originate? Where did it come from, and when did it first appear? How was it first written? In what kind of language was -- is -- it written? What form did it first take? Who constituted its first audience? How was it transmitted form one generation to another, especially in its early years? When, how and by whom was it codified?[132]
- Was there is "some kind of original version" of the Quran ("Ur-Quran") that today's Quran can "be traced back to"? or was the Quran created gradually, eventually "crystallizing"?
The Islamic historical tradition says there was an original version, which is the same as the current Mus'haf.[164] Traditionally Orientalist scholars also thought there was an original version, though they thought it was possible that "minor" changes may developed between the Ur-Quran and the Mus'haf.[164] Revisionists such as Günter Lüling and John Burton also agree that there was a "prototype text", though Lüling does not think it is from the time of Muhammad. Disagreeing are John Wansbrough and his "followers" such as Andrew Rippin and G. R. Hawting who believe the Quran was "pieced together" over two centuries "or more" in a "long slow process of crystallization".[164]
- Where did it come from?
Mecca and then Medina in the Hijaz according to tradition. Wansbrough thinks this is a later invention.[165] Crone and Cook and Tom Holland believe the Quran's mention of closeness to the remains of Lot's people (Q.37:137-8) and wheat, grapes and olives crops indicate southern Palestine.[124]
- If there was an original version, what was its "nature"? Christian? Jewish? Oral? some combination?
A source of religious and moral guidance for its audience, but was it Islam as we know it today? Abraham Geiger,[166]C.C. Torrey,[167] argued for a Jewish nature. Tor Andræ and Günter Lüling saw Christianity influencing Islam.[168][169] Andrew G. Bannister has asked whether the Quran was not just recited by believers but "composed orally", due to its resemblance to orally transmitted literature like epic poems.[170][171]
- "What "kind of language did it represent? And what was the relationship between the written text and that language?" The same Quranic Arabic written and spoken today? Or one of the Arab dialects? poetic Koiné Arabic? Or Arabic combined with Syriac?
The Islamic historical tradition says Arabic, but was it instead "a purely literary vehicle" not intended to represent the sound of a spoken language (like hànzì characters of Chinese)? Did it reflect the dialect of the Quraysh tribe? poetic Koiné language of the Bedouin?[172] Or a mixture of Arabic and an earlier language of Syriac?[173]
- "How was it transmitted?" Both orally and in writing? Or was oral transmission lost for a period of time?[174]
By written notes and oral recitation with nothing lost or added in the recension process (nothing that God did not want lost at least) according to the Islamic historical tradition. But could was there have been editing to completely transform the Ur-Quran?[175] And could it (or parts of it) have been transmitted only by written form at some stage in its history? (see: Possible written without oral transmission below)
- "How and when did codification and canonization of the Quran take place?" codification a couple of decades after canonization? More than a century later? At the same time?[176]
Canonized, i.e. given authority in the Muslim community from the very beginning, but codified into the Muṣẖaf with the "Uthmanic recession" in the mid 7th century CE, according to historical tradition. John Wansbrough says much later -- 200 + years after Muhammad; John Burton believes earlier than tradition, upon Muhammad's death.[177][178][179]
Preexisting sources
Main article: Biblical and Quranic narratives
Similarities with Jewish and Christian Narratives
In dealing with the question of the origins of the Quran, non-Muslim historian have often focused on Christian and Jewish sources.
The Quran contains references to more than fifty people and events also found in the Bible (including Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Lot, Moses, Saul, David and Goliath, Jonah, Jesus, Mary. Moses, is mentioned 135 times[180][181] Moses is mentioned in 502 verses in 36 surahs,[182] Abraham in 245 verses, Noah in 131.[183]
The Quran and Bible differ on a number of narrative and theological issues. There is no original sin in the Quran; it specifically denies the Christian Trinity of three persons in one God, holding that the Holy Spirit is actually the angel Gabriel;(2:97; 16:102) it denies that Jesus is the son of God (9:30), was crucified (4:157) and died, or rose from the dead. The Devil, Satan (Shaitan), is regarded as a jinn in most contemporary scholarship[184] (2:34; 7:12; 15:27; 55:15).[185]
Muslims believe the Quran refers to figures, prophets, and events in Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament because these books are predecessors of the Quran, also revealed by the one true omnipotent God. The differences between two books and the Quran can be explained (Muslims believed) by the flawed processes of transmission and interpretation of the Bible and New Testament, distorting revelation that the Quran provides free from any distortions and corruptions.
Non-Muslim historians -- secular but also Jewish and Christian -- in keeping with Occam's razor, have looked for simpler, non-divine/non-supernatural explanations for the connection[Note 27] (In Islamic language, dealing only with shahada, i.e. what can be perceived, described, and studied; and not with the unseen al-Ghaib, made known only by divine revelation). Many stories of the Muhammad hearing about Christianity from Christians and Judaism from Jews come from Muslim sources.
Western academic scholars who have studied "the relationship between the Quran and the Judaeo-Christian scriptural tradition"[130] include Abraham Geiger,[166] Tor Andræ,[168] Richard Bell,[187] and Charles Cutler Torrey.[167]
- Jewish influence
In the 19th century, Abraham Geiger argued for Jewish influence on the formation of the Quran,[166] as did C.C. Torrey even more forcefully in the early 20th Century.[167] Micheal Cook believes Muhammad "owed more to Judiasm than to Christianity",[188] and mentions a "fusion" of Jewish-based "monotheism with Arab identity" in Palestine prior to Islam. According to a fifth-century Christian writer -- Sozomen -- some "Saracen" (Arab) tribes rediscovered their "Ishmaelite descent"[189] after coming into contact with Jews and had adopted Jewish laws and customs.[190][191][192] Although there is no evidence to show "a direct link" between these Arabs and Muhammad,[189] it is a milieu where Quranic material could "have come into existence" before Muhammad.[190]
Several narratives rely on Jewish Midrash Tanhuma legends, like the narrative of Cain learning to bury the body of Abel in Surah 5:31.[193][194] Critics, like Norman Geisler argue that the dependence of the Quran on preexisting sources is one evidence of a purely human origin.[195]
In their book Hagarism, Michael Cook and Patricia Crone postulate that a number of features of Islam may have been borrowed from the Jewish breakaway sect of Samaritanism: "the idea of a scripture limited to the Pentateuch, a prophet like Moses (i.e. Muhammad), a holy book revealed like the Torah (the Quran), a sacred city (Mecca) with a nearby mountain (Jabal an-Nour -- the Samaratan mountain being Mount Gerizim) and shrine (the Kaaba) of an appropriate patriarch (Abraham), plus a caliphate modeled on an Aaronid priesthood."[196][197] Ibn Warraq compares the similarities of Muhammad of Islam and Moses of the Jews. Both bearers of revelation (Pentateuch v. Quran), both receiving revelation on a mountain (Mount Sinai v. Mt. Hira), leading their people to escape persecution (Exodus vs. Hijra).[198]
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "The dependence of Mohammed upon his Jewish teachers or upon what he heard of the Jewish Haggadah and Jewish practices is now generally conceded."[61] Early jurists and theologians of Islam mentioned some Jewish influence but they also say where it is seen and recognized as such, it is perceived as a debasement or a dilution of the authentic message. Bernard Lewis describes this as "something like what in Christian history was called a Judaizing heresy."[199] According to Professor Moshe Sharon, specialist in Arabic epigraphy, the legends about Muhammad having ten Jewish teachers developed in the 10th century CE:
"In most versions of the legends, ten Jewish wise men or dignitaries appear, who joined Muhammad and converted to Islam for different reasons. In reading all the Jewish texts one senses the danger of extinction of the Jewish people; and it was this ominous threat that induced these Sages to convert..."[200]
- Christian
Tor Andræ, saw Christian "Nestorians of Yemen, monophysites of Ethiopia and especially ... Syrian pietism" influencing Islam".[168][169] Richard Carrier regards the reliance on pre-Islamic Christian sources as evidence that Islam derived from a heretical sect of Christianity.[201]
Scholar Oddbjørn Leirvik states "The Qur'an and Hadith have been clearly influenced by the non-canonical ('heretical') Christianity that prevailed in the Arab peninsula and further in Abyssinia" prior to Islam.[202] H.A.R. Gibb states that many of the details in the description of Judgement Day, Heaven, and Hell and some vocabulary "are closely paralleled in the writings of the Syriac Christian fathers and monks."[203]
Tom Holland thinks it notable that some doctrines that the Quran mentions in association with Christianity -- that Jesus did not died on the cross (which came from the Gospel of Basilides and is accepted by virtually no Christians)[204] that he was a mortal man and not divine (held by the heretical Ebionites),[205] that the mother of Jesus is divine (which came from the Nazorean Gospel denounced by Saint Jerome[205] and is also supported by virtually no Christians) -- come not only from Christian heresies, but ones that had not been heard from in the heartland of Christianity for some time by the 7th century CE when the Quran was revealed.[206]
- Trinity
In Islam, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity -- that God is a single being but three distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit -- is a violation of monotheism (Quran 9:1–15). It is shirk[207] (giving partners to God), and not only a sin but a major al-Kaba'ir sin.[208][209] Some Christian missionaries who study Islam argue the Quran mistakenly thought that Christians worshiped three gods (Sura 5:73-75), but also mistakenly believed one of the beings of the trinity was Mother (Mary) rather than the Holy Spirit (Sura 5:116).[210]
However, historian Tom Holland suggests a somewhat different theory. He notes that uses the Quran uses the term "Nasara"[211] when talking about Christians,[212] a name Christians themselves did not use, but similar to "Nazorean", the name of a small Christian sect mentioned by Saint Jerome. A doctrine found in the Nazorean Gospel (that Saint Jerome and other Christians strongly disapproved of) was that the Holy Spirit was the heavenly 'mother' of Christ" (the Virgin Mary not being mentioned).[205] Holland believes this may be alluded to in verse 5:116 where Allah questions Jesus as to whether he told "the people", 'Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah?'" and has Jesus vehemently denying it, ("It was not for me to say that to which I have no right"). While mainstream Christians believed neither that Mary was part of the trinity, nor that the Holy Ghost was the mother of Jesus, this would have made sense as a reaction to Nazorean teaching.[211]
Another variation from Nicene or conventional Christianity in the Quran was the doctrine that Jesus was mortal not divine. Holland quotes Epiphanius, another fighter of heresy in the Christian church, who wrote that a heretical teacher by the name of Ebion who blended Judaism and Samaritanism and held that Jesus was not the son of God, but a man who obeyed the law of Moses and who "turned in the direction of Jerusalem" when performing his daily prayers.[205]
- Confusion of Mary, mother of Jesus with Miriam daughter of Amran, sister of Moses[213][214]
When looking at the narratives of Jesus found in the Quran, some themes are found in pre-Islamic sources such as the Infancy Gospels about Christ.[215] The narration of the baby Jesus speaking from the cradle can be traced back to the Arabic Infancy Gospel, and the miracle of the bringing clay birds to life being found in The Infancy Story of Thomas.[215]
Much of the qur'anic material about the selection and upbringing of Mary parallels much of the Protovangelium of James,[215] with the miracle of the palm tree and the stream of water being found in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.[215] In Pseudo-Matthew, the flight to Egypt is narrated similarly to how it is found in Islamic lore,[215] with Syriac translations of the Protoevangelium of James and The Infancy Story of Thomas being found in pre-Islamic sources.[215]
John Wansbrough believes that the Quran is a redaction in part of other sacred scriptures, in particular the Judaeo-Christian scriptures.[216][217] Herbert Berg writes that "Despite John Wansbrough's very cautious and careful inclusion of qualifications such as 'conjectural,' and 'tentative and emphatically provisional', his work is condemned by some. Some of the negative reaction is undoubtedly due to its radicalness... Wansbrough's work has been embraced wholeheartedly by few and has been employed in a piecemeal fashion by many. Many praise his insights and methods, if not all of his conclusions."[218] Gerd R. Puin's study of ancient Quran manuscripts led him to conclude that the Quran is a "cocktail of texts", some of which may have been present a hundred years before Muhammad.[149] Norman Geisler argues that the dependence of the Quran on preexisting sources is one evidence of a purely human origin.[219]
Ibn Ishaq, an Arab Muslim historian and hagiographer who collected oral traditions that formed the basis of the important biography of Muhammad, also claimed that as a result of these discussions, the Qur'an was revealed addressing all these arguments – leading to the conclusion that Muhammad may have incorporated Judeo-Christian tales he had heard from other people. For example, in al-Sirah an-Nabawiyyah (an edited version of Ibn Ishaq's original work), Ibn Hishām's report
explains that the Prophet used often to sit at the hill of Marwa inviting a Christian...but they actually also would have had some resources with which to teach the Prophet.[220] ...saw the Prophet speaking with him, they said: "Indeed, he is being taught by Abu Fukayha Yasar." According to another version: "The apostle used often to sit at al-Marwa at the booth of a young Christian slave Jabr, slave of the Banu l-Hadrami, and they used to say: 'The one who teaches Muhammad most of what he brings is Jabr the Christian, slave of the Banu l-Hadrami."[221]
A study of informant reports by Claude Gilliot concluded with "the possibility that whole sections of the Meccan Quran contains elements" from or within groups possessing Biblical, post-Biblical and other sources.[222][223] One such report (coming from "renowned" exegete Muqatil bin Sulayman Tafsir al-Quran, 2, 487)[224] and likely informant of Muhammad was the Christian slave mentioned in Sahih Bukhari whom Ibn Ishaq named as Jabr for which the Quran's chapter 16: 101-104 was probably revealed.[223] Waqidi names this Christian as Ibn Qumta,[225] with his identity and religious affiliation being contradicted in informant reports.[223] Ibn Ishaq also recounts the story of how three Christians, Abu Haritha Ibn `Alqama, Al-`Aqib `Abdul-Masih and Al-Ayham al-Sa`id, spoke to Muhammad regarding such Christian subjects as the Trinity.[226]
Muhammad's first wife Khadija "had read the ancient writings and knew the history of the prophets, and also the name of Gabriel" according to Balami (d.363/974) "Persian abridgment of the Annals of Tabari"[227] Khadija also had a cousin Waraqa bin Nawfal who was a Christian and who and read the scriptures she took Muhammad to meet and who proclaimed Muhammad a prophet according to Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, 107[228]
In the 1970s, revisionist historian Günter Lüling argued that the Quran contains earlier Christian writings[229] and that aproximately one-third of the Quran has pre-Islamic Christian origins (specifically is a Christian hymnal).[230][231] Crone and Cook in their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, argued that Muhammad's movement started with an alliance between local Jews and Arabs.[169]
Stories related in the Quran usually focus more on the spiritual significance of events than details.[Note 28] The stories are generally comparable, but sometimes differ from the bible, such as on Jesus' crucifixion.
According to Arthur Jeffery numerous early Islamic texts mention Muhammad's contacts with both SYrian and Arabian Christians COPYRIGHT [232]
Crucifixion
Main article: Islamic views on Jesus' death
Quran mentions the crucifixion of Jesus described in the Christian bible but maintains that Jesus was not actually crucified and did not die on the cross.
That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:-
Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise;-
The general Islamic view supporting the denial of crucifixion was probably influenced by Manichaenism (Docetism), which holds that someone else was crucified instead of Jesus, while concluding that Jesus will return during the end-times.[234][235]
Despite these views, there is little dispute among scholars of the Crucifixion of Jesus. According to Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, "...if there is any fact of Jesus' life that has been established by a broad consensus, it is the fact of Jesus' crucifixion."[236]
Ancient Greek influence
It has been suggested by Walid Saleh[237] that the Quranic reference to eternally boyish cup-bearers, "handsome like hidden pearls" (Quran 52:24), and the "lovely eyed" houri(Quran 56:22–23) as a reward for the faithful in heaven, may have come from legends of the head Greek god Zeus who was said to have "an exquisitely pearl-like youth" (Ganymede) bearing his cup and a wife (Hera) with beautiful large-eyes.[238] Saleh suggests that in general, the "joyful" emphasis on the pleasures of heaven in the Quran "is more akin the lives of the gods of Olympus than to the asceticism and sensibilities of late antique Christianity", and may be because the pre-Islamic Arabs "were the last upholders of paganism" and likely familiar with the pagan Greek myths.[239]
Legends/parables
Main article: Legends and the Quran
One legend/story recounted in the Quran concerns,
- The story of "the two-horned one" (Quran 18:83–102) tells of the journeys of Dhu l-Qarnayn -- generally thought to be the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great -- to "the setting of the sun" (Q.18:85–88), the place of the rising of the sun (18:89–91), a place threatened by Yajuj and Majuj, where he is asked to build a protective wall, his giving a prophecy (18:92–98), and ending with God's warning of ominous future events (18:99–102).[240] At least one scholar (Kevin van Bladel)[241] finds striking similarities between the verses and a Syriac legend thought to be written as propaganda for Roman Emperor Heraclius which van Bladel dates to before Muhammad's death.[242] The Syriac legend matches many of the details of the verses as well as making sense of them (at roughly 20 page it is much longer than the 20 verses).[242] Van Bladel finds it more plausible that the Syriac legend is the source of the Quranic verses than vice versa, as the Syriac legend was written when the Hijazi Muslim community was still little known to the Mesopotamian site of the legend's creation, whereas Arabs worked as troops and scouts for Romans during the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 and could have been exposed to the legend.[243]
Folklorist Alan Dundes has noted three legends/parables/tales in the Quran that fit the pattern of folktales included in the Aarne–Thompson classification system of folklore narratives of (primarily) Europe and Western Asia [244] (and he believes predate the Quran[245]):
- "The Seven Sleepers" (Quran 18:9–25), where seven believers seek refuge in a cave from pagans threatening them with death, fall asleep for three hundred years, fits Aarne-Thompson story type 766;[246][247] (Christians celebrated the "Seven Sleepers of Ephesus" as a miracle of Christians escaping pagan persecution and the Roman church celebrated its feast day on 27 July.[248] The earliest version of this story pre-date the Quran and come from the Syrian bishop Jacob of Serugh (c. 450 – 521).[249]
- The story of Al-Khidr and Moses (Quran 18:65–82), where a servant of God (Al-Khidr) is followed and questioned by Moses about his many apparently unjust or inappropriate actions (sinking a ship, killing a young man, repaying inhospitality by repairing a wall) that Al-Khidr later explains are actually fully justified because of circumstances unknown to Moses (preventing capture of the ship, murder of parents, etc.). This parable fits Aarne-Thompson 759 "The Angel and the Hermit"[250] where a hermit plays a role similar to that of Moses and an angel to that of Al-Khidr.[251][252] and is thought to have origins in a Jewish legend pre-dating the Quran.[Note 29] </ref>
- The story of Solomon and the ant (Quran 27:16–19) — where the Jewish king Solomon has been taught the language of animals and overhears an ant warning his fellow ants to take shelter from Solomon's approaching army — fits Aarne-Thompson 670, "The Animal Languages".[253] (Among the versions of a story where a king overhears a conversation of insects is a Buddhist one from the Third Century CE.)[254]
While Dundes agrees these stories appear to uphold the unbelievers criticism in the Quran that it (the Quran) contains `ancient fables,` he defends his claim, asking:
`What's wrong with that?` The presence of ancient fables in the Quran (and in the Bible) in no way diminishes the religious or moral value of these great sacred documents. Quite the contrary, the presence of folklore is a guarantee of their basic humanity, and, if one chooses to believe so, their divine character."[245]
Christoph Luxenberg's theory of Syriac origin
The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran by Christoph Luxenberg (psuedonym) postulates that the Quran was substantially derived from Syriac Christian liturgy, Syriac lectionaries used in Christian churches of Syria, and that it was the work of several generations who adapted these texts into the Quran we know today. He argues that many "obscure" portions become clear when they are back-translated and interpreted as Syriacisms. An example is verse 37:103, considered to be about Ibrahim's sacrifice of his son, reads when translated into English from Arabic:
- And when they had both submitted and he put him down upon his forehead. But using Syriac instead of Arabic for almost the same Arabic rasm, he put him down upon his forehead, changes the meaning to he tied him to the firewood".[255][256]
Compilation and redaction of Uthman Codex
*I‘jām or nuqat al-I'jam (examples in red) was added in later arabic (possibly around 700 CE)[257] so that consonants letters such as ـبـ ـتـ ـثـ ـنـ ـيـ (y, n, th, t, b) could be distinguished. This provides a "consonantal skeleton" that is sufficient for most educated Arab readers.[124]
*Ḥarakāt or nuqaṭ ali'rab (examples in blue) indicate short vowels. These are not found in most written arabic, but are in (today's) Quran. They were added to the arabic language even later than I'jam, around "the first half of the tenth century", according to Gerhard Böwering.[258]
(The phrase illustrating the markings is from Al-Fatiha, the first surah of the Quran, is pronounced Alhamdu lillaahi Rabbil 'aalameen and translated as "Praise to Allah, Lord of the worlds".)
- Traditional account of compilation
According to the tradition Islamic account of the compilation of the Quran, following the death of Muhammad the Quran ceased to be revealed, and companions who had memorized the Quran began to die off (particularly after the Battle of Yamama in 633).[259] Worried that parts of the Quran might irretrievably lost, senior companion Umar urged Caliph Abu Bakr to order the collection of the pieces of the Quran which had hitherto been scattered among "palm-leaf stalks, thin white stones, ... [and] men who knew it by heart, ..." [260] put them together.[259][261]
Some years later (around 644 CE) as the Islamic empire spread and conflict arose from "divergences in Quranic recitation" that appeared among the now larger and more diverse Muslim population,[262] Caliph Uthman (644–656 CE) thought it necessary to make one standard and official Quran. A committee of five copied the scraps into a single volume, "monitoring the text as they went", resolving disagreements about verses, tracking down a lost verse.[263] This muṣḥaf -- that became know as the "Uthmanic codex" -- was finished around 650 CE,[264] (the date was not recorded by early Arab annalists),[262] whereupon Uthman issued an order for all other existing personal and individual copies and dialects of the Quran (known as Ahruf) to be burnt:
According to part of a hadith from Sahih al-Bukhari,
... 'Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Quranic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt. ...[Bukhari Sahih al-Bukhari, 6:61:510][265]
After the variant maṣḥaf copies were ordered destroyed, there were still differences in "readings" of the Quran still cropped up. In c. 700 CE, Umayyad governor, Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf "improved" written Arabic by adding diacritical marks (I‘jām, see above) which 'Uthman's codex lacked.[Note 30] In the 10th century, scholar Abu Bakr Ibn Mujāhid canonized one system of consonants (one rasm) and limited the variation of vowels (Ḥarakāt, see above) to seven different recognised schools of Qira'at (recitation).
Today, "for all practical purposes", one Quranic version is in "general use" in the Muslim world — an Egyptian standard edition of the Qur'an originally "produced in 1924".[178][Note 31] It is a descendant of one of the readings of the Quran — namely the reading of Ḥafṣ (d 190/805) for the reading of ʾĀṣim (d.127/744)) (or going back even farther to 'Ali ibn Abi-Talib according to one scholar).[Note 32] Thus (Muslims believe), the official Uthman compilation, carefully collected and redacted by followers -- at least some of whom had learned it at the time of the revelation, committed it to memory and recited it regularly -- has been scrupulously preserved for 1400 odd years until the present day.
- Criticism
Outside Islamic historical tradition, some see problems with the traditional account.
Michael Cook notes that narratives about the compilation do not agree. Some have Uthman collecting verses of the Quran, another only copying and editing what had been collected earlier.[270] Some have Uthman's predecessor Umar collecting bits of the Quran and creating a codex. In other narratives Umar only assembles what his predecessor Abu Bakr had collected. And in some Abu Bakr assembles a codex from bits collected in the time of the Prophet. [Note 33]
Which of these narratives is true is relevant because the earlier the Quran was compiled the less time there was for its source material to have been lost or altered; a concern (Cook believes) if you consider the admonition of the son of Umar: "Let none of you say that he has the whole Quran in his possession. ... Much of the Quran has gone."[274] (Pious Muslims argue Ibn ‘Umar is referring to verses deliberately abrogated (naskh) by God, not lost.)[275]
Despite Uthman's order to burn all other codices, some older ones with variant rasm apparently survived "well into the 4th century";[276] and even among those using the Uthman codex more than one "reading" of the text are possible because it did not include diacritical or vowel markings.[92] (see illustration above).
Cook argues that a number of issues indicate that the text of the Quran was "not yet as firmly fixed in the decades after Uthman as it came to be later".[277] He writes of a verse found in an "early theological epistle" circa 700 CE that quoted a Quranic verse similar to, but not the same as two other verse in the Uthmanic codex,[263] and in a codex attributed to Abdullah ibn Masud yet another verse not found in the Uthmanic codex that is slightly different from the first three.[277] Coins from the Islamic empire dated 698 or 699 CE is inscribed with a "somewhat deviant" version of Q.9:33.[278] Fragments from the 7th or late 6th century Sanaʽa manuscript have a "considerably greater ... range of variants", though again not deviating in character from the Uthman muṣḥaf.[279]
Charles Adams states,
It must be emphasized that far from there being a single text passed down inviolate from the time of Uthman's commission, literally thousands of variant readings of particular verses were known in the first three (Muslim) centuries. These variants affected even the Uthmanic codex, making it difficult to know what its true form may have been. [280]
The eight volume collection of variants, Mu'jam al-qira'at al-qur'aniyyah, contains over ten thousand different "readings" of the Quran. While in most of these the variations are only of diacritical marks, "about a thousand are variants of or deviations in the rasm", according to Ibn Warraq.[281] In the contemporary world, three variants have circulation, Warsh (d.812) from Nafi of Medina, Hafs (d.805) from Asim of Kufa, and al-Duri (d.860) from Abu Amr of Basra (Hafs from Asim dominating everywhere except North Africa).[282] Charles Adams calls the differences "real and substantial",[283] Muslim scholar Alfred Guillaume, "not always trifling in significance".[284][282]
Standard version of Uthman
The view that the Quran authentically attests to what Muhammad taught, and "expressed in his own words" during his mission in Mecca and Medina is supported by some Western academics as well as Muslims. F. E. Peters states that no "significant variants" have been found from Uthman's standard edition of the Quran in the partial versions found by researchers, and claims by some Muslims who allege "tampering with the original texts" in the making of Uthaman's standard edition, is "so patently tendentious that "few" have been convinced.[285] The French scholar Theodor Noldeke wrote: “The efforts of European Scholars to prove the existence of later interpolations in the Holy Quran have failed.” [286][3]
What is evident regarding the compilation of the Quran, according to John Burton, is the disagreement between the companions of Muhammad (earliest supporters of Muhammad), as evidenced with their several disagreements regarding interpretation and particular versions of the Quran and their interpretative Hadith and Sunna, namely the mutawatir mushaf having come into present form after Muhammad's death.[287] John Burton's work The Collection of the Quran claims certain Quranic texts were altered to adjust interpretation, in regards to controversy between schools of fiqh (human understanding of Sharia) known as madhahib.[288]
- Arguments against perfect preservation for 1400 years
The belief that the Qur’an has been "perfectly preserved for nearly fourteen centuries" -- reflected in verse 15:9 -- “We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption)” (at least from the revelation of each verse to the time of the codification of the Quran) seems to be contradicted by some Islamic sources, according to at least one Christian missionary (David Wood, a critic in the sense that he believes the work and Islam in general to be untrue and wanting to convince Muslims of this) who write that the Quran has "(1) missing phrases, (2) missing passages, (3) missing chapters, (4) disagreements about what goes back to the original".[289] Companions of the Prophet who were early Islamic experts disagreed among themselves, some complaining about Uthman codices and specifically Zaid ibn Thabit (who was one of the compilers of the Quran appointed by Uthman).[289] Abdullah ibn Masud was one of four people Muhammad recommends learning the Quran from (according to two hadith related by Al-Bukhari). But in a Tabaqat (طبقات) (a book of Islamic biographical literature) written by Ibn Sa'd, Ibn Masud calls the Uthman/Zaid ibn Thabit codices a deception: “The people have been guilty of deceit in the reading of the Qur’an. I like it better to read according to the recitation of him [i.e. Muhammad] whom I love more than that of Zayd ibn Thabit.” [290] Another source (Jami` at-Tirmidhi, one of the Kutub al-Sittah)[291] has him declaring “O you Muslim people! Avoid copying the Mushaf and recitation of this man [Zayd ibn Thabit]," urging Muslims to keep and hide their own versions (Muṣaḥif) of the Quran. Another companion of the prophet, Ubay ibn Ka'b, known for his beautiful recitation of the Quran,[292][293][294] believed that Zayd’s Qur’an was missing parts of several verses.[295] Ibn Umar stated “Let none of you say, ‘I have learned the whole of the Koran,’ for how does he know what the whole of it is, when much of it has disappeared? Let him rather say, ‘I have learned what is extant thereof.’”[296][297] Abu Musa al-Ash’ari also talked of forgotten surah, a long and difficult as Surah Bara’at[298] According to Muhammad’s wife Aisha “Surat al-Ahzab (33) had 200 verses at the time of the Prophet, but only 73 verses were known when Uthmanic codex was compiled.[299] According to another well known hadith Aishah maintains that verse on stoning adulterers and regulations for breastfeeding have been lost because their notes were eaten by a sheep.[300] These issues have been raised by Christian missionaries like David Wood (critics of the Quran in the sense of believing the work and Islam in general to be untrue and wanting it convince Muslims of this) who write that the Quran has "(1) missing phrases, (2) missing passages, (3) missing chapters, (4) disagreements about what goes back to the original").[289]
- Codification time controversy
Fred Donner argues that (as of 2008 there is evidence for both the hypotheses of a codification earlier than the standard narritive and one later.[301] There are large numbers of qira'at or variant readings of the Quran. .. multiple recensions of each of the fourteen collections of variants stemming from "regional traditions" of Medina, Kufa, Basra, Syria, etc. While many of the variants vary only by "voweling of the text" but some vary by the "rasm as well".[301] By definition then the large number of qira'at means that the Quran was not "crystalized into a single , immutable codified form .. within one generation of Muhammad".[301]
On the other hand while there are "some significant variants" in the qira'at literature, "we do not find long passages of otherwise wholly unknown text claiming to be Quran, or that appear to be used as Quran -- only variations within a text that is clearly recognizable as a version of a known Quranic passage"[302] Revisionist historian Michael Cook also states that the Quran "as we know it", is "remarkably uniform" in the rasm.[262]
Extant copies prior to Uthman version
See also: Early Quranic manuscripts
Manuscript studies appear to suggest a date for the codification of the Quran around the time of its traditional historical date. [152]
- Sana'a manuscript
See also: Sana'a manuscript
In 1972 a "paper grave" of ancient Qur'ans in the Grand Mosque of Sana'a, Yemen was discovered – commonly known as the Sana'a manuscripts. It included tens of thousands of fragments from close to a thousand different discarded parchment codices of the Koran "of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence". [Note 34] The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Quran fragments for years. His research team "Painstakingly ... flattened, cleaned, treated, sorted, and assembled", and made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to early part of the 8th century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but noted "small but intriguing" variances from the standard Uthmanic Quranic text -- unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He also suggested that some of the parchments were palimpsests which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied "an evolving text" as opposed to a fixed one.[1]
Andrew Rippin agrees that "these manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic text is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed."[1] [Note 35]
However, according to Christopher Rose[Note 36], a comparison of the consonantal skeleton of the Ṣanā’a manuscript and the standard Qur’ān, finds the structure "surprisingly intact". The variations amount to "things like shifting from third person to first person, or shifting singular to plural, or occasionally changing a pronoun."[308]
- Birmingham manuscript
See also: Birmingham Quran manuscript
In 2015, the University of Birmingham disclosed that scientific tests indicated that a Quran manuscript in its collection (known as the Birmingham Manuscript) was one of the oldest known. Using Radiocarbon dating, the date the animal used to make the parchment was killed is estimated to be between 568 and 645 CE -- slightly before the Uthmanic codex and close to the time of Muhammad. Since parchments are thought to have been used shortly after being prepared (after the animal was killed), the dating is thought to hold for the manuscript as well as the parchment. According to the New York Times, "researchers say it may have been transcribed by a contemporary of the Prophet Muhammad".[141] [85]
At least some Western scholars have found the findings in 2015 of the Birmingham Manuscripts to provide “further evidence for the position of the classical Islamic tradition that the Quran as it exists today is a seventh-century document.” (according to Omid Safi, of the Duke Islamic Studies Center).[141] Joseph E. B. Lumbard commented,[309]
These recent empirical findings are of fundamental importance. They establish that as regards the broad outlines of the history of the compilation and codification of the Quranic text, the classical Islamic sources are far more reliable than had hitherto been assumed. Such findings thus render the vast majority of Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran untenable.[142]
and that the "manuscript discovery in Birmingham and the analysis of several previously discovered manuscripts" provide proof that "the Islamic historiographical and exegetical traditions have provided honest and accurate information regarding the history of the Quranic text."[309]
Early Islamic sources, “still provide a more compelling framework for understanding the Qurʾan than any alternative yet proposed.” (Carl Ernst)[309]
"Assuming that it isn’t a palimpsest -- and that is definitely a question -— it would put to rest the idea that the Qur’ān was authored after the middle of the seventh century. So, definitely not the 9th, definitely not the 8th" (Christopher Rose)[85] Rose notes that there is little indication in the text of a work in flux, notes and scraps being put together. The text is "much more fully formed then we might have expected". Divisions between surahs where not added after the text was written but have titles and decorations to separate the surahs.[85]
"Muslim accounts are much earlier and thus much nearer in time to the time of the alleged events than hitherto assumed in Western scholarship" (Harald Motzki).[309]
Epigraphic data and historical evidence “would allow us to take most of what the Islamic sources say at face value, and it is not clear why, in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, this should not be our default position” (Nicolai Sinai of Oxford University).[309]
Lumbard notes that as of 2015, subjecting the "extant parchment to infrared photography" allows the "under text" (original ink before the parchment was reused as a palimpsest) to be read and finds the slight variations in text and ordering of surahs (chapters) to be what was already .. recorded in the Islamic historiographical tradition," thus confirming "the accuracy of early Islamic historiography."[309]
- Too early?
While the manuscript disproves the the revisionist idea that the Quran was formed in the 8th or 9th century CE, according to some it raises the question of whether it was codified earlier than the standard Islamic account. If the carbon dating of between 568 and 645 CE "is accurate", it means that there is only a five to 10% possibility the parchment is from after 645,[85] while the standard narrative dates the Uthmanic codex at 650. This would put in question whether it was actually Uthman who codified the Quran or "the dates of Muhammad's ministry"[85] Islamic scholars believe Muhammad lived between 570 and 632 CE, the dating means the text may have been "compiled either before the Prophet’s birth or during his childhood."[310]
However, Muslim Islamic scholars question whether the script is as old as the parchment. Dr Saud al-Sarhan, Director of Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, noted that the writing had chapter separators and dotted verse endings – features in Arabic scripts which are believed not to have been introduced to the Qur'an until later.[141] Dr Saud's criticisms was affirmed by several Saudi-based experts in Quranic history, who strongly rebut any speculation that the Birmingham/Paris Quran could have been written during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. They emphasize that while Muhammad was alive, Quranic texts were written without chapter decoration, marked verse endings or use of coloured inks; and did not follow any standard sequence of surahs. They maintain that those features were introduced into Quranic practice in the time of the Caliph Uthman, and so the Birmingham leaves could have been written later, but not earlier.[311]
- Other manuscripts
Professor Süleyman Berk of the faculty of Islamic studies at Yalova University has noted the strong similarity between the script of the Birmingham leaves and those of a number of Hijazi Qurans in the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum; which were brought to Istanbul from the Great Mosque of Damascus following a fire in 1893. Professor Berk recalls that these manuscripts had been intensively researched in association with an exhibition on the history of the Quran, The Quran in its 1,400th Year held in Istanbul in 2010, and the findings published by François Déroche as Qur'ans of the Umayyads in 2013.[312] In that study, the Paris Quran, BnF Arabe 328(c), is compared with Qurans in Istanbul, and concluded as having been written "around the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth century."[313]
According to BBC News, "academics are increasingly confident the Birmingham manuscript has an exact match in the National Library of France, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France."[314] In December 2015 Professor François Déroche of the Collège de France confirmed the identification of the two Birmingham leaves with those of the Paris Qur'an BnF Arabe 328(c), as had been proposed by Dr Alba Fedeli. Prof. Deroche expressed reservations about the reliability of the radiocarbon dates proposed for the Birmingham leaves, noting instances elsewhere in which radiocarbon dating had proved inaccurate in testing Qur'ans with an explicit endowment date; and also that none of the counterpart Paris leaves had yet been carbon-dated. Jamal bin Huwareib, managing director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, has proposed that, were the radiocarbon dates to be confirmed, the Birmingham/Paris Qur'an might be identified with the text known to have been assembled by the first Caliph Abu Bakr, between 632–634 CE.[315]
A 09/02/2015 article stated that a radiocarbon testing of a piece of the ancient parchment from the Quran discovered in Birmingham University Library in July of that year dated "the tome from between 568 and 645 AD". Since Islamic scholars believe Muhammad lived between 570 and 632AD, the dating means "the text was compiled either before the Prophet’s birth or during his childhood."[310] But this early date is inconsistent with the style of the text or "graphical evidence", such as how the verses are separated and the grammatical marks, since writing styles developed and grammatical rules of early Arabic changed over time.[314]
Further research and findings
According to Ibn Warraq, critical research of historic events and timeliness of eyewitness accounts reveal the effort of "later traditionalists" to consciously promote, for nationalistic purposes, the centrist concept of Mecca and prophetic descent from Abraham's son Ishmael (not Isaac), in order to grant "a Hijazi orientation to the emerging religious identity of Islam". Ibn Warraq quotes Suliman Bashear:
For, our attempt to date the relevant traditional material confirms on the whole the conclusions which Schacht arrived at from another field, specifically the tendency of isnads to grow backwards.[316][317]
The author of the Apology of al-Kindy Abd al-Masih ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (not the famed philosopher al-Kindi) claimed that the narratives in the Quran were "all jumbled together and intermingled" and that this was "an evidence that many different hands have been at work therein, and caused discrepancies, adding or cutting out whatever they liked or disliked".[318] Bell and Watt suggested that the variation in writing style throughout the Quran, which sometimes involves the use of rhyming, may have indicated revisions to the text during its compilation. They claimed that there were "abrupt changes in the length of verses; sudden changes of the dramatic situation, with changes of pronoun from singular to plural, from second to third person, and so on".[319] At the same time, however, they noted that "[i]f any great changes by way of addition, suppression or alteration had been made, controversy would almost certainly have arisen; but of that there is little trace." They also note that "Modern study of the Quran has not in fact raised any serious question of its authenticity. The style varies, but is almost unmistakable."[320]
Postulating alternative history
See also: Revisionist school of Islamic studies
SUMMARIZE THIS STUFF ABOUT PROBLEMS ITS REPETITION
Scholar Gerd R. Puin claims that 20% of the Quran "simply doesn't make sense" and suggests the reason is:
... the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants.[1]
Referring to obscure words and phrases and "mystery letters" in the Quran, Islamic historian Michael Cook argues that "someone must once have known" what these mean (pious Muslims argue that there are many things in Islam known only to God), and adds another question: why some aspects of sharia law seem to ignore or contradict the Quran, which in theory should be the highest ranking of the sources of sharia. The most notable example of this conflict is that the traditional, universally accepted punishment for zina (adultery) under sharia was stoning to death (rajm), yet the Quran clearly states the perpetrators should be given 100 lashes and says nothing about stoning.
- Q.24:2 — The [zina committing] woman or [zina committing] man found guilty of sexual intercourse — lash each one of them with a hundred lashes.[150][127]
An earlier Western scholar, Joseph Schacht, also noted that Sharia (what he called "Muhammadan law") "often diverged from the intentions and even the explicit wording of the Koran", and that his evidence showed the law "did not derive directly from the Koran but developed ... out of popular and administrative practice under the Umayyads" (661-750 CE). "Norms derived from the Koran were introduced into Muhammadan law almost invariably at a secondary stage."[321]
Cook argues that one explanation for this is a break somewhere in the transmission of the Quran from its revelation to Muhammad to around the second century of Islam -- a theory that violates an basic Islamic doctrine of how the Qur'an was "born". Cook (as well as Christopher Rose)[150] suggests that the Quran may have been "off the scene for several decades" and/or that the mysterious words, letters, Sabian religion, and ignored laws "might have been appropriated from elsewhere".[150][85] Rose proposes that the break may have happened as the Islamic empire was expanding rapidly, spread thin the relatively small original core group of companions and their descendants with a strong knowledge of the Quran.[85]
Rose also questions how reliable the traditional narrative is in dating Muhammad's age (40) at the time of his first revelation, and whether it was "decided on later because the actual date had been lost." In the "Abrahamic tradition" 40
"is a number of significance. It’s the number of days that Noah was in the Ark, it’s the number of years the Israelites wandered in the desert. It’s a number that indicates that you are mature, that you have been purified in the eyes of God.[85]
Cook and Patricia Crone argue that "there is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century."[322][149] Crone, Wansbrough, and Nevo argue that all the primary sources which exist are from 150–300 years after the events which they describe, and thus are chronologically far removed from those events.[323][324][325] G. R. Hawting and Andrew Rippin argue (according to Tom Holland) that it took "at least" decades for the Quran "to reach anything like its final form.”[326]
In their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Crone and Cook depict early Islam[327][328] conquests and the formation of the caliphate as a peninsular Arab movement inspired by Jewish messianism and in alliance with the Jews. The Quran was not 7th century revelation, but a product of 8th-century edits of various materials drawn from a variety of Judeo-Christian and Middle-Eastern sources. Muhammad was the herald of Umar "the redeemer", a Judaic messiah.[329]
The theory has been almost universally rejected[330][331][332][333][334] and its authors have "backed away from some of its most radical propositions".[1]
MOVE TO CHRISTIAN and JEWISH INFLUENCE? According to Hagarism, as it developed Islam borrowed "from Samaritanism the idea of a scripture limited to the Pentateuch, a prophet like Moses, a holy book revealed like the Torah, a sacred city with a nearby mountain and shrine of an appropriate patriarch, plus a caliphate modeled on an Aaronid priesthood."[335][336]
MENTIONED ABOVE SO TRIM IT
In an essay dated 2008, Crone again gives her ideas on early Islam and Muhammad: "we can be reasonably sure that the Qur'an is a collection of utterances that [Muhammad] made in the belief that they had been revealed to him by God", but thinks an area around the Dead Sea and eastern Mediterranean more likely the location of his revelation than Mecca and Medina: There is "not a single source outside Arabia mentions Mecca before the conquests", mentioning it as a pagan sanctuary or home to a tribe called the Quraysh.[124]
the Qur'an describes the polytheist opponents as agriculturalists who cultivated wheat, grapes, olives, and date palms. Wheat, grapes and olives are the three staples of the Mediterranean; date palms take us southwards, but Mecca was not suitable for any kind of agriculture, and one could not possibly have produced olives there. ... In addition, the Qur'an twice describes its opponents as living in the site of a vanished nation, that is to say a town destroyed by God for its sins. There were many such ruined sites in northwest Arabia. The prophet frequently tells his opponents to consider their significance and on one occasion remarks, with reference to the remains of Lot's people, that "you pass by them in the morning and in the evening". This takes us to somewhere in the Dead Sea region.[124]
One Dan Gibson argues that the best location for the original "Mecca", center of Muslim worship is Petra, in the present day Kingdom of Jordan[337] (less than 100 km south of Sodom and Gomorrah)
As to why the traditional Islamic account would claim Mecca as Muhammad's home when it was several hundred km north, Crone states
It is difficult not to suspect that the tradition places the prophet's career in Mecca [which was unknown prior to the rise of Islam] for the same reason that it insists that he was illiterate: the only way he could have acquired his knowledge of all the things that God had previously told the Jews and the Christians was by revelation from God himself. Mecca was virgin territory; it had neither Jewish nor Christian communities.[124]
She sees much promise for answering the question what was Muhammad "reacting to, and why was the rest of Arabia so responsive to his message?" in research of databases of hadith, in archaeology and in focusing on the context of the world of late antiquity.
Revisionist historians
Revisionist historians (i.e. ones offering alternatives to the Islamic historical tradition) are not in agreement. Some believing the Quran is older and some more recent than the tradition, [338]
- John Wansbrough
See also: John Wansbrough
Wansbrough argues that the Quran is more recent than thought, and should be dated not from the 1st century Hijaz, Western Arabia, but from the 2nd 3rd Islamic century in Abbasid Iraq when it "became a source for biography, exegesis, jurisprudence and grammar",[339][152] and following the model of an older monotheist religion -- Judiasm -- provided a fixed, sacred scripture revealed by (a) prophet to form the basis for their (sharia) code of law.[340][140] Wansbrough argues that variants of Quranic text are so minor they are not "recollections of ancient texts that differed from the Uthmanic text," but the outcome of exegesis.[341][342] And also that classical Arabic was developed later than the colloquial forms, "contemporaneously with the codification of the Quran."[343] His theories have neither been "widely accepted" nor rejected according to Gabriel Said Reynolds.[343]
- Yehuda D. Nevo
See also: Crossroads to Islam
In his work Crossroads to Islam, Israel archaeologist Yehuda D. Nevo his co-author Judith Koren also argued Islamic doctrine developed later than its historical tradition claimed, and that the Quran was developed by the Abbasids to create a fixed canon upon which to base their code of law.[340][140] He believed that Arabic inscriptions he studied in the Negev desert indicated a "progressive religious development" of Islam "during the first two Islamic centuries", moving from "indeterminate monotheism to formal Islamic doctrine".[343] Rather than conquering Byzantine provinces, Arab tribes were made "clients" (foederati) by the declining Byzantine Empire as it withdrew from its Eastern provinces and tried to maintain some control over the area, encouraging "heterodox Christianity".[343] Nevo argues that rather than being the fifth Caliph, Muawiyah I was the first historical ruler of the Arab Empire, and arose from the other foederati to become a warlord/strongman.[140]
- Christoph Luxenberg
See also: The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran
Unlike Wansbrough and Nevo, Luxenberg and Lüling argue that "the genesis of the Quran" was much earlier than the Islamic historical tradition, and began with Christian writings"[344] Rather than speaking an Arabic dialect, he argues "the inhabitants of Mecca ... must" have spoken some kind of "Aramaic-Arabic hybrid language" at the time the Quran was revealed, and that parts of the Quran that are "inexplicable from the point of view of Arabic", make more sense when translated as Syro-Aramaic.[345] The "writing conventions" of this Syro-Aramaic were later forgotten or misunderstood and read "as though they were Arabic".[346]
- Günter Lüling
See also: Günter Lüling
Lüling attempted to demonstrate a link between the composition of the Quran and pre-Islamic hymns of Christians in Mecca. He theorized that the early believers of what later became Orthodox Islam were non-Trinitarian Christian whose theological positions were adopted by later generations to become an Arab religion Islam (i.e. "religion of Abraham and the tribes"). He also proposed that "mushrikun" (usually translated as polytheists) adversaries of Muhammad denounced in the Quran were not pagans but Trinitarian Christians.[347] He theorized that approximately one-third of the Quran has pre-Islamic Christian origins (specifically one-third is made up of a Christian hymnal).[348][231]
Five questions Donner sees are
Transmission of the Quran
Fred Donner calls the "question of oral vs. written transmission of the Quran text ... a very enigmatic issue and one with potentially profound implications for our understanding of the origins and history of the text."[176] Islamic historical tradition teaches that the Quran was transmitted both by writing and orally from its very beginning,
- "firmly controlled by the practice of oral recitation; the recitations received by Muhammad were learned from him as recitations by his followers, and were sometime later written down to form the Quran text we have today" (Fred Donner) .
Different revisionist historians also find both oral and written transmission explain things about the Quran. They differ with Islamic historical tradition by proposing that periods of time where the work was only transmitted by text (i.e. where the meaning of certain parts was forgotten but texts of the Quran survived to be revived with some misunderstandings later) explain characteristics of the holy book, and that composition of the Quran that was at least in part only oral -- not written -- explain other characteristics of its contents.
Islamic historical tradition
Islamic tradition teaches that the Quran was transmitted in written form started from the time scribes wrote down what had been revealed to Muhammad, and continues to the present with publication and reading of millions of Quranic mushaf codexes. The importance of the oral form of the Quran is also widely noted. The standardized written mushaf was created in part from Quranic revelations memorized by Muhammad's companions, and the decision to create it came after the death in battle of a large number of Muslims who had memorized the work.[349]
Furthermore, the very first Qurans were written in "defective" script, or rasm, which lack diacritical marks to distinguish between arabic letters for b, t, th, n, y. This would imply "that written copies were initially intended to serve only as a memory for those who already knew the test by heart", according to Fred Donner.[176]
Even after diacritical marks were added, for centuries physical Qurans were written, not printed, and their scarcity made reciting it from memory the predominant mode of teaching and conveying the book to others. To this day it is memorized by millions and its recitation can be heard throughout the Muslim world from recordings and minarets.[350] Muslims state that some teachers of memorization/recitation constitute the end of an "un-broken chain" whose original teacher was Muhammad himself.[350] It has been argued that "the Qur’an’s rhythmic style and eloquent expression make it easy to memorize," and is so to facilitate the "preservation and remembrance" of the work.[Note 37] (Another enormously important body of work in Islam, the Islamic traditions or hadith, were transmitted by "oral preachers and storytellers" for two centuries before being committed to written work.)[351]
Possible oral origins
But at least one non-Muslim scholar (Andrew G. Bannister) has examined the possibility that the Quran was not just "recited orally, but actually composed orally."[170] Bannister postulates that some features of the Quran — such as the telling of stories that are very similar but not identical (the story of the Iblis and Adam, for example, is told seven times), and the repeated phrases “which of the favours of your Lord will you deny?” in Sura 55 — make more sense addressed to listeners than readers.[351][352]
Perhaps more importantly, Banister and other scholars (Alan Dundes, Shabbir Akhtar, Angelika Neuwirth, Islam Dayeh)[353] have also noted the large amount of "formulaic" phraseology in the Quran, like that found in orally transmitted literature such as epic poems. Oral tradition was the main mode of passing on literature at the time of the Quran's revelation, when few were literate and mass production of physical books did not exist (paper not being available in the Middle East and and printing presses not invented at the time).[354][350] The Arab poetry that preceded the Quran and the hadith that followed it were orally transmitted.[351]
According to the "oral-formulaic composition" theory, long works of folk literature which are passed down by word of mouth over many generations are not memorized word-for-word. Instead performers found/find it easier to use catch-phrases or "formulas",[48] which they reused "to express key ideas.[351][Note 38] Examples of formulas in the epic literature include ‘rosy-fingered’ Dawn, the ‘wine dark’ sea, ‘ox-eyed’ Hera in Homer.
In the Quran, the most common formulas are the attributes of Allah — all-mighty, all-wise, all-knowing, all-high, etc. — often found as doublets at the end of a verse. Using a concordance of the Quran translated into English, Alan Dundes notes the many dozens of other repeated phrases[Note 39] — a few examples being: "Allah created the heavens and the earth" (found 19 times in the Quran),[Note 40] and estimates as much as one third of the Quran is made up of "oral formulas".[357] Using a computer database of (the original arabic) words of the Quran and of their "grammatical role, root, number, person, gender and so forth", Andrew Bannister estimates that depending on the length of the phrase searched, somewhere between 52% (searching by three word phrases) and 23% (five word phrases) are oral formulas.[358]
The large percentage of oral formulas in the Quran indicates to Dundes and Bannister that it at one point the Quran was not fixed but had formulas that could be interchangable in different "slots", and might explain the story of Abdollah bin Sa'd, a scribe of Muhammad's revelations, who is alleged to have suggested that the attributes "knowing and wise" be substituted for "mighty and wise" in one revelation told to him by Muhammad, and later abandoned Islam after becoming disillusioned with Muhammad's agreement to his alteration and .[359][360]. However, the suggestions of oral formulas violates the Islamic doctrine that from Gabriel to today the Quran has never been altered.
Possible transmission without oral help
Non-Muslim scholars Michael Cook and Fred Donner suggest that questions over "language, stories, and events" in the Quran might be explained by there being a time (following its creation or the creation of parts of the Quran) when there was no recitation but only a written book "off the scene" for long enough for memories of the meaning of some of its contents to be forgotten. Journalist and scholar Toby Lester states that the Quran "assumes a familiarity with language, stories, and events that seem to have been lost even to the earliest of Muslim exegetes".[1] Michael Cook also notes that the meaning of some Quranic words and phrases and the "mystery letters" (see "Obscure words and phrases" above), have puzzled commentators "from the earliest times", speculating that "someone must once have known" what these mean. (Pious Muslims argue that there are many things in Islam known only to God.) That their meaning has now been forgotten suggests the Quran may have been "off the scene for several decades" between its creation and the analysis of these early exegetes/commentators.[71]
LOOK UP WHAT COOK SAYS, THERE WAS SO A GAP, EXPLAIN THIS BETTER
(And, Cook adds, while it is not uncommon for a gap of time to separate the writing of scriptures or classics, and the explanations of the work by commentators, according to Islamic tradition there is no such gap with the Quran.)[71]
Fred Donner writes there is "mounting evidence that the Quran text, or parts of it at least, must at some stage in its history have been transmitted in purely written form, without the benefit of a controlling tradition of active recitation. ... This evidence takes the form of recognizing in the Quranic text misunderstood words, hypercorrected words, or stray marks which then became incorporated into the recitation, something that could only happen if the oral recitation were derived from the written text rather than the other way around."[175][361] Donner also notes that if parts of the Quran were Syriac but later came to be read as Arabic (as some like Luxenberg believe) "this only makes sense if the passages in question were transmitted only in written form -- otherwise the proper pronunciation of Aramaic would have been retained."[176] "Several studies by Bellamy clearly imply that the text was at least in part transmitted in purely written form without a controlling tradition of oral recitation. 55 [362][363][364][365] Recent work on the word furqan (title of the 25th surah) provides another case in which the written, not oral, transmission of the text is implied by the evidence. 56[366]
Cook postulates the gap may be
- "materials that make up the Quran did not become generally available as scripture until several decades after the Prophet's death, with the result that by the time this happened, memory of the original meaning of the material had been lost."[367]
- "much of what found its way into the Quran was already old by the time of Muhammad."[150] Cooks adds that "the two approaches do not exclude each other".
OUTAKES
Bannister notes characteristic of oral transmission in the Quran such as the large number of "formulas" or "short, repeated phrases or groups of words that can be reused time and again to express a key idea". Another being multiple versions of the same story with slight or not so slight variations (such as the story of the Iblis and Adam in the Quran). Another being phrases such as “which of the favours of your Lord will you deny?” found throughout sura 55 that makes more sense as being addressed to listeners, rather than readers.[351] such as epic poems like those of Homer — to be passed down by word of mouth over many generations, instead of memorization the works word-for-word, performers used catch-phrases or "formulas",
Questions on fact of the content
Like the Bible, the Quran has many stories of supernatural occurrences in conflict with modern understanding of how the world (and universe) work, and like the Bible the Quran has been criticized for violating science.
Perhaps the most basic question religious skeptics (such as Ibn Warraq) ask about the Quran is even if Muhammad was sincere, how do we know that he saw "God or an angel? how did he know that the particular experiences he had where manifestations of God?" In modern times claims of receiving divine messages also occur, but most of those who profess to having "direct access to God" would be seen as being deluded.[368]
Questions of plausibility include why does "God keep sending messengers to disobedient communities (with warnings of they mostly disregard)" when as an omnipotent God "he can realise His wishes immediately" by simply willing that "all men believe in Him".[369] As well as being eternal, infinitely powerful, God is also self-sufficient: (Quran 3:97 "... God does not stand in need of anything in all the worlds"; Quran 39:7 "... Allah (is) free from need of you. ..."; one of the name of God is aṣ-Ṣamad Quran 112:2 -- "The Self-Sufficient" as translated by Wahiduddin Khan). So why is it so important that He create a universe and have it obey Him?[370]
Signs
The Quran specifically describes God not as a "watchmaker" creator but one actively intervenes in the natural and human world — holding up the sky to prevent it from falling on earth (Quran 22:65), making rain fall and trees grow.[371][372] Ibn Warraq complains that these "signs", putative evidence of God's "power and bounty", such as 2:164
Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah Sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth;- (Here) indeed are Signs for a people that are wise. - 2:164
... are explained in the modern world through science "without assuming the existence" of a divine designer/creator.[373]
Science in the Quran
See also: Qur'an and science and Islamic views on evolution
- events in apparent violation of natural law
Just as some stories in the bible — such as Jonah living in the belly of a fish for three days (Jonah 1:17) -- caused no concern when they were revealed but now clash with the "scientific world-view", so do some verses of the Quran.[374]
- One such story highlighted by non-scholarly debunkers of Islam is described in verse Q.18:85-6 where a figure named Dhul Qarnain finds the sun setting in a "muddy spring",
The literal interpretation of this verse has been attacked on the grounds that the suns apparent setting is caused by the revolution of the earth and that being much larger than earth the sun cannot enter a spring or any place else on earth.[375] Tafsir Ibn Kathir states that "the idea" of Dhul Qarnain "reaching the place in the sky where the sun sets, ... is something impossible", blaming "the myths of the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] and the fabrications and lies of their heretics." [376] In the modern world, TV preacher Zakir tv p interprets the verse to mean the time of sun set at a particular place and an optical illusion of appearing to set into a spring.[377][378]
Skeptics argue that English translations of the verse state quite clearly the sun set in the spring ("the text said Dhu’l-Qarneyn reached the place ... of the setting of the sun. One does not reach a direction, but a destination!"), a sahih hadith (Sunan Abu Dawud 3991) also reports Muhammad telling one Abu Dharr that the sun set in a spring, and that commentaries by Al-Tabari and al-Baydawi "both understood this passage in a literal sense".[379][380]
- Another is the splitting of the moon.[381]
- 54:1-2 -- The hour drew nigh and the moon was rent in twain. And if they behold a portent they turn away and say: Prolonged illusion.
It is considered a miracle of Muhammad and mentioned by Muslim traditions such as the Asbab al-nuzul (context of revelation). A good many Muslim commentators, particularly from the Medieval period, interpret the event as a literal physical splitting of the Moon by Muhammad,[13] (how it was rejoined is not described in the Quran or traditions). Some reformist Muslims have complained that the literal interpretation leaves unanswered why "If there were such an astronomical event, many people from China to Africa would have noticed and recorded it" and how it contradicts another accepted doctrine of the Quran "which specifically limits the signs given to Muhammad to be the signs contained in the Quran alone" (i.e. the Quran -- it's miraculous greatness -- was the only miracle given to Muhammad). (Q.29:50-51)[382][13] The literal interpretation has also been attacked as physically impossible.[383] Apollo mission photographs of the 300 km-long rift line on the surface of the Moon known as Rima Ariadaeus[384] generated Internet suggestions that this was proof of the Quranic splitting. In 2010 NASA scientist Brad Bailey was asked about this and replied, "... No current scientific evidence reports that the Moon was split into two (or more) parts and then reassembled at any point in the past."[385]
- Another story not fitting in with modern beliefs of what is naturally possible is Q.7:163-166 and Q.2:65 where God tests "a community of fishermen among the ancient Israelites by tempting them to fish on the Sabbath". When some of them do succumb, he turns them into monkeys:[387]
- 7:163-6 -- And [mention, O Muhammad], when it was said to them, "Dwell in this city and eat from it wherever you will and say, 'Relieve us of our burdens,' and enter the gate bowing humbly; We will [then] forgive you your sins. We will increase the doers of good [in goodness and reward]." But those who wronged among them changed [the words] to a statement other than that which had been said to them. So We sent upon them a punishment from the sky for the wrong that they were doing. And ask them about the town that was by the sea - when they transgressed in [the matter of] the sabbath - when their fish came to them openly on their sabbath day, and the day they had no sabbath they did not come to them. Thus did We give them trial because they were defiantly disobedient. And when a community among them said, "Why do you advise [or warn] a people whom Allah is [about] to destroy or to punish with a severe punishment?" they [the advisors] said, "To be absolved before your Lord and perhaps they may fear Him." And when they forgot that by which they had been reminded, We saved those who had forbidden evil and seized those who wronged, with a wretched punishment, because they were defiantly disobeying. So when they were insolent about that which they had been forbidden, We said to them, "Be apes, despised."
- Verse 2:65 also mentions the story -- And you had already known about those who transgressed among you concerning the sabbath, and We said to them, "Be apes, despised."
Cook notes that "traditional" (or pre-twentieth century) commentaries (tafsir) were all but unanimous in interpreting the story literally (the outlier being early Meccan Mujahid ibn Jabr who argued that the turning of fishermen into monkeys was only a metaphor for ostracizing shameless religious law breakers), as an all-powerful God would have no problem turning humans into another animal.[374] In the early twentieth century, Modernists Rashid Rida and Muhammad Abduh cited Mujahid ibn Jabr on these verses and ignored traditional commentators. Other commentators "followed their lead" — including Islamist Sayyid Qutb.[388] In the late twenthieth/early twenty-first century as modernism was replaced by the Islamic revival, the interpretation of the traditional commentators has reappeared. At least one fatwa source (IslamQA.info) takes the verses literally, also mentioning ahadith about the story: "Allaah has told us in more than one place in the Qur’aan that He transformed some of the Children of Israel into monkeys as a punishment for their disobedience towards Allaah."[389] Syrian Islamic scholar Sa`id Hawwa and Shi'i Lebanese scholar Muhammad Jawad Maghniyya (d.1979) also both favored a literal interpretation of the story.[390]
- Other statements of the Quran that seem to contradict science are that
- "of all things we created two mates" in pairs (Q.51:49, ignoring the binary fission of simple organisms),
- all creatures create communities like humans (Q.6:38),
- that humans are created from clay (Q.15:26) or dust (Q.3:59),
- milk comes from the bellies of animals, created between blood and feces (And indeed, for you in grazing livestock is a lesson. We give you drink from what is in their bellies - between excretion and blood - pure milk, palatable to drinkers Q.16:66),
- There are 8 mates of livestock: sheep, goats, camels, oxes (Q.6:142-44);
- Allah sends thunderbolts and strikes therewith whom He wills, Q.13:13),
- pre-scientific conception of stars, neither so large or far away as we now know them to be, maybe subject to earth's gravity. They are described as lamps beautifying the heavens (Q.81:2), in the nearest heaven (Q.37:6), something that could fall to earth And when the stars fall ...(Q.81:2), missiles thrown at the devils (Q.67:5);
- the sky is ceiling miraculously held up without pillars and we made the sky a protected ceiling ... (Q.21:32) He created the heavens without pillars that you see (31:30)[Note 41]
In addition to the literal interpretation some have identified it as an event that will happen at judgment day, and still others consider it to have been an optical illusion.[citation needed]
[392]
"Scientific miracles in the Quran"
Starting the 1970s and 80s a "popular literature known as ijaz" (miracle) and often running under the title "Scientific miracles in the Quran" developed and spread to Muslim bookstores, websites, and on television programs of Islamic preachers.[393] The ijaz movement/industry is "widespread and well-funded"[394] with "millions" from Saudi Arabia.[393] Enthusiasts of the movement argue that rather than being at odds with scientific discoveries, the Quran abounds with "scientific facts" centuries before their discovery by science and thus demonstrating that the Quran must be of divine origin.[395] Thus "everything, from relativity, quantum mechanics, Big Bang theory, black holes and pulsars, genetics, embryology, modern geology, thermodynamics, even the laser and hydrogen fuel cells", can be found in the Quran.[393]
Zafar Ishaq Ansari describes the idea that "the Quran (and the Sunna)" contain "a substantially large number of scientific truths that were discovered only in modern times" as one of the "new themes and emphases" of "scientific exegesis of the Quran".[396]
Some examples are the verse "So verily I swear by the stars that run and hide ..." (Q.81:15-16) or "And I swear by the stars' positions-and that is a mighty oath if you only knew". (Qur'an, 56:75-76)[397] which demonstrate (to proponents) the Quran's knowledge of black holes; "[I swear by] the Moon in her fullness; that ye shall journey on from stage to stage" (Q.84:18-19) refers to human flight into outer space.[393]
As of 2008, both (some) Muslims and non-Muslims have disputed whether there actually are "scientific miracles" in the Quran. According to author Ziauddin Sardar, the movement has created a "global craze in Muslim societies".[393]
Critics argue that while it is generally agreed the Quran contains many verses proclaiming the wonders of nature — e.g. “Travel throughout the earth and see how He brings life into being” (Q.29:20) “Behold in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding ...” (Q.3:190) — ijaz is an "embarassingly popular yet misguided theory",[18] because:
- it requires "considerable mental gymnastics and distortions to find scientific facts or theories in these verses" (Ziauddin Sardar);[393]
- the Quran is the source of guidance in right faith (imam) and righteous action (alladhina amanu wa amilu l-salihat), but the idea that it contained "all knowledge, including scientific" knowledge has not been a mainstream view among Muslim scholarship (Zafar Ishaq Ansari);[396] and
- because "Science is ever-changing ... the Copernican revolution overturning polemic models of the universe to Einstein’s general relativity overshadowing Newtonian mechanisms" (Ali Talib);[398]
Many classical Muslim commentators and scientists, notably al-Biruni, assigned to the Quran a separate and autonomous realm of its own and held that the Quran "does not interfere in the business of science nor does it infringe on the realm of science."[399] These medieval scholars argued for the possibility of multiple scientific explanations of the natural phenomena, and refused to subordinate the Quran to an ever-changing science.[399] Some modern scholars like G. A. Parwez have translated those verses in the Quran which are generally associated with "miracles", "angels" and "jinn" rationally as metaphors, without appealing to the supernatural.[400][401][402]
Contradictions and abrogation (naskh)
Critics have complained that a book revealed by an all-knowing, all-powerful being would not contain contradictions, but that they have found some in the Quran.[403] A couple include Verses 2:34, 15:28-31, 38:71-74, which indicate the disobedient creature Iblis was an angel, while another verse refers to him as "one of the jinns"
- 18:50 We said to the angels; "Prostrate to Adam." So they prostrated except Iblis (Satan). He was one of the jinns;
... although angels and jinns are usually thought of as distinct creatures. This has led to the explanations that jinn are actually a class of angels.[404]
Two sets of verses indicate Allah was seen by Muhammad, Q.53:1-18 and Q.81:15-29. (The verses do not specifically use the words Muhammad and Allah but the comrade who hasn’t gone astray and who doesn’t speak out of caprice in Q.53:1 is agreed to be Muhammad, and whoever "revealed to his servant" is agreed to be "the divine speaker"[405] and someone to whom Muhammad is a servant,[406] namely Allah.
- Q.53:1-18 (HE STOOD POISED, being on the higher horizon, THEN DREW NEAR and suspended hung, two bows’-length away, or nearer, then REVEALED TO HIS SERVANT that HE REVEALED),
- Q.81:15-29 (Your companion is not possessed; he truly SAW HIM on the clear horizon; he is not niggardly of the Unseen. And it is not the word of an accursed Satan; where then are you going? It is naught but a Reminder unto all beings, for whosoever of you who would go straight; but will you shall not, unless God wills, the Lord of all Being.)[406]
However, two other verses declare that God cannot be seen.
- Q.6:102-103 (Such is GOD your Lord ... No visions can encompass Him,),
- Q.42:51 ("It is not fitting for a man that God should speak to him EXCEPT by inspiration, or from behind a veil, or by the sending of a messenger to reveal").[406]
https://answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra/index.html (cites added)
Main article: Naskh
These contradictions, and more importantly divine commands or policies in verses of the Quran that are ignored in Islamic law/sharia, may be explained by the Islamic concept of Naskh (نسخ ), whereby God may abrogate a revelation (Quranic but also hadith) with another. Naskh also holds that there are verses that were originally in the Quran but are not found in present day Mus'haf (written copies of the holy book), but whose orders remain part of Islamic law.[407]
A number of verses mention this issue, the central one being:
- Quran 2:106: "We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that We bring forth [one] better than it or similar to it. Do you not know that Allah is over all things competent?"[408]
Some examples of naskh cited by scholars are
- 24:2 prescribes a penalty for adultery of "100 lashes" for zina (sex outside of marriage), but sharia law based on hadith of Muhammad calls for sentencing adulterers to death by stoning.[150]
- 2:2:219 where Muslims are first allowed but discouraged from drinking alcohol,[409] then forbidden from praying while drunk (4:43), and finally commanded to abstain (5:90).
- the revelation of a verse criticizing Muslim slackers in the waging of jihad prompted a blind Muslim (‘Abd Allah ibn Umm Maktum) to protest that his eyesight prevented him from fighting. "Almost instantaneously" a revelation (4:95) was sent down partially abrogating the earlier one[Note 42] by adding the qualifier "except the disabled".
- 8:65 tells Muslim warriors, "If there be of you twenty patient believers, they will overcome two hundred" enemy. It is thought to be abrogated by 8:66 which lowers the number of enemies each Muslim warrior is expected to overcome in battle from ten to only two: "Now God has alleviated your burden, knowing that there is weakness in you. If there should be of you one hundred, they will overcome two hundred;.[411]
- Verses such as 43:89 urging followers to "turn away" from mocking unbelievers "and say, 'Peace'", when Muslims were few in number, were replaced with the "Sword verse" 9:29 commanding "Fight those who (do) not believe in Allah and not in the Day the Last ... ", as Muhammad's followers grew stronger.[412]
These replacements and modifications might seem to pose what non-Muslim scholars David S. Powers and John Burton call "a difficult theological problem", because an an eternally all-knowing deity would not/could not change His mind,[413] or realized something He was unaware of earlier;[414][415][416] particularly since (in the view of Sunni scholars) the Quran was not written/spoken during the course of its revelation, but is timeless, its original a "mother of the book" — umm al-kitab — in heaven.[417]
Classical Islamic scholars and mainstream Muslims, however, believe that God "knows the temporariness or permanence of any ruling from the time He issues it" (Louay Fatoohi).[418][411][419] The rules of naskh being passed down directly from Muhammad's closest Companions (sahabah) and future Muslim leaders, according to hadith, and these later were developed into a theory in Islamic legal exegesis, aka tafsir, (although no consensus developed on just which verses were abrogated and abrogating). Muslim preachers and scholars explain that in some cases naskh serves to gradually implement a policy too harsh to be done all at once (the banning of alcohol consumption;[420][409] or out of divine generosity to lighten (takhfīf) obligations, making "things easier for the Muslims or increasing the rewards";[421] or as changing circumstances made necessary a change in the Quran’s message.[420][409][420] What ever its rationale, naskh was a reflection of God's "sovereignty and might" ("Allah is over all things competent") and whoever rejected naskh rejected them. (Saalih al-Munajjid quoting ‘Abd ar-Rahmaan as-Sa‘di).[422]
Non-Muslim scholars have been more skeptical. Philip Schaff argues that the concept of abrogation was a "convenient theory" to remove the "contradictions" found in the Quran. [Note 43]
Ali Dashti found the naskh process suspiciously similar to the human process of "revising ... past decisions or plans" after "learning from experience and recognising mistakes", and something an all-knowing God would have no need for.[424][425] When the Quran defends abrogation against those who scoffed at it ("Do not you know that Allah over every thing?" Q.2:106; "they say, "Thou art but a forger" ... Allah knows best what He reveals" Q.16:101), Dashti asks if the "scoffers" were suspicious "precisely because God is capable of everything", and knowing what the future brings would have no need to revise or repeal a verse.[424][425][426]
While some naskh can be explained as takhfīf (lightening) for Muslims — abrogating compulsory lengthy nocturnal prayers or lowering the number of enemies each Muslim warrior is expected to vanquish — other abrogation brings tougher regulations — for example, the extension of the ritual fast from a few days (Quran 2:184) to the entire month of Ramadan (Quran 2:185). This is alleged to be lightening in the sense that it will help Muslims attain a greater reward in the Hereafter, but still other abrogation — such as the switching of the qibla — would seem to have no effect on the difficulty or ease for Muslims of either temporal life or the afterlife.[427]
Regarding the different revelations on alcohol being explained as part of a process of gradually introducing a ban on it, some (Farooq Ibrahim ) have noted that Sahih hadith make no mention of this strategy -- hadith often explaining events that the Quran refers to cryptically.[428] Nor is a gradual process used in other islamic prohibitions; the worship of multiple gods, or having intercessors before God were banned with no concern about being too harsh and impractical.[428]
John Burton argues that the theory of naskh was an "invention of fiqh scholars", used not to develop fiqh but to validate already existing fiqh doctrine established without consultation of the Quran.[Note 44] [Note 45] Burton asks why — if the purpose of naskh was to abrogation of Islamic rulings while leaving the text in the Quran as fiqh scholars maintain — verse Q.2:106 didn't read:
- "Whatever existing ritual or legal regulation We suppress or cause to abandon, We shall bring in its place another superior to it or at least similar to it... "[431] ... instead of what it does say:
- "What We abrogate (of) a sign or [We] cause it to be forgotten, We bring better than it or similar (to) it."
Satanic verses
Main article: Satanic Verses
Some criticism of the Quran has revolved around two verses known as the "Satanic Verses". Some early Islamic histories -- which differ in detail but agree on basic points[399] — relate that Muhammad longed to convert his kinsmen and neighbors of Mecca to Islam. As was reciting Sūra an-Najm[432] (Q.53), as revealed to him by the angel Gabriel, Satan tempted him to utter the following lines after verses 19 and 20:
"Have you thought of Al-lāt and al-'Uzzā;
and Manāt the third, the other;
These are the exalted Gharaniq, whose intercession is hoped for."
The Allāt, al-'Uzzā and Manāt were three goddesses worshiped by the Meccans. Gharaniq is uncertain, but means cranes according to commentators. Muhammad repudiated these 'Satanic Verses' shortly afterward at the behest of Gabriel.[433]
The different versions of the story are all traceable to one single narrator Muhammad ibn Ka'b, who was two generations removed from biographer Ibn Ishaq.[434] The subtext to the event is that Muhammad was backing away from his otherwise uncompromising monotheism by saying that these goddesses were real and their intercession effective. The Meccans were overjoyed to hear this and joined Muhammad in ritual prostration at the end of the sūrah. The Meccan refugees who had fled to Abyssinia heard of the end of persecution and started to return home. Islamic tradition holds that Gabriel chastised Muhammad for adulterating the revelation, at which point [Quran 22:52] is revealed to comfort him,
Never sent We a messenger or a prophet before thee but when He recited (the message) Satan proposed (opposition) in respect of that which he recited thereof. But Allah abolisheth that which Satan proposeth. Then Allah establisheth His revelations. Allah is Knower, Wise.
Muhammad took back his words and the persecution of the Meccans resumed. Verses Quran 53:21–23 (Translated by Pickthall) were given, in which the goddesses are belittled as female. The passage in question, from 53:19, reads:
Have ye thought upon Al-Lat and Al-'Uzza
And Manat, the third, the other?
Are yours the males and His the females?
That indeed were an unfair division!
They are but names which ye have named, ye and your fathers, for which Allah hath revealed no warrant. They follow but a guess and that which (they) themselves desire. And now the guidance from their Lord hath come unto them.Quran 53:19–23 (Translated by Pickthall)
Among Western scholars, many accept the validity of the story, some (Burton, Caetani, Dickinson) do not. Maxime Rodinson believes it to be evidence of the Quran's human -- not divine -- origin, the work of Muhammad;[435][436][437][438] W.M. Watt of Muhammad's sincerity.
Maxime Rodinson describes the incident as a conscious attempt to achieve a consensus with pagan Arabs, which was then consciously rejected as incompatible with Muhammad's attempts to answer the criticism of contemporary Arab Jews and Christians,[435][439] linking it with the moment at which Muhammad felt able to adopt a "hostile attitude" towards the pagan Arabs.[437][440] Rodinson writes that the story of the Satanic Verses is unlikely to be false because it was "one incident, in fact, which may be reasonably accepted as true because the makers of Muslim tradition would not have invented a story with such damaging implications for the revelation as a whole".[441][442] In a caveat to his acceptance of the incident, William Montgomery Watt, states: "Thus it was not for any worldly motive that Muhammad eventually turned down the offer of the Meccans, but for a genuinely religious reason; not for example, because he could not trust these men nor because any personal ambition would remain unsatisfied, but because acknowledgment of the goddesses would lead to the failure of the cause, of the mission he had been given by God."[443] Academic scholars such as William Montgomery Watt and Alfred Guillaume argued for its authenticity based upon the implausibility of Muslims fabricating a story so unflattering to their prophet. Watt says that "the story is so strange that it must be true in essentials."[444]
On the other hand, John Burton argues the tradition was forged, the work of elite vested interests of the status-quo, seeking to dilute the radical messages of the Quran with "occasion of revelation" for eradicatory modes of abrogation.[445] The rulers used such narratives to build their own set of laws which contradicted the Quran, and justified it by arguing that not all of the Quran is binding on Muslims. Burton cites Leone Caetani, who argued that the story should be rejected not only on the basis of isnad, but because "had these hadiths even a degree of historical basis, Muhammad's reported conduct on this occasion would have given the lie to the whole of his previous prophetic activity."[446] Eerik Dickinson also pointed out that the Quran's challenge to its opponents to prove any inconsistency in its content was pronounced in a hostile environment, also indicating that such an incident did not occur or it would have greatly damaged the Muslims.[447] According to Michael Cook, historians wonder if "it was ... the existence of the verse that called forth" the narratives written on the verses. The verse cryptically alluding too some kind of attempt by Satan to corrupt divine texts but little else and revealed some time before the narratives, while the narratives have the quality (according to Cook) of a 'just so story'.[448]
Ethical questions about teachings
See also: Islamic ethics
While "critical-historical study" does not deal with the moral teachings of the Quran, some Christian and Western secular writers have, and some historians have raised questions about the compatibility of (some interpretations of) the Quran with modern norms of peaceful coexistence and human rights. Examples of general criticism include the Catholic Encyclopedia which states that "the ethics of Islam lack originality and "are far inferior to those of Judaism and even more inferior to those of the New Testament".[449] French political thinker and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859) declared that after extensive study of the Quran he feared there were "few religions ... as deadly to men" and found it to be "the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world today", even "in relation to paganism.[450]
More specifically, religious skeptics have raised questions about the morality/ethical values of Islam (some of which apply to other monotheist religions). Ibn Warraq asks how God's pride ("He is Allah, the Creator, the Inventor, the Fashioner; to Him belong the best names. Whatever is in the heavens and earth is exalting Him. And He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise" (Quran 59:24); wrath and demands for fear ("... And fear Allah ; indeed, Allah is severe in penalty" Quran 59:7, "O you who have believed, fear Allah. And let every soul look to what it has put forth for tomorrow - and fear Allah" (Quran 59:18));[Note 46] scheming ("Allah is the best of plotters" (Quran 8:30 (Translated by Pickthall)); and threats of eternal suffering in hell can be considered "ethically admirable" for an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent, perfect being.[452]
Ali Dashti questions God's description of himself as an "excellent" plotter. (8:30: "Allah is the best of plotters" Pickthall translation) [Note 47] -- a skill very useful to those struggling against an equally or more powerful adversary, but seemingly unnecessary for someone "who created the universe by uttering the word `Be` and decides everything that happens in it".[453]
Torments of hell and delights of paradise
Many verses of the Quran are devoted to the delights of Jannah (heaven) and torments of Jahannam (hell).
Houris and other delights of paradise
Among the pleasures of Jannah are beings known as houris, who will accompany the faithful,[454] "boys graced with eternal youth" 76:19 52:24 56:17 and wine (47:15 mentions a "river of delectable wine" in heaven, 52:23 "offering and receiving cups of wine"). While at least one verse mentions marriage by the faithful to houri,(44:54
Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx, of The Quran in context : Historical and Literary Investigations (2009) note that a long list of Christians starting in the Middle Ages who found "the Muslim paradise disgusting, ridiculous, or both", and considered exhibit A of evidence "that Islam was not a spiritual religion".[455]
- Houris
Main article: Houri
Houris are mentioned several times in the Quran described in English translations as "splendid companions of equal age [or well-matched]" (78:33),[456][457] "lovely eyed", (Quran 56:22–23)[458] "voluptuous" (78:31), "full-breasted" (Quran 78:33), of "modest gaze" (55:56),[459] and "untouched by man or jinn" (i.e. virgins) (55:56, 56:35)[460] who will accompany the faithful.
Max I. Dimont interprets that the Houris described in the Quran are specifically dedicated to "male pleasure".[461] Henry Martyn claims that the concept of the Houris was chosen to satisfy Mohammed's followers.[462]
Secular author Ali A. Rizvi asks: "If men are getting all of these things, what do the women get? And what exactly would we do with couches, cups, cushions, and carpets for eternity? or for that matter, a river of honey?"[463]
Alternatively, Annemarie Schimmel says that the Quranic description of the Houris should be viewed in a context of love; "every pious man who lives according to God's order will enter Paradise where rivers of milk and honey flow in cool, fragrant gardens and virgin beloveds await home..."[464]
Another defense is that there are both make and female houris. Modern exegesis of Muhammad Ali (d.1931) declared "Just as the gardens, rivers, milk, honey, fruits, and numerous other things [in heaven] are both for men and women, even so are hur." A modern German translation of the Quran includes a footnote claiming huris "can grammatically mean male and female spouses".[455] According to Pakistani Islamic scholar Maulana Umar Ahmed Usmani cited by Dawn newspaper,
"it is a misconception that hurun means the females of paradise who will be reserved for good men. He says that ‘hur’ or ‘hurun’ is the plural of both ‘ahwaro’, which is the masculine form as well as ‘haurao’, which is feminine. It means both pure males and pure females. He says that basically the word ‘hurun’ means white."[465]
On the other hand, the Quran uses feminine adjective for houri, [Note 48] and masculine pronouns for those who will be married to houris.[Note 49] [466]
Under the Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Quran by Christoph Luxenberg, the words translating to "Houris" or "Virgins of Paradise" are instead interpreted as "Fruits (grapes)" and "high climbing (wine) bowers... made into first fruits."[467] Luxemberg offers alternate interpretations of these Quranic verses, including the idea that the Houris should be seen as having a specifically spiritual nature rather than a human nature; "these are all very sensual ideas; but there are also others of a different kind... what can be the object of cohabitation in Paradise as there can be no question of its purpose in the world, the preservation of the race. The solution of this difficulty is found by saying that, although heavenly food, women etc.., have the name in common with their earthly equivalents, it is only by way of metaphorical indication and comparison without actual identity... authors have spiritualized the Houris."[467]
- Beautiful serving boys
There are several mentions of serving boys in heaven in the Quran (52:24, 76:19), one verse calling them ghilman (52:24).[468] Critics have speculated that just as wine drinking is forbidden on earth but allowed in heaven where there are no hangovers, so too sex between men and boys may be allow in heaven where there is no need for procreation.[Note 50][Note 51] On the other hand the fatwa site Islam Question and Answer has vehemently denounced this story and stated that the verse "says that they [the youth] will serve the inhabitants of Paradise, and will go around taking food and drink to them, and no more than that."[471]
- wine
On the subject of things that are forbidden on earth but allowed in heaven, Alan Dundes asks why wine is forbidden on earth as the work of Satan and preventing humans from prospering (Q.5:90-1), but a reward of heaven (Q.47:15)(Q.52:23).[67]
- Torment of hell
The Quran devotes nearly 500 references (according to Einar Thomassen) to Jahannam/hell -- using a variety of names.[472] The torments of unbelievers there is described vividly:
Flames that crackle and roar;[473] fierce, boiling waters [474] scorching wind, and black smoke,[475] roaring and boiling as if it would burst with rage.[476] Its wretched inhabitants sigh and wail,[477] their scorched skins are constantly exchanged for new ones so that they can taste the torment anew,[478] drink festering water and though death appears on all sides they cannot die.[479] They are linked together in chains of 70 cubits,[480] wearing pitch for clothing and fire on their faces,[481] have boiling water that will be poured over their heads, melting their insides as well as their skins, and hooks of iron to drag them back should they try to escape,[482] their remorseful admissions of wrongdoing and pleading for forgiveness are in vain.[483][484][485]
Ibn Warraq notes that the Names of God include al-Raḥmān (the ِBeneficient) and al-Raḥīm (the ِMerciful), and are important enough to be found in beginning of every Surah (chapter) except one -- surah 9.[452] Yet the God of the Quran consigns human beings to everlasting torment of hell "for not believing in him".
Warraq asks to what extent believers fearing hell and God, and looking forward to the eternal pleasures of heaven in the life to come can be said to be motivated by virtue -- generosity or sympathy in their earthly behavior -- rather than by self-interested calculation.[452] and
- God as both all-good and the decider of what is good
On a more philosophical level, Ibn Warraq (quoting J.L. Mackie,) asks if it makes sense that God as creator (in Islam as revealed in the Quran) defines "good" and "bad", while at the same time being "good", [Note 52] or if this doesn't reduce "the description of God himself as good ... to the rather trivial statement that God loves himself or likes himself the way he is."[486] [487]
Orthodox Muslim believe the Quran in effect defines "good" and "bad" as whatever God "considers permissible" (good) "or forbidden" (bad).[486] At the same time some of the most familiar and frequent of the Islamic names for God are attributes of goodness -- "the Compassionate" (Ar-Raḥmān) and "the Merciful" (Ar-Raḥīm).[488][489] found in the start of every Surah (chapter) except one. Ibn Warraq, asks if, in fact, good and bad are not independent of God's commands/desires, (determined by factors such as reason or common sense rather than God's will),[486] although this would violate the doctrine of God being the creator of everything.
Other harsh punishments
Ali A. Rizvi notes the harsh punishments called for in the Quran -- amputation of hands for theft (5:38),[490] 100 lashes called for unmarried men or women having sexual intercourse, where the lasher is ordered not to "be taken by pity for them" (24:2-5).[491] (Rizvi relieved himself of doubts by telling himself that amputation was really just a metaphor and fornicators would be protected by the strict rules of evidence.[492]
Superiority over paganism
A number of authors have argued that Islam was solution to a social malaise or spiritual dissatisfaction of pagan society in Mecca. H. A. R. Gibb, author of Mohammedanism saw Mohammed motivated by a fervent opposition to "social injustice and fraud" and driven by a "deep and unshakeable conviction" for monotheism which put him at odds with the leaders of Mecca and compelled him to found a new religion.[493] W. Montgomery Watt found Muhammad's changes an improvement for his time and place: "In his day and generation Muhammad was a social reformer, indeed a reformer even in the sphere of morals. He created a new system of social security and a new family structure, both of which were a vast improvement on what went before. By taking what was best in the morality of the nomad and adapting it for settled communities, he established a religious and social framework for the life of many races of men."[494] Shabbir Akhtar has argued that the Quran introduced prohibitions against "the pre-Islamic practice of female infanticide" (16:58, 16:5817:31, 17:31).[495]
W.M. Watt argued in his biography of Muhammad that Islam provided an answer to a social malaise in Hijaz and this explains the mass conversion to Islam.[496] Other have argued a better explanation is the traditional Arab lust for spoils of raiding, which Muhammad, by uniting the Arabs provided better opportunities for. p.121-3
The evangelizing monotheism of the Quran has also come under criticism, (a criticism that also applies to Christianity). The Quran sought to replace paganism with monotheism, and it is often argued that this is a higher and more virtuous form of religion, but critics complain its superiority is simply assumed without arguments being provided in favor of it.[497] Ibn Warraq quotes philosopher David Hume in noting that if creation of universe was the product of divine force, there is no reason it could not come from more than one god: "if such foolish, such vicious creatures as man can yet often unite in framing and executing one plan, how much more those deities or demons who he made supposed several degrees more perfect."[498][499] Ibn Warraq quotes Arthur Schopenhauer that "intolerance is essential only to monotheism" which holds there is only one true god and all others being false. In contrast a believer in multiple gods is unlikely in principle (or in practice) to have a problem with the god or gods of another religion.[500] The Quran, traditionally interpreted, gives polytheists the choice of conversion or death.[498][501]
Peaceful coexistence
Main article: Quran and violence
The Quran's teachings on matters of war and peace have become topics of heated discussion in recent years. Some of the most important verses traditionally pertaining to either tolerating or fighting non-Muslims were "the Sword verse", "the tribute verse", and 2:256 (which says there is no compulsion in religion).
The sword verse
- 9:5 --Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
... has traditionally been interpreted as calling for the death of unbelievers ("idolaters") unless they convert. But the "tribute verse"[502]
- 9:29 --Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.
... allowed Jews, Christians and later others to be spared execution if they paid some kind of tribute and underwent some kind of humiliation (were "brought low").[502] Another verse
- 2:256 -- There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth distinct from error. And he who rejecteth false deities and believeth in Allah hath grasped a firm handhold which will never break. Allah is Hearer, Knower.
... suggests it no one should be forced to become a Muslim.
- 33:27 -- "It was God who made you inherit their lands their homes their wealth"
... is thought to refer to early conquest of non-Muslims and divine approval of expropriation of the property of the vanquished.[503]
In examining tafsir (commentary used to explain the Quran) on these verses, Islamic historian Michael Cook notes that before the twentieth century, the first two verses, and not the third, formed the scriptural "core" of how Muslims approached dealing with "false belief".[504] But in the early twentieth century, Q.2:256 was cited by "modern-minded Muslims" (Rashid Rida and Muhammad Abduh) to contradict Christian allegations that Islam was the "religion of the sword".[504] In more recent times, however, at least one noted Islamic scholar (Sa`id Hawwa) has emphasized the first two verses and called for a return to levying a tax on unbelievers (with an exemption for those who ask to serve in the military and are accepted) although he made no mention of humiliation of them in his tafsir.[505][Note 53]
Among the many who have written on what the Quran says about when and whether on what circumstances Muslims should fight or tolerate unbelievers are:
Patricia Crone writes that "holy war was not a cover for material interests; on the contrary, it was an open proclamation of them. 'God says ..."my righteous servants what inherit the earth," now this is your inheritance and what your Lord has promised you ..."' Arab soldiers were told on the eve of the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, with reference to Iraq: 'If you hold out ... then their property, their women, their children, and their country will be yours'. God could scarcely have been more explicit." 9note 261 [507][508]
Sam Harris, who argues that Muslim extremism is simply a consequence of taking the Quran literally, and is skeptical that "moderate Islam" is possible.[509] Rodrigue Tremblay who argues that the Quran commands that non-Muslims under a Muslim regime, should "feel themselves subdued" in "a political state of subservience" . He also argues that the Quran may assert freedom within religion.[510] George W. Braswell has argued that the Quran asserts an idea of Jihad to deal with "a sphere of disobedience, ignorance and war", i.e. the non-Muslim world.[511] Michael David Bonner has argued that the "deal between God and those who fight is portrayed as a commercial transaction, either as a loan with interest, or else as a profitable sale of the life of this world in return for the life of the next", where "how much one gains depends on what happens during the transaction", either "paradise if slain in battle, or victory if one survives".[512] Critics have argued that the Quran "glorified Jihad in many of the Medinese suras" and "criticized those who fail(ed) to participate in it".[513] Ali Ünal has claimed that the Quran praises the companions of Muhammad, for being stern and implacable against the said unbelievers, where in that "period of ignorance and savagery, triumphing over these people was possible by being strong and unyielding."[514] The author Syed Kamran Mirza has argued that a concept of 'Jihad', defined as 'struggle', has been introduced by the Quran. He wrote that while Muhammad was in Mecca, he "did not have many supporters and was very weak compared to the Pagans", and "it was at this time he added some 'soft', peaceful verses", whereas "almost all the hateful, coercive and intimidating verses later in the Quran were made with respect to Jihad" when Muhammad was in Medina .[515] In at least one attack on civilians (at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill in 2006), a statement was released by the perpetrator citing various calls to arms in the Quran in defense of his attack.[516]
On the other hand, other scholars argue that such verses of the Quran are interpreted out of context,[517][Note 54] and Muslims of the Ahmadiyya movement argue that when the verses are read in context it clearly appears that the Quran prohibits aggression,[519][520][521] and allows fighting only in self-defense.[522][523] Micheline R. Ishay has argued that "the Quran justifies wars for self-defense to protect Islamic communities against internal or external aggression by non-Islamic populations, and wars waged against those who 'violate their oaths' by breaking a treaty".[524] Mufti M. Mukarram Ahmed has also argued that the Quran encourages people to fight in self-defense. He has also argued that the Quran has been used to direct Muslims to make all possible preparations to defend themselves against enemies.[525] Shin Chiba and Thomas J. Schoenbaum argue that Islam "does not allow Muslims to fight against those who disagree with them regardless of belief system", but instead "urges its followers to treat such people kindly".[526] Yohanan Friedmann has argued that the Quran does not promote fighting for the purposes of religious coercion, although the war as described is "religious" in the sense that the enemies of the Muslims are described as "enemies of God".[527] Solomon Nigosian concludes that the "Quranic statement is clear" on the issue of fighting in defense of Islam as "a duty that is to be carried out at all costs", where "God grants security to those Muslims who fight in order to halt or repel aggression".[528] Shaikh M. Ghazanfar argues that the Quran has been used to teach its followers that "the path to human salvation does not require withdrawal from the world but rather encourages moderation in worldly affairs", including fighting.[529] Shabbir Akhtar has argued that the Quran asserts that if a people "fear Muhammad more than they fear God, 'they are a people lacking in sense'" rather than a fear being imposed upon them by God directly.[530]
On issues outside of Muslim-non-Muslim relations, Nisrine Abiad argues that the Quran incorporates the offence (and due punishment) of "rebellion" into the offence of "highway or armed robbery".[531]
Equity for women
The Quran deals with the status of women in a number of verses whose literal and traditional interpretation follows the views of many societies at the time of its revelation (such as ancient Israel) but is now in conflict with at least Western norm. Women are not granted equality and may be beaten if their husband fears disobedience; husbands may take concubines and more than one wife. At the same time it contains a number of provisions "intended to secure the decent treatment of women."[532]
- Witness inequality
See also: Status of women's testimony in Islam
- 2:282 -- O you who believe! When you contract a debt for a fixed period, write it down. Let a scribe write it down in justice between you. Let not the scribe refuse to write as Allah has taught him, so let him write. Let him (the debtor) who incurs the liability dictate, and he must fear Allah, his Lord, and diminish not anything of what he owes. But if the debtor is of poor understanding, or weak, or is unable himself to dictate, then let his guardian dictate in justice. And get two witnesses out of your own men. And if there are not two men (available), then a man and two women, such as you agree for witnesses, so that if one of them (two women) errs, the other can remind her.
This verse is one of the bases of the sharia rule that two women are the equivalent of one man in providing evidence.
- Domestic relations
Main articles: Islam and Domestic violence and An-Nisa, 34
Verse 4:34 of the Quran as translated by Sahih International reads:
- 4:34 -- Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.[533]
Michael Cook notes that in traditional commentary on the Quran "the main" issue commentators concerned themselves with over the verse was how to distinguish "legitimate physical punishment" from excessive beating.[534] Some Muslims, such as Islamic feminist groups, have alleged An-Nisa, 34 has been used by some Muslim men as justification for domestic violence.[535]
- 2:223 -- Your wives are a tilth for you, so go to your tilth when or how you will, and send (good deeds, or ask Allah to bestow upon you pious offspring) before you for your ownselves. And fear Allah, and know that you are to meet Him (in the Hereafter), and give good tidings to the believers (O Muhammad).
This verse is usually translated as giving the husband the right to have sex with his wife or to have "control of the reproductive process".[536] At least the Saudi Arabian Salafi site IslamQA agrees it is forbidden for a wife to refuse to have sex with her husband when he desires intercourse, stating: "she must meet his request whenever he calls her, unless she harms her or distracts her from a duty." [Note 55]
The Quran commands financial provision for widows and the right to remarry after a an interval. Women are not excluded from inheritance but generally given half of what males receive.[532][538]
Verse 4:34
See also: An-Nisa, 34
Verse 4:34 has been called "hotly debated".[539] The Dutch film Submission, which rose to fame outside the Netherlands after the assassination of its director Theo van Gogh by Muslim extremist Mohammed Bouyeri, critiqued this and similar verses of the Quran by displaying them painted on the bodies of abused Muslim women.[540] Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the film's writer, said "it is written in the Koran a woman may be slapped if she is disobedient. This is one of the evils I wish to point out in the film".[541]
Modern interpretations by scholars of Islam include a variety of responses to these criticisms. Many translations -- Sahih International, Yusuf Ali, Mohsin Khan -- give a chronological sequence, with beating "as the last resort",[542] (as do many (mostly) modern interpretations of the Quran).[Note 56][Note 57] [546] But other translations -- Marmaduke Pickthall's, Muhammad Sarwar's, Shakir, or Arthur John Arberry's -- do not.[542] (Arberry's translation, for example, reads "admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them,"[547] and copies of his version are widespread, according to author Asra Q. Nomani, thanks to Saudi petroleum export money.)[535]
According to Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Ibn Kathir, the consensus of Islamic scholars is that Q.4:34 describes a "light" beating,[548][549] similarly other scholars and commentators have emphasized that beatings, where permitted, are not to be harsh,[Note 58] [Note 59] [551] or even that they should be "more or less symbolic,"[552] with some scholars specify that limiting beating to a light touch by siwak (a twig used to brush teeth).[553][554] Some have sited the hadith by The Prophet "Do not beat your wife like you beat your camel, for you will be flogging her early in the day and taking her to bed at night."[539] According to Ingrid Mattson, a Islamic scholar and president of the Islamic Society of North America, "the whole idea is not to punish" the offending wife, but to show displeasure.[539]
Some Muslims argue that beating is only appropriate if a woman has done "an unrighteous, wicked and rebellious act" beyond mere disobedience.[555]
Some jurists argue that even when beating is acceptable under the Quran, it is still discouraged.[Note 60] [Note 61][Note 62]
Some translations of the Quran have replaced the word "beat" or "strike" in favor of some non-violent term,[539] but according to ex-Muslim Ali A. Rizvi, these are "relatively recent interpretations" that have been "put forward by largely non-Arab speaking Muslim scholars" attempting to ignore the straight-forward message of the verse allowing husbands to beat wives when they fear disobedience (something he strongly disapproves of).[559][560]
Predestination
Numerous verse in the Quran where God states it is up to humans whether or not to accept his guidance or that those who repent their unbelief will be forgiven, such as the first part of Q.18:29):
- 18:29 Say: (It is) the truth from the Lord of you (all). Then whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve....
"The forgiver" or "the oft-forgiving one" (Al-Ghafir) is one of the 99 attributes of names of God, and God is described as "all-forgiving" (or most forgiving غَفُوْرٍ ghafoor ) or "very forgiving" (غَفَّارًا ghaffar) 80+ times in the Quran.[561]
At the same time least a few observers (Michael Cook, Ali Dashti, Sam Shamoun and Jochen Katz)[562] have noted the frequent references (more than 50)[563] to contradictory statements — those where "God states that the guidance of humans" to believe in God and avoid hellfire "depends wholly on His will and choice".[563] An example is
- 2:6_7Q.2:6-7 -- Indeed, those who disbelieve - it is all the same for them whether you warn them or do not warn them - they will not believe. Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing, and over their vision is a veil. And for them is a great punishment.
(Sam Shamoun and Jochen Katz complain that one series of verse (Q.3:86-91) goes back and forth: first promising "God guides not the people of the evildoers", before stating "But those who repent thereafter, and make amends -- God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate", and finally going back to "those who disbelieve after they have believed and then increase in unbelief -- their repentance shall not be accepted".)[562] Which raises the questions: Why should "God's enemies ... be held responsible for the things they wrought when it was God who chose to mislead them?" [564] and why does God not only "punish those who fail to respond to his guidance but actively leading them astray"? (Cook)[565] Dashti ponders how "God, having not wished that certain people should believe," would feel "anger with those people for their unbelief".[453] Cook answers that the Quran is "scripture" and not a work of "theology" but emphasizes that his "sovereignty over his universe is absolute";[565] Dashti note that while this approach makes no sense for a just, all-powerful, all knowing God; it might make sense as something a frustrated preacher would wish on those who scoff at and persecute him and his followers.[453]
Favoritism towards Muhammad
Islam teaches that Muhammad was the human being that the Quran was revealed to and passed down its contents to humanity. In the words of Daniel W. Brown, "Muslims only know the Quran is revelation because of Muhammad's testimony to this fact."[566] In the words of Muhammad Ayyub Dihlawi, "The word of the Prophet is a ḥujja [evidential proof] for the Quran."[567] Therefore it is from him that we know what God wanted/wants human beings to believe and how to behave.
Scholars suspect that Muhammad's contemporary nonbelievers/opponents accused him of being the actual source of the Quran. At least one verse implies opponents accuse Muhammad of being the author ("And when you, [O Muhammad], do not bring them a sign, they say, "Why have you not contrived it? ...".7:203) And numerous verses (6:50, 7:203, 10:15, 10:37, 10:109, 13:38, 33:2) --which are often directed against Muhammad's opponents -- vehemently deny that he was doing/saying anything other than delivering what was revealed to him by God.[4]
One contention that is said to infuriate Muslims more than "any other" is that Muhammad created the Quran.[568] Abdullah Saeed writes that "there is not credible evidence in the Qur'an to suggest that its authorship can be attributed to the Prophet", and that "the avocation of the so-called 'human element' in the Qur'an is unwarranted."[569]
Convenient revelations
Orientalists complained that "personal indulgences" of Muhammad "were not only excused but encouraged by the divine approval or command", revelation gave him special treatment in his relationship with Mary the Copt, his passion for the wife of his adopted son and close friend, etc. (William Muir),[570] that God assisted Muhammad, "meeting with revealed verses every troublesome question, smoothing over errors, legalising faults" (Leone Caetani).[571]
In the 20th century Ali Dashti found that "confusion" between God and Muhammad within the Quran "cannot objectively be disputed".[572] He notes the "self-consolation" Muhammad would get in verses declaring God's willingness to condemn polytheists to hell no matter what they would give him. The Quran assigns two specific individuals -- Abū Lahab and his wife -- to hell in Sura 111:
- Q.111:1-5 -- May the hands of Abu Lahab be ruined, and ruined is he. His wealth and gains will not exempt him. He will [enter to] burn in a Fire of [blazing] flame And his wife [as well] - the carrier of firewood. Around her neck is a rope of [twisted] fiber.
Hadith describes Abū Lahab as interrupted the Prophet's sermon and Abū Lahab's wife as throwing thorns on the prophet's path. Ali Dashti asks whether it "becomes the Sustainer of the Universe to curse an ignorant Arab and call his wife a firewood carrier".[99]
But according to Western scholar of Islam Ignác Goldziher, it was not just modern rationalists who had such questions, but early Muslims. "Devout" members of Mu'tazilites and members of another Muslim group the Kharijites questioned how verses where the Prophet curses his enemies — such as Abu Lahab — have come from `a Noble Quran on a well-guarded tablet`.[573]
The practice of abrogating contradictory verses of the Quran is explained in
- 2:106 -- What We abrogate (of) a sign or [We] cause it to be forgotten, We bring better than it or similar (to) it. Do not you know that Allah over every thing (is) All-Powerful?
and again Dashti asks if not changing plans is not a normal and desirable in humans whose minds are limited and learn from experience and mistakes, but unnecessary and even absurd for an all-powerful, all-knowing God.[574]
Christians and Jews in the Quran
See also: Christianity and Islam, Islam and antisemitism, Islamic–Jewish relations, and People of the Book
Jane Gerber claims that the Quran ascribes negative traits to Jews, such as cowardice, greed, and chicanery. She also alleges that the Quran associates Jews with interconfessional strife and rivalry (Quran 2:113), the Jewish belief that they alone are beloved of God (Quran 5:18), and that only they will achieve salvation (Quran 2:111).[575] Karen Armstrong claims that there are "far more numerous passages in the Qur'an" which speak positively of the Jews and their great prophets, than those which were against the "rebellious Jewish tribes of Medina" (during Muhammad's time).[576]
According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Qur'an contains many attacks on Jews and Christians for their refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet.[577] In the Muslim view, the crucifixion of Jesus was an illusion, and thus the Jewish plots against him ended in failure.[578] In numerous verses[579] the Qur'an accuses Jews of altering the Scripture.[580] Abul Ala Maududi believes the punishments were not meant for all Jews, and that they were only meant for the Jewish inhabitants that were sinning at the time.[576] According to historian John Tolan, the Quran contains a verse which criticizes the Christian worship of Jesus Christ as God, and also criticizes other practices and doctrines of both Judaism and Christianity. Despite this, the Quran has high praise for these religions, regarding them as the other two parts of the Abrahamic trinity.[581]
Hindu criticism
Hindu Swami Dayanand Saraswati gave a brief analysis of the Quran in the 14th chapter of his 19th-century book Satyarth Prakash. He calls the concept of Islam to be highly offensive, and doubted that there is any connection of Islam with God:
Had the God of the Quran been the Lord of all creatures, and been Merciful and kind to all, he would never have commanded the Mohammedans to slaughter men of other faiths, and animals, etc. If he is Merciful, will he show mercy even to the sinners? If the answer be given in the affirmative, it cannot be true, because further on it is said in the Quran "Put infidels to sword," in other words, he that does not believe in the Quran and the Prophet Mohammad is an infidel (he should, therefore, be put to death). Since the Quran sanctions such cruelty to non-Mohammedans and innocent creatures such as cows it can never be the Word of God.[582]
On the other hand, Mahatma Gandhi, the moral leader of the 20th-century Indian independence movement, found the Quran to be peaceful, but the history of Muslims to be aggressive, while he claimed that Hindus have passed that stage of societal evolution:
Though, in my opinion, non-violence has a predominant place in the Quran, the thirteen hundred years of imperialistic expansion has made the Muslims fighters as a body. They are therefore aggressive. Bullying is the natural excrescence of an aggressive spirit. The Hindu has an ages old civilization. He is essentially non violent. His civilization has passed through the experiences that the two recent ones are still passing through. If Hinduism was ever imperialistic in the modern sense of the term, it has outlived its imperialism and has either deliberately or as a matter of course given it up. Predominance of the non-violent spirit has restricted the use of arms to a small minority which must always be subordinate to a civil power highly spiritual, learned and selfless.[583][584]
See also
- Islam: What the West Needs to Know
- Islam and science
- Creation–evolution controversy
- The Syro-Aramaic Reading Of The Koran
- War against Islam
- Criticism
- Apostasy in Islam
- Censorship by religion
- Criticism of Muhammad
- Criticism of Islam
- Homosexuality and Islam
- Islam and antisemitism
- Islam and domestic violence
- Islamic views on slavery
- Islamic terrorism
- Islamofascism
- Women in Islam
- Child marriage
- Controversies
- Islamic view of Ezra, concerns Al-Quran 9:30 which quotes, "and Jews said Ezra (Uzair) is the son of God"
[45] [8] [6] [17] [27] [585] [586] [92] [587] [588] [589] [590] [36] [130] [240] [591] [38] [592] [593] [202] [594] [595] [490]
References
Notes
- Muhammad relayed God's revelation to the early Muslims, and many of his contemporary nonbelievers/opponents maintained he (Muhammad) was the true origin of the Quran. Numerous verses of the Quran (Q.6:50, 7:203, 10:15, 10:37, 10:109, 13:38 and 33:2) vehemently deny that the Qur’an was Muhammad's own work, or that he was doing anything other than following what was revealed to him by God.[4]
- As God's speech, the Quran was not created or written by God but is an "uncreated" attribute of God
- "... when the Arab scholar Suliman Bashear argued that Islam developed as a religion gradually rather than emerging fully formed from the mouth of the Prophet, he was injured after being thrown from a second-story window by his students at the [An-Najah National University
- "From the literary point of view, the Koran has little merit. Declamation, repetition, puerility, a lack of logic and coherence strike the unprepared reader at every turn. It is humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries, and that millions of men are still wasting time absorbing it." Reinach, Salomon (1909). Orpheus: A History of Religions.
- Because the Sabians were Ahl al-Kitāb (people of the book) but unknown, they are said to have been used as a "loop hole" in Islamic law by a religious group threatened with either conversion to Islam or death. According to Abu Yusuf Absha al-Qadi, Caliph al-Ma'mun of Baghdad in 830 CE stood with his army at the gates of Harran and questioned the Harranians about what protected religion they belonged to. As they were neither Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Magian, the caliph told them they were non-believers. He said they would have to become Muslims, or adherents of one of the other religions recognized by the Qur'an by the time he returned from his campaign against the Byzantines or he would kill them.[86] The Harranians consulted with a lawyer, who suggested that they find their answer in the Qur'an II.59, which said that Sabians were tolerated. It was unknown what the sacred text intended by "Sabian" and so they took the name.[86]
- Muhammad relayed God's revelation to the early Muslims, and many of his contemporary nonbelievers/opponents maintained he (Muhammad) was the true origin of the Quran. Numerous verses of the Quran (Q.6:50, 7:203, 10:15, 10:37, 10:109, 13:38 and 33:2) vehemently deny that the Qur’an was Muhammad's own work, or that he was doing anything other than following what was revealed to him by God.[4]
- As God's speech, the Quran was not created or written by God but is an "uncreated" attribute of God
- Ibn Hisham's biography was based on Ibn Ishaq's biography. "We do not even have Ibn Ishaq's original biography of Muhammad -- only revisions and reworkings. As for the material on which Ibn Ishaq himself drew on for his researches, it has long since vanished." Ibn Ishaq was a great grandchild of the "generation of the Prophet"[154]
- In the words of atheist author Richard Dawkins rephrasing David Hume: "Which is more likely -- that a man should be used as a transmitter by God to deliver some already existing revelations, or that he should utter some already existing revelations and believe himself to be, or claim to be, ordered by God to do so?"[186]
- for example, Gerald Hawting, interviewed for The Religion Report, Radio National (Australia), 26 June 2002.
- "Mark Twain's "Mysterious Stranger" is considerably older than the date of that mediaeval fable-collection would imply. It is found in the Koran .. and undoubtedly borrowed from a much older Jewish source ... The sources and parallels of the story of the angel and the hermit are elaborately discussed by Israel Lévy in the Revue des Etudes Juives, VIII, .... 504. [letter by I. Friedlaender dated March 31, 1919, writing to The Nation Vol. 108,. N0. 2805.]
- one scholar (Ahmed El-Wakil of the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies) argues that the Quran as read by Hafs we have today is exactly the same as the one compiled by 'Ali ibn Abi-Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad. The Quranic reading of Hafs (one of the seven or ten or fourteen recognised methods of recitation, known as qira'at), was learnt from two sources: 'Asim who was his main teacher, and Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq who provided him with a corrective of 'Asim's reading. Hafs learned his reading from his teacher 'Asim who learned from his teacher, Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, who learnt the Quran from 'Ali. Furthermore, Hafs was a Companion of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq and it is claimed that the latter had inherited 'Ali's Master Copy of the Quran which (the study argues) formed the basis of the 'Uthmanic canon. "If future research can validate these preliminary findings, then this could very well mean that the reading of Hafs from Asim is the de facto reading of 'Ali which he inherited from the Prophet till the very last dot."[269])
- Ahadith sources differ over who was the first to collect the revelations of the Quran Zaid b. Thabit said:
The Prophet died and the Qur'an had not been assembled into a single place.[271]
It is reported... from Ali who said:May the mercy of Allah be upon Abu Bakr, the foremost of men to be rewarded with the collection of the manuscripts, for he was the first to collect (the text) between (two) covers.[272]
It is reported... from Ibn Buraidah who said:The first of those to collect the Qur'an into a mushaf (codex) was Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hudhaifah.[273]
- The parchment upon which the lower codex of the Sana'a manuscript is written has been radiocarbon dated with 99% accuracy to before 671 CE, with a 95.5% probability of being older than 661 CE and 75% probability from before 646 CE.[303] Tests by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit indicated with a probability of more than 94 percent that the parchment dated from 568 to 645.[304]
- The Sana'a palimpsest is one of the most important manuscripts of the collection in the world. This palimpsest has two layers of text, both of which are Quranic and written in the Hijazi script. While the upper text is almost identical with the modern Qurans in use (with the exception of spelling variants), the lower text contains significant diversions from the standard text. For example, in sura 2, verse 87, the lower text has wa-qaffaynā 'alā āthārihi whereas the standard text has wa-qaffaynā min ba'dihi. The Sana'a manuscript has exactly the same verses and the same order of verses as the standard Qur'an.[305] The order of the suras in the Sana'a codex is different from the order in the standard Qur'an.[306] Such variants are similar to the ones reported for the Quran codices of Companions such as Ibn Masud and Ubay ibn Ka'b. However, variants occur much more frequently in the Sana'a codex, which contains "by a rough estimate perhaps twenty-five times as many [as Ibn Mas'ud's reported variants]".[307]
- (Assistant Director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies at University of Texas)
- Dundes lists of repeated phrases come from an English translation and so those Quranic phrases in the original Arabic sometimes have slight differences
- For example, Burton writes, "Where the Fiqh points to practice different from that adumbrated in the Quran, Tabari [a influential Islamic scholar and exegete of the Qur'an who died about 300 years after Muhammad] can and does conclude that the Quran ruling has been abandoned. His certainty cannot be shaken by the consideration that the corresponding Quran wording has not been abandoned. The decisive criterion for Tabari, as it had been for Shafi'i, is the Fiqh."[429]
- (Burton is among those in the "mainstream" of the Islamic studies field of fiqh/Islamic law led by Ignác Goldziher and Joseph Schacht who hold that fiqh doctrine did not grow directly and organically from the Quran and sayings and doings of Muhammad but was already established and sometimes in contradiction with the Quran when the theory of naskh was established.)[430]
- حُورٌ مَّقْصُورَاتٌ فِي الْخِيَامِ 55:72
- 52:20 تَّكِئِينَ عَلَىٰ سُرُرٍ مَّصْفُوفَةٍ ۖ وَزَوَّجْنَاهُم بِحُورٍ عِينٍ and كَذَٰلِكَ وَزَوَّجْنَاهُم بِحُورٍ عِينٍ 44:54
- Author Judith Miller described a column of secular Egyptian activist Farag Foda shortly before his assassination "About two weeks before his murder, he mocked what passed for intellectual discourse among Islamists by citing a recent sermon by Egypt’s most popular preacher, Abdel Hamid Kishk, a blind sheikh who constantly attacked both the government and its official religious establishment. Kishk had been telling his audience that Muslims who entered paradise would enjoy eternal erections and the company of young boys draped in earrings and necklaces. ..."[469]
- According to Janet Afary, "Standard commentaries on the Quran are silent about the possible role of these boys, although such discussions persist in other commentaries and among ordinary people. Two factors worked against homosexual intercourse on earth: the need for procreation and the use of the anus for defecation. Since there was no childbirth and no defection in paradise, some sources have suggested that lavat [anal sex] might be permissible and the boys in descriptions of paradise could be construed as sexual companions."[470][468]
- Khaleel Muhammad, professor of religious studies at San Diego State University, states, regarding his discussion with the critic Robert Spencer, that "when I am told ... that Jihad only means war, or that I have to accept interpretations of the Quran that non-Muslims (with no good intentions or knowledge of Islam) seek to force upon me, I see a certain agendum developing: one that is based on hate, and I refuse to be part of such an intellectual crime."[518]
- Abdullah Yusuf Ali in his Quranic commentary states that: "In case of family jars four steps are mentioned, to be taken in that order. (1) Perhaps verbal advice or admonition may be sufficient; (2) if not, sex relations may be suspended; (3) if this is not sufficient, some slight physical correction may be administered; but Imam Shafi'i considers this inadvisable, though permissible, and all authorities are unanimous in deprecating any sort of cruelty, even of the nagging kind, as mentioned in the next clause; (4) if all this fails, a family council is recommended in 4:35 below." [543]
- Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, says that "If the husband senses that feelings of disobedience and rebelliousness are rising against him in his wife, he should try his best to rectify her attitude by kind words, gentle persuasion, and reasoning with her. If this is not helpful, he should sleep apart from her, trying to awaken her agreeable feminine nature so that serenity may be restored, and she may respond to him in a harmonious fashion. If this approach fails, it is permissible for him to beat her lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive parts.[544]
- Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, says that "It is permissible for him to beat her lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive parts. In no case should he resort to using a stick or any other instrument that might cause pain and injury."[550]
- Ibn Kathir Ad-Damishqee records in his Tafsir Al-Quran Al-Azim that "Ibn `Abbas and several others said that the Ayah refers to a beating that is not violent. Al-Hasan Al-Basri said that it means, a beating that is not severe."
- Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi comments that "As to a beating, the Holy Prophet allowed it very reluctantly and even then did not like it. But the fact is that there are certain women who do not mend their ways without a beating. In such a case, the Holy Prophet has instructed that she would not be beaten on the face, or cruelly, or with anything which might leave a mark on the body." [556]
Citations
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- Reynolds, Gabriel Said, ed. (2008). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge.
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- Weiss, Bernard (April–June 1993). "Reviewed Work: The Sources of Islamic Law: Islamic Theories of Abrogation by John Burton". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 113 (2): 304–306. doi:10.2307/603054. JSTOR 603054.
Category:Criticism of Islam Category:Quran Category:Islam-related controversies
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