under|progress

Abu Muhammad on the language of the Qur'an

Abu Muhammad: "Isn't it true that what we choose to eliminate [in terms of interpretation] also has valid basis in language though not always in historical context of revelation? What is the correct priority of sources of understanding Quran? What comes first in Quranic hermeneutics - knowledge of language, tribal dialects and jahilia poetry or Hadith, context of revelation and understanding of Companions and their students? Is it a valid assertion that understanding of Quran would always remain evolving and there would always be room for new interpretations? [...] The fact that answer to these questions are multifarious and sometimes extremely complicated implies that Quran by itself is not a very straightforward document. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say (in the words of Fazlur Rahman) that [the] Quran is as 'straightforward' and as organically coherent as life itself."

Prayer and violence, despair and disbelief

Ibrahim N. Abusharif has another couple of brilliant posts. The first is on how the Qur'an connects despair and disbelief; the second on the subtext of many reports on "radical Islam" which link salat and the ritual practice of Islam with violence and extremism.

Despair and Disbelief: "Despair and disbelief are soul-mates, according to the Quran: “None despairs of God’s mercy except people who disbelieve” (12:87). What’s implied here specifically is the loss of hope for God’s compassion as a quality of those who willingly or unwittingly scoff the sacred, or, as the word kufr strongly suggests, those who are ungrateful to the point of denial." 

Prayer and Violence: "I noticed something in the two-hour report -- something which I had noticed before in many a documentary or report on "radical Islam" -- that the film footage accompanying the narration that speaks of OBL's radicalization process included men praying in a mosque. Now this is hardly the first time we see the Ritual Prayer of Islam linked (through image) with a scripted narrator's screed about violent teachings and extremism. We all sense it: image is a formidable conveyor of a message, especially in a time of intellectual sloth in which "image" is paramount culturally, politically, and commercially, more so than the written word, which also struggles with dilution."

Forced conversions in Gaza

I got back from a weekend away (it was a long Bank Holiday weekend here), to find the world in pretty much the same sorry mess I left her in.

I did catch something about the release of two American journalists taken hostage in Gaza. Israel/Palestine is not something I blog about for a number of reasons. But what did prick my ears about this story was the video of the two men being forced to convert to Islam (note, you might the comments distasteful on that link), after which their ordeal ended:

"Mr [Steve] Centanni told Fox News the two had been forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint [...] I have the highest respect for Islam... but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns and we didn't know what the hell was going on," he said by telephone from Gaza City."

Thankfully, the journalists were not harmed and Centanni himself seemed to acknowledge that his 'conversion' was not considered part of Islamic practice or belief. But Steven Guess opines:

"It distresses me greatly that thusfar no Islamic websites I visit have made any mention on their blogs/news outlets that this was wrong and inhumane."

He acknowledges that people, Muslims in this case, perhaps don't feel the need to speak out against something which they obviously bear no responsibility for. One could cite scripture, but that is not the point here. The crux of the matter is this: should a Muslim feel compelled to speak out against something 'done in the name of Islam' which they believe to be totally contrary to their faith?

One side would argue that no matter how loudly a vast number of Muslims will shout about terrorism, murder and so on being against Islamic beliefs and principles, bigots will still claim that such acts are 'part of Islam'. Further more, as the blogger in that link says, no one asks the English to apologise for the acts of English hooligans abroad. The flip side is explained by Tariq Nelson:

"[The] political realities, even though we may not like it, make it necessary for the Muslim organizations to distance Islam from it in a clear and unambiguous manner. Given the constant barrage of negative images of Muslims the common person sees on a daily basis, and our relative isolation from society, I don’t think it is reasonable to expect a person not to ask a few questions about this or expect to see some type of condemnation of things done in the name of Islam."

The (sad) reality is that, ordinarily, people do not inform themselves of what they see or hear in the popular media. Even when they do out to seek more information, it can end up simply being a task to enforce their own prejudice (which might explain the popularity of certain blogs and the comments on the videos of the 'conversion' at YouTube). In our media-saturated environments, and especially in more affluent societies (where everyone, rich or poor, has access to a television), sound bites, opinion polls and visual images on the box-in-the-room seem to form the staple diet of information today. It's not that television cannot be informative; it most certainly can. Nor is it the case that everyone should become a scholar of the subject under discussion. Rather, when watching television people may not be discerning or critical and accept everything at face value (the same approach, should be taken when reading a book too, of course). So, if the news reports that two hostages were forced to convert to Islam whilst showing videos of these 'conversion', but does not report that such 'conversions' are considered contrary to Islamic principles and that even the most ardent "fundamentalist" would reject such a forced conversion, then Muslims are left in a bit of quandary.

For me, it comes down to personal preference. Some people do not feel compelled to speak out against such matters. Others, including myself on occassions, do. For me, speaking out against actions is not necessarily 'apologising', but part of the general attempt to take back the usage of Islamic terminology and principles which have become villified in the popular media, whether at the hands of extremists amongst us or those hostile to us.

Needless to say, on this occassion, such 'conversions' deserve to be derided and rubbished, and I am glad that the two journalists are free and appeared to have a better opinion of their Palestinian hosts, than the Palestinain kidnappers had of them.

Update: Aziz, Eteraz look at the issue in greater detail.

The language of the Qur'an

Ibrahim N. Abusharif has a couple of posts on the Qur'an, which are worth reading:

• Vocabulary of the Quran: "The point is this: the main themes and core message of the Quran are carried on the backs of several hundred root words that one can make a steady study of. There are a few standard texts that can help with this but they require some knowledge of Arabic. One must resist the notion that one cannot begin a personal study of the Quran until he or she has mastered Arabic. My argument against this is in its circularity. One can learn Arabic as he or she moves methodically through the root words of the Quran and read how they are used in the Scripture."
• The Quran and the Quraysh Quandry: "The Quraysh understood the words that Muhammad recited. And they themselves marveled at these words and knew they were not ordinary. They were a people of language and to deny this would have been an admission of stupidity. The words chilled the back of their necks. They were dazzling and beautiful; but also terrifying—letters and syllables that crawled up their nerves telling the detractors things that they didn’t want to hear, things in the world, things beyond, and the fraud of idolatry. They had never heard anything like it, not even from their finest poets. They were words that shook the floor of their lives."

Why I am not Ibn Warraq

Following on from the post on 'revisionist Islam' I want make a quick comment on Ibn Warraq, who work is peddled by many critics of Islam as a constructive or honest engagement with Islamic history and sources. In reality his work is far from that.

Ibn Warraq's method is to merely find whatever appears 'anti-Islam' and has the veneer of academic respectability. It doesn't matter if the criticism he adopts itself has severe limitations, is severely flawed, or that there are counter-arguments. He doesn't appear to be bothered with the fact that he will happily choose critiques where the very core methodologies used are at odds with one another. Consider that, on the one hand he promotes a secularisation of Islam, yet on the hand uses well-known Christian polemicist, for who the only interest in the Qur'an is to validate that which accords with their own texts. Consider that he uses the work of those who engaged with the history, like Joseph Schacht and Ignaz Goldziher; but then starts to waffle on about the importance of John Wansbrough or Andrew Rippin, who essentially reject the history and reconstruct Islam through literary analysis. It is one thing to use such material and make a case for your views, understanding their limitations, and perhaps proposing alternative methods. It is quite another to not to simply ignore these points. This is just plain dishonesty.

Here's a review of one of Ibn Warraq books, The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book, that appeared in the Journal of Islamic Studies.

Q: What is 'revisionist Islam'? A: The Da Vinci Code for Muslims

Eteraz links to an article from a few years back, published in the New York Times, which looks at 'radical' new theories on the emergence of Islam from Arabia. The article concentrates on the theories of Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, as developed in their contrioversial book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, with a nod towards other work by contemporary German scholars.

Hagarism is perhaps one of the most abused theories around. It used as 'historical proof' that the Qur'an Muslims have with them today, and core tenants of their faith, are fabrications with no historical validity. Whatsoever.

Following on from their teacher, John Wansbrough, Crone and Cook did not accept the Muslim views of their own history, and so rather than following the path of someone like Montogemery Watt and examine Muslim historical sources for internal consistency, they dumped the whole history. Indeed, they declared in their book that Hagarism was a book 'written by infidels for infidels'. The whole point of Crone's and Cook's work was to reject the traditional Muslim accounts of the emergence of Islam and reconsruct the history using other, non-Muslim, sources. From this they drew the conclusion that, while a man called Muhammad might have existed, the Qur'an and other Islamic beliefs came into existence much after his death. In fact, the entire first century of Islam was largely a later fabrication. In other words, if you're not a Muslim who accepts the divine origins of the Qur'an, how do you explain the contents of the text? Where did its stories come from? Hagarism is one attempt to answer these questions, by positing that the Qur'an, being a monotheist text, must have been developed in a monotheist culture, where such teachings were existent and accepted; if the Hijaz was not such a monotheist centre, as is supposedly claimed by the Muslim traditions, then how does one who does not accept the existence of divine intent explain Qur'anic contents? Hagarism, basically, asks us to accept a vast conspiracy theory; a sort of Da Vinci Code for Islam, where the falsity of Jesus' divinity by the Catholic Church is replaced by the falsity of the sirah of the Prophet (upon whom be peace) by early Muslims as they expanded out of Arabia.

I do want to mention that Crone's insistence (as reported by the article) that 'there are only two possibilities' is a stretch, and avoids a third possibility. If we indulge in a little speculation of our own we could say that the Quraysh accepted the existence of Abraham (upon whom be peace), and his religion and even the One God, but had distorted Abraham's (upon whom be peace) teachings and practices. All of this could have occured in the Hijaz, and without the need for huge Jewish and Christian groups (however, the Qur'an mentions them in many verses, so there must have been some Jews and Christians in Makkah and Medina). (Incidentally, this is a view put forward by some Muslim scholars.)

Hagarism is a speculative attempt to find answers. Not, as some would have us believe, The Truth. (For example, read this laughable piece. Attempting to bolster your arguments by adding "PhD" at the end of your name is lame. Especially when your area of expertise is somewhere else.) Crone and Cook have revised their own views in recent years, though perhaps they still hold Islamic traditions' view of itself as unreliable and not wholly accurate (I've read more of Cook's work than I have Crone's in recent years). And Muslims should not forget that the Qur'an itself records peoples' derisive attitude towards the Prophet (upon whom be peace); some would dismiss Revelation as "stories of the ancient" (e.g. Qur'an 8: 31). Hardly new, this business of where the Qur'an came from, then is it?

So Muslims should not be perturbed by people asking such questions and producing these sorts of answers. They can respond in kind and show where the faults in such attempts lie. Or Muslims can just ignore such theories and deprive the one thing that most people who push such ideas need: publicity (angry Muslims are good publicity).

Of course, it doesn't help if hostile or lazy journalism constantly repeats these kinds of stories, exaggerating their importance out of all proportion and not considering the crticisims for and and against such theories. For example, last year I looked at a similar article that appeared in The Economist, which discussed some contemporary German scholarship, which similarly exaggerated the importance of some theories.

Against the 'scientific miracles' apologia

I originally posted this on my old blog as "Against Muslim apologetics" a few years ago (May 2003). Reproduced here with some further editing.

It has become common to hear of, and read of, the 'scientific miracle' of the Qur'an. Pamphlets, booklets, conferences, papers, debates and lectures; all have been used to disseminate the idea that the Qur'an contains 'facts' which have been discovered by 'modern science', but were unknown at the time of the Prophet (upon whom be peace), or were unknowable because of the sophistication we required in uncovering these 'facts'. The obvious conclusion the Muslim draws is that, the Qur'an was revealed by an All-Knowing God. For how else could the Prophet (upon whom be peace) have know about embryology, the theory of relativity, quantam physics, red giants and white dwarves, and cures for, among other diseaes and conditions, diabetes, tuberculosis and rheumatism, all of which are claimed to be 'scientific facts' revealed in the Qur'an?

Yet, the question we have to ask at this point, one that is rarely raised in Muslim circles, is do these claims have any substance? Can they stand up against a stringent scientific, philogical and literary criticism? The simple answer, I am afraid to say, is no.

Unfortunately, in their desire to "prove" the foundation of their faith, some Muslims have resorted to these poor polemics and pushed what, in my opinion, is barely third-rate scholarship. Not only is the 'science' poor in these works, the methodology employed to prove these 'scientific-facts' is less than scientific, and further, the whole endeavour makes a mockery of the Qur'an and its purposes.

All this has been noted by Imran Aijaz, a Muslim student of philosophy, based (I believe) in New Zealand. He has set out a critical examination of the 'scientific miracles' (the combination of these words appears to be oxymoronic) apologia, in his ongoing paper, "Evidentialist Apologetics in Islam". The second part of this paper is of importance to this post, because this is where the criticism of the scientific miracles is made.

Aijaz's paper is a very good read, which I recommend to all interested in examining an example of an arbitary Qur'anic hermeneutic, which (as far as my understading takes me) has little basis in Muslim scholarship, whether traditional or contemporary. Below I have highlighted some of his main points, and I have also added a few comments of my own. The main thrust of his criticism is centred on the flawed methodology employed by Muslim apologists.

To begin with Aijaz outlines the two main sources for the apologetic argument, Maurice Bucaille's popular work, The Bible, The Qur'an, and Science [1], and Keith Moore's paper to an Islamic journal, "A Scientist's Interpretation of References to Embryology in the Qur'an". [2] Further, he provides a concise summary of another Muslim critic of the scientific-apologetic argument, Ziauddin Sardar, who is most well-known for his works on postmodernism, scientific and cultural studies as well some issues on Islam.

The question posed by Sardar is an interesting one:

[The scientific-miracles apologia] opens the Quran to the counter argument of Popper's criteria of refutation: would the Quran be proved false and written off, just as Bucaille writes off the Bible, if a particular scientific fact does not tally with it, or if a particular fact mentioned in the Quran is refuted by modern science?

Personally, I have never met a person who made the purposeful decsion to "become a Muslim" based on some 'scientific fact' which he or she thought existed in the Qur'an (or the hadith literature, for this is also apparently replete with scientific discoveries). Does a Muslim believe in God, and specifically the messengership of the Prophet (upon whom be peace), because some 'scientific miracle' they read about? It isn't that superficial, I hope. No, 'faith' is something best described as being 'organic', something a lot deeper than the shallowness of these supposed 'mircales'. Why then do we expect a non-Muslim to buy this nonsense?

The main problem which Aijaz highlights is the arbitary nature of this 'scientific hermeneutic'. He asks:

Why should we think certain verses are really modern, scientific statements any more than we should consider them as allegorical, metaphorical or symbolic verses?

It is this seemingly ad hoc methodology, which is the bone of contention, for both Aijaz (and myself). Verses are plucked from the Qur'an, more often than not in their English translation (some of which are not very good) and then given the most random "scientific" exegesis. Why, of all the interpretations of a verse in the Qur'an, must a Muslim take the one which accords to 'modern science'? What happened to the literal, the allegorical and the mystical interpretations? Why are they not considered?

What is even more intriguing is that, very often (and this is anecdotal) the same people arguing for the 'scientific hermeneutic', that is to say a radically new interpretation of the Qur'an (for such scientific facts were unknown prior to their discovery), are the same people who often reject any form of reinterpretation of, say, the legal or theological bases in the Qur'an. On the one hand they tend to savage any alternative look at the Qur'an (and hadith) because such attempts are out of synch with our previous generations' attempts; yet on the other they promote this 'science' in the Qur'an argument, when previous generations neither made such interpretations (nor would they have been able to, given they did not know about this 'scientific fact')! The circularity is quite apparent and 'science' and 'reasoning' are conspicuous by their absence!

We now move onto, perhaps, the most interesting point, one which Sardar alluded to, and which Aijaz is more upfront about:

No scientific miracles apologist has thoroughly laid out his rules for scientific exegesis, nor defended the legitimacy of interpreting the Qur'an scientifically.

Would a Muslim who supports such claims of 'scientific miracles' be able to provide a stringent methodolody for his scientific hermeneutic? For when we try and interpret the Qur'an we resort to a methodology. Whether they have been traditionalists, modernists, reformists, mystics, jurists, etc. Muslims have resorted to some kind of method, developed for the purposes of interpreting the Qur'an. But the single thing which marks all of these techniques of interpretating the Qur'an is the layout of a set of rules of exegesis, which they try and adhere to, and which others can comment and criticise as neccesary. Where is such a hermeneutical model from the scientific apologists? It seems non-existent.

Though the Muslim apologist is quick to pick up the works of a non-Muslim like Bucaille and Moore in promoting his 'scientific' argument, criticism of the Qur'an, based on science (especially by a non-Muslim) is surely so heretical that is must cause alarm among the promoters of this cheap polemic, many of whom are not scientists and so have little understanding of scientific methdologies. For if they had known that by accepting 'modern science' as a criterion by which the contents of the Qur'an are judged, then surely they would have realised that science allows for the method of falsification. And when we apply 'modern science' to the Qur'an, in order to refute its contents, we find that it can be falsified. For what does 'modern science' say about virgin briths, raising of the dead, staffs which turn to serpents and the existence of jinns? Negative evidence 'refutes' the Qur'an, if we follow the apologists line of thinking to its logical conclusion (i.e. making 'science' the criterion of the Qur'an).

But are Muslim apologists about to open the Qur'an to 'modern science'? The answer is again all too obvious, and I shall let the reader decide. In addition, we are now into the question of who is the arbiter of such 'scientific' interpretations? A Muslim scholar will have a knowledge of Arabic, its grammer and sources, of the hadith literature, of commentaries and explanations of source materials, of the opinions and interpretations of the previous generations, of the application and philosophy of juristic reasoning, and so on. But he will not necessarily be a scientist or a philosopher of science. So does a scientist interpret? Moore did so, but he was no philologist, so paid no attention to principals of exegesis, relying on translations of the Qur'an. In addition, if we do let modern scientists provide a 'scientific interpretation' of the Qur'an, what is the scope for a non-Muslim scientist to interpret the Qur'an, reject it on the basis of 'modern science', and then have Muslims accept his argument (because science does not belong to one religious grouping)? None, despite whatever his scientific credentials might be. We can see, that this sort of endeavour has opened a can of worms, which the Muslim apologist has no wish to answer.

It is this double standard which I find irritating. Aijaz again:

I find this sort of attitude to be very curious, inconsistent vis-à-vis the coherence of one's religious beliefs, and downright irritating [...] Apologists like [Dr. Zakir] Naik want to have their cake and eat it too. On one hand, they argue that their belief is scientifically unfalsifiable, because belief in the Qur'an for them is supra-rational, and it is the ultimate yardstick. On the other hand, they are reasoning with the unbeliever that it would be irrational for him or her to reject the scientific evidence for the Qur'an which has been put on the table, proving once and for all that it is God's Word. And yet, this sort of contingency is precisely which the apologist rejects. For if negative scientific evidence was put on the table, attempting to refute the Qur'an (say, for example, the impossibility of virgin births, non-existence of jinns, etc) he would simply shift the goal-post and argue that it is a category mistake to judge the Qur'an using science. The absurdity and hypocrisy of this position is glaring.

Aijaz proposes that a Muslim, who is in general a fideist (that is one who places 'faith' over 'reason'), remains a fideist and rejects this apologia which makes no sense and is so far from science.

I would say that, as the apologist himself points out, to judge the Qur'an by 'modern science' is a false attempt. That is because it never claims it has provided man with some far-fetching 'scientific' miracle. It may draw humanity's attention to physical phenomena (insofar as they are 'scientific facts'), but these are something which are already known through observation and experience (e.g. the existence of the Sun and the Moon, the day and the night, and so on). The Qur'an calls itself a "book of guidance" [3]. What kind of guidance? Surely page after page it exhorts man to keep taqwa ('God consciousness'), so it can really only mean moral and metaphysical guidance. And if this is the entire theme of the Qur'an, then aren't all the verses to be understood in light of the moral precepts in reason and revelation?

Whatever the true nature of the Qur'an is best understood, I can only agree with Imran Aijaz's closing sentiments:

I think it would be best for Muslims to refrain from engaging in this mockery of the Qur'an, and send this worn-out apologetic straight into the dustbin, where it belongs.

This entire attempt is surely just miracle-mongering and an attempt to provide the modern Muslim with some substance in order to withstand the onslaught of developments in science (which has replaced other knowledges as the pinnacle of modern achievement). But it is the poverty of thinking which drives this sort of discourse which is so alarming.

Notes
[1] Maurice Bucaille, The Bible, The Qur'an, and Science, Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1979.

[2] Keith L. Moore, "A Scientist's Interpretation of References to Embryology in the Qur'an". In: The Journal of the Islamic Medical Association, Vol.18, Jan-June 1986, pp.15-16, available on-line.

[3] Qur'an 2: 2.

'I know that which you know not'

A verse to ponder upon:

And when thy Lord said unto the angels: Lo! I am about to place a viceroy in the earth, they said: Wilt thou place therein one who will do harm therein and will shed blood, while we, we hymn Thy praise and sanctify Thee? He said: Surely I know that which ye know not. [Qur'an 2:030; my emphasis, Pickthall's translation]

The Qur'an as a visual work of art?

I've just finished watching "Art and Islam" with Hari Kunzru on BBC World, part of the BBC's commercial arm (the other arm of the BBC has a fist with which it can extract a yearly licence and then play repeats of Only Fools and Horses).

The programme was brief (around 30 minutes), so it was only an overview of what "Islamic art" means. They had brief interviews with various people associated with Islamic art, like Nasser D. Khalili, who is not only a scholar of Islamic art but also has one of the world's largest collections of such art; Robert Hillenbrand, a professor of Islamic art; and the artist Ali Omar Ermes. Having challenged the belief that Muslims have never depicted people or animals, the discussion moved to 'abstract' Islamic art and what exactly makes art 'Islamic' (it should be noted that this programme appears to have been made long before the cartoon saga). They never really managed to discuss in any great detail what makes art 'Islamic', although several interviewees mentioned how vital 'the beautiful' was in the 'Islamic' sense of the aesthetic. My thought here is: why is 'Islamic art' judged any differently from any other piece of art? Isn't drawing a line around 'Islamic' art, as opposed to other forms of art, a sort of orientalist view? (Oliver Leaman makes this point.)

For me, the most interesting subject of discussion was on the collection of Qur'ans, including the famous "Blue" Qur'an. One point made by Hillenbrand on early Qur'anic calligraphy was that it was often deliberately obscure and difficult to read off the page, thereby drawing the reader into the Qur'an. The experience of the Qur'an in this case is not only a question of only reading the words off the page. Instead the experience becomes a literary and visual experience. Now, Muslims have developed an entire art (or science, i.e. body of knowledge) with respect to recitation (tajwid). And even if you don't understand Arabic, a Qur'an recited with near perfection can be a moving experience, especially in an act of worship like prayer. And Qur'anic verses in elaborate calligraphy have been used to decorate everything from mosques to cermamic tiles for centuries. But I have to admit I've never thought of the Qur'an as a visual work or considered how powerful a beautifully crafted Qur'an can be aesthetically, except perhaps in a very superficial way. I wonder in such a visual world (or 'post-literate' as described aptly by Eteraz) how important the Qur'an is visually and how it adds (or detracts?) from its intended purposes?

(See also this article in the New York Times in a somewhat similar vein.)

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'.