Disingenious disquisition

I've not read a print edition of The Economist for quite some time. Not sure why. But I found (via Chapati Mystery) an article published at the back end of 2004, entitled Holy Writ (paid link I'm afraid; it'll set you back $2.95, of the American kind). In short, what the article suggests is that whatever problems may exist in biblical texts and transmission, these are assumed to have occured in Qur'anic transmission and textual preservation. And not only that, other weird claims are made too. I cannot speak for the Bible (by which I mean both Jewish and Christian texts). In fact I can't even speak for the Qur'an. But I can (hopefully) spot unwarranted assumptions or claims, deliberate or otherwise:

1. After discussing the Bible and its status in secular and religious intellectual investigation, the article informs readers that "Muslims insist that their tradition also makes full use of reason and intellectual rigour in the understanding of sacred texts. In the early Middle Ages, when Christianity and Islam were struggling to find ways to reconcile divine revelation with human reason and investigation, Islam often seemed to fare better. There is intellectual discipline, of a specialised kind, in the tradition of inquiry into the authenticity of the hadith, sayings attributed to the Prophet. But all this tradition is based on one central premise: the authenticity of God's revelation to the Prophet, and the accuracy of the Koran as a rendering of that revelation in language both human and divine."

My first reaction to the above was "?". That punctuation mark actually appeared in my mind (I'm fairly non-sectarian on the font style, but usually prefer a clean, modern type). The author of the article seems to be confusing several aspects, though interrelated, with one another. The interpretation of texts (in the case of Muslims, the primary texts would be the Qur'an and hadith) may be a 'rationalist', or an 'estoeric', or a 'literalist' endeavour. The "intellectual discipline" (actually a composite of various sub-disciplines) which determines the level of accuracy of various narratives or reports (commonly hadith) is not actually an act of interpretation (pace Hayden White!). Further, the last sentence itself is bizarre for the following reasons:

a. Muslims, by default, will believe the Qur'an is from a divine source (and Prophetic activity is under divine inspiration). If the author is objecting to this, then why not just say so, instead of couching his criticism in verbose garbage? Nonetheless, this doesn't stop people from making an investigation into the Qur'an from a purely "secular" view (often as a social document). And, indeed, there have been many Western academics who have done just that, either making an historical inquiry, or dumping the history and engaging with it through literary methods and so recreating their own history (and there those that have tried to criticise it through their own religious traditions).

b. Determining the accuracy of a report does not, by default, require one to be a Muslim. Even though there have been Western ("secular" or "religious") academics who have rejected the hadith literature as a later creation which does not in reality extend to the Prophet or his closest companions, there have been those have found the method used and developed by Muslim traditionists (muhaddithin) to be extremely accurate. Even the former category did not reject this method and its conclusions on the sole basis that it so happened to be created by Muslims.

2. Next we're told: "In many parts of the Muslim world, merely asking open questions about the origins of the Koran would guarantee the inquirer an abbreviated life." This might indeed occur "in many parts of the Muslim world". However, it would be strange given that Muslims have long had methods for establishing the accuracy of various readings of the Qur'an (the various qira'at). There exist reports that Muslims went to great lengths to establish the veracity of their Scripture, because they feared that what happened to the previous texts (i.e. those of Jews and Christians) might happen to theirs. And in order to establish the veracity of something, we do often go to the "origins" of the claim. Indeed, the list of classical sources that have discussed the variant readings and engaged in "textual criticism" is impressive.

3. The third such statement that is thrown to us is that "...secular scholars do study the Koran, though most keep their heads down or write under a pseudonym." Perhaps they do use pseudonyms. I do on this weblog. But given that I can name several "secular" academics of the Qur'an (just as there are "secular" academics of the Bible), and unless the use of pseudonyms is popular in the Islamic and Arabic studies departments of Western universities, I take it this is an exaggerated statement. In addition, the article says that "many of these academics [with psuedonyms] come from Germany". Maybe Noldeke, Scwally, Ptrezl and Bergstrasser were all German pseudonyms? And, further, in hadith studies, the first port of call for Western university students of Islam is Ignaz Goldziher's Muhammedanische Studien (though Goldziher was Hungarian by birth, he received much of his higher education in Germany). Maybe he too was a psuedonym? This claim about German scholarship is being used to buttress something else; but more on this later.

4. Here comes the bit that implies little understanding or care has been taken to study Qur'anic transmission as something more than a "text" belonging to a particular class in a religious society: "For example, scholars [...] have been analysing evidence from a huge stack of mouldering Arabic documents, discovered in Yemen in 1972. These promise, in the scholars' view, to show the Koran as an evolving rather than a static work." There are some points here:

a. The Qur'an, by the admission of Muslims, was something that was revealed over the course of some 23 years -- basically, the missionary period of the life of the Prophet (p). Some verses, or even whole chapters, are said to be revelations in response to certain incidents. There are even injunctions of an ethical/legal nature that show evidence of some sort of 'evolution' (the famous example always cited is the gradual prohibition on the consumption of alcohol). In addition, the final arrangement of the Qur'an is accepted by Muslims as not being the same as the order of revelation. So why is it so amazing that a view will be presented showing the "Koran as an evolving rather than a static work"? Of course, no Muslim regards the Qur'an merely as a piece of "work". But then to accept the divine origins of the Qur'an is to be a Muslim. I suppose we shall have to wait to see what the scholarly pseudonyms present.

b. Given that, to this day, the Qur'an is transmitted orally, why does the existence of said texts neccessarily prove a problem? [1] This is based on a faulty assumption -- influenced by how the Christian traditions have viewed the Gospels at some stage in their history. Qur'anic transmission as a social phenomenon is often overlooked for this very reason. Whereas even reading the Scripture was particularly blasphemous in Christian history, the opposite is true of Islamic traditions. To recite the Qur'an, even without understanding, is considered a 'blessing'. To this day the Qur'an, primarily, undergoes oral transmission; even in an age of mass printing no one is considered an authrotative reciter (hafiz) of the Qur'an unless it is recited in whole in front of another hafiz. Further, the Qur'an is recited by lay and specialist alike in the qui-daily prayers, and it is an established tradition to engage in completing the recital of the Qur'an in the month of the Ramadan during evening prayers and in private. So the actual reading has been open to all and sundry. How easy would it be to make changes to the very text of the Qur'an in this case? Not very easy, I contend. What has been guarded is the task of interpretation. But does protecting the way in which a text is interpreted mean one is protecting inquiries into its historicity?

5. Next we get to the crux of the matter and the reason why German scholarship was cited: "One bold German-based academic, writing under the pen name of Christoph Luxenberg, believes he has discovered a hitherto unsuspected influence of the Aramaic language, and of the teaching of Syrian Christians, on the Koran."

I know next to nothing of Aramaic or Syrian Christians and their tradition. However, in light of the fact this article makes rather damning conclusions of the state of Muslim scholarship (and indeed other religious traditions), one need ask: has the author consulted a peer-reviewed journal discussing Luxenberg's work? Indeed, no where does the author suggest that this work by Luxenberg has been received with some degree of scpeticism. But then why bring down a good polemic with such annoying irrelevancies? [2] As a total aside, this sort of "truth-finding" methdology seems suspect. For example, finding "hitherto unsuspected influences" would leave the English language with the sum of a few hundred words and much of what we use today would be meaningless.

6. Suha Taji-Farouki, a lecturer in Islamic Studies at Exeter Univserity (which is said to have a leading  Arabic department in the United Kingdom), is cited in the following excerpt: "“Interrogating the text in this way is a very sensitive matter, and even if the interrogators are Muslim, there are significant red lines,” says Suha Taji-Farouki, the editor of a new set of essays on the Koran."

The placement of this quote from Taji-Farouki raises some questions. Is she being cited because the "essays on the Koran" aim to find fault in the text or transmission of the Qur'an? If so, this is a mistake -- I have that collection of essays in front of me, and it is says nothing particular on this matter. In fact, the book is a collection of essays on modernist interpretations the Qur'an by Muslims, who regardless of their position outside the traditional methods of interpreting the text, all believed the Qur'an to be a Revelation (however they understood the mechanisms of "Revelation").

7. Lastly, there is simply a blatent mistake, which shows either lazy editing or lazy scholarship: "Take one example from Islam: Mr Luxenberg argues that the rewards the Koran promises to martyrs for their faith when they get to heaven is not “virgins” (72 of them) but a word that means “grapes” or “white fruit”. In a world where suicide-bombers are urged on by delectable prizes, that is a translation that matters."

I don't know if "suicide-bombers are urged on by delectable prizes". The author merely makes such a statement without providing any evidence. Nonetheless, what is even more glaring is that the Qur'an, in its various descriptions of heaven, makes no mention of the number of "virgins". Did the author actually read the Qur'an?

Notes
[1] There are accounts of two additional chapters in some Shi'a sources. But these are: (i) rejected by Shi'a scholars; (ii) rejected by some Western scholars; and (iii) the one real source of this claim is considered a forgery, as attested to even by Western scholars.

[2] I know of two such reviews: a brief discussion is found in Angelika Neuwirth, "Qur'an and History - A Disputed Relationship. Some Reflections on Qur'anic History and History in the Qur'an", In: Journal of Qur'anic Studies, 2003, Volume V, Issue I, pp. 1-18; a fuller review can be seen in Francois de Blois, "Review Of Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Koransprache ('Christoph Luxenberg', 2000, Das Arabische Buch: Berlin)", In: Journal of Qur'anic Studies, 2003, Volume V, Issue 1, pp. 92-97. These two are also available online: (1), (2). Note, my aim is not to critique this theory. I am, primarily on this point, highlighting something that resembles hypocrisy in the article, that otherwise champions 'critical secular reason'.