The Qur'an
If Muhammad bin Abdullah was illiterate, then the Qur'an (means recitation) must surely be a work of miracle. The miracle isn't that he suddenly acquired the ability to write, but that he could remember it so perfectly to give it to others who, in many cases, remembered it themselves perfectly, or wrote it perfectly, to be assembled perfectly after Muhammad's death. The tradition is that he surrounded himself with scribes, so these revelations were recorded as well as remembered, as was his life.
If, though, he worked on the Suras to make them good for reciting, then he is far more able and cultured than Muslims will claim! There are identifiable sources (Jewish people, Christian people, local myths) which would require working on to produce the style of this (perhaps) one person.
This view is that the Qur'an has a history, consistent with any other writing, even one that was produced far more rapidly than the books of the New Testament. People who take this view within Islam are in danger of being branded apostates and taking the consequences.
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Muhammad is also the last prophet. Of course there are faiths that have produced their own since, notably Sikh and Bahai. If culture and language change further, and there is still a belief in progressive revelation of a strong and direct kind, then it is arguable that there are other prophetic figures. Of course these can be handled as Christians handle the notion that there is yet more truth to emerge from God (as Christians understand Muhammad).
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Another critical view in the West is that language is a barrier to knowing the purity of God. All religions end up being human constructs, even if they point to a reality beyond, because of the inadequacy of language. For Islam the perfect revelations were actually in Arabic, a language therefore deemed to be sufficient to carry the purity of revelation. Arabic is therefore a unique language, a divine language, and is the opposite of being a barrier to the knowledge of God and the role of his prophet. The language allows perfection, and so the Qur'an is learnt verbatim and recited in Arabic.
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So when people speak of fundamentalist Islam, is it a misnomer. All Muslims are fundamentalists in a way that even Christian fundamentalists are not (because they pick and choose their literalism and are themselves inconsistent). What is meant is forms of fanaticism where the simplicity of the view of God, its God centred nature and striving for justice are turned into theocracy and a quest for power. This is a postmodern response to Western power now. It happens in the context of a background when imperial powers ran states in Islamic areas because the West reinvested and reinvented itself and Islam had become second best. Islamic fanaticism also attempts to replace the failure of nationalisms, socialism, and autocracy (sometimes supported by Western powers, the states themselves sometimes restricting religious freedom). Yet before the Western renaissance, and the slow stagnation of Muslim culture, Islam was confident, cultured and successful. There were three main Empire blocs, and one nearest the West in the Ottoman Empire was quite tolerant and multi-cultural, as had been its development. This is to be contrasted with Ataturk's Turkey which had imposed secularism and produced strains in a democratic Turkey that are unresolved and make it such a difficult candidate to join the European Union (and could seriously undermine its stability should it be inside).
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One argument is that Islam will only return to confidence when it can accept the kind of scriptural criticism that is given to Christianity and Judaism, along with a revision of its history, or to accept the mythical nature of scriptures as in Hinduism and Buddhism, and other Eastern faiths (as well as the near Eastern which shaped the West). It also would involve a more relativist view of language including its own. It would still leave a highly intriguing and unified document. However, this seems impossible, and for Islam, at present, would be to accept change on another's terms. Thus Abu Zaid was branded an apostate in 1995, upheld by Egypt's highest court in 1996. That had consequences in being ordered to divorce and being prevented from marrying a Muslim. So he left with his (still) wife to the Netherlands.
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The standard official story of producing the Qur'an follows on from the person of Muhammad bin Abdullah. Muslims will follow the mention of the name of prophet Muhammad with the words, "Peace be upon him" every time.
On a revelatory account Muhammad simply received God's pure message of beauty, and unity and applied it with inevitable success as, of course, the revelation of the Qur'an matches the human condition. On a more critical sociological and humanist reading, Muhammad desired to unify the Arabian tribes with the simple faith of the unity of God and human justice, to remove their differences, and with his expansionary success received justification as a unique messenger, and did so despite and through opposition and persecution.
He would seem to have been someone susceptible to hallucinations (whether these are regarded as real or illusory) and religious visions. He had to have a personality that intense enough to pursue his vision to the extent that he did in an all consuming manner with a highly practical and real outcome affecting increasing thousands.
This is an (officially compatible) brief account of his life:
- He encountered a situation of Pagan polytheism taking place at the Kaaba, a shrine Muslims believe was built by Abraham (Ibrahim, for Muslims)
- Clearly that shrine remains central in Islam today
- But it had become polluted by 360 statues and icons surrounding the Kaaba (including Jesus and the Virgin Mary)
- Against this situation came revelations starting in 610 in the cave of Hira to Muhammad
- He went to a near mountain cave to reflect alone (as was his habit)
- He was visited by the Angel Gabriel (who also met the Virgin Mary)
- Gabriel said "Recite!" meaning he was the Messenger of God
- The revelations continued
- The illiterate Muhammad was given divine revelations
- Gabriel taught Islam (meaning submission to God's will)
- Gabriel gave them in a poetic and rhetorical style
- Muhammad remembered these word for word and gave them to frends and family who also memorised them perfectly or wrote them down
- Persecution began for Muhammad and the few followers because they were out of keeping with the actual economic, social and religious life of Makkah
- In 621 Mohammad had an Isra (Night Journey) to Jersusalem including a Miraj (Ascension) into heaven where he met Adam, Moses, Abraham and Jesus and then passed through veils to the veil of Unity
- This vision led to the establishment of five daily prayers
- In 622 the now a recognisable Islamic community undertook the Hijra, going to Yathrib, later Madinah (Madinaht al-Nabi, City of the Prophet)
- Muhammad continued to receive divine revelations (becoming more pragmatic and prosaic)
- In 624 Makkahns attacked Madinah but Muhammad and supporters fought them off at Badr
- In625 at Uhad the Makkahns were held (Muhammad was wounded)
- In 626 a trench was built around Madinah and the Makkahns could not penetrate it
- The Treaty of Hudaybia was signed but was repeatedly violated by Makkahns
- By 630 he and 10,000 followers conquered Makkah without a fight
- In 631 Muhammad gave his farewell sermon to 124,000 Muslims in the valley of Arafat
- The revelations continued until he died in 632
- The Islamic empire continued to expand
- By the 640s Arabs had conquered most of Syria, Iraq, Persia, and Egypt
- By the 670s they were into Europe, North Africa, and Central Asia
- The Qur'an was still not a single book!
The Qur'an if examined supports this chronology of Muhammad:
- There is the vision of the Angel Gabriel, his messenger, when he was 40 and having a month's devotional break at Makkah
- There is some doubt and resolve before becoming a teacher
- There was the pause called the Fatrah when he may have wanted a repeated vision
- He took some forty converts over three years including Abu Bakr
- A second vision which intensified how he spoke and was heard
- Emigrating to Abyssinia in 616 whilst continuing to attack polytheisms and bringing in Jewish and Christian histories
- The conversion of Umar in 617
- To Thaquifies at Taief in 620
- Meeting Islamic pilgrims from Madinah
- The vision of a midnight journey to Jerusalem and the heavens
- Meetings at night in Acaba and receiving pledges
- Command to believers to go to Madinaht-en-nabi or El-Madinah in April 622
- Escape with Abu Bakr from Makkah to a cave at Thaur
- Then rapidly Madinah on June 20 622
- Treaties with Christian tribes
- More but still imperfect understanding of Christian beliefs
- The battle of Bedr
- The battle of Ohod with Jews and opposing Arabians resulting in the siege of Madinah in 627
- Pilgrimage to Hudaibiya
- Engaging with King of Persia, Governor of Egypt and King of Abyssinia to believe in Islam
- Conquering a number of Jewish tribes
- Engaging with Heraclius in Syria, having been fighting in Persia
- Pilgrimage to Makkah (630)
- Demolishing the idols of the Kaaba
- Conquering for Islam the Christians oif Nedjran and others
- Conquering for Islam Hadramont, Yeman, and more in south and east Arabia
- Pilgrimage to Makkah
Muslims themselves do explain a process by which the memories and fragments became one identical book, and this is an explanation:
- Many were arguing about the contents and there was great potential for disunity
- Scattered parts of the Qur'an were first collected under Muhammad's successor, the first Caliph Abu Bakr (of two years, died 634) by Zaid Ibn Thabit
- They then passed to Haphsa, one of Muhammad's widows
- Umar (who became the second Caliph) was concerned that warriors might die or be killed (and some did die) who remembered the revelations
- Hodzeifa could see a problem regarding interpretation and difference as with Jewish and Christian scriptures, precisely what Islam intended to avoid
- After Umar's death (644), and under the Caliph Uthman, Zaid Ibn Thabit was asked to produce a standard text and he took three or twelve colleagues to help
- Six identical hand written parchment copies were made for a reading
- These were then sent out across the Muslim world
- All other versions were removed
- This Qur'an is certainly meant to be heard as much as read with its musical poetry
The question of how this history is given comes from the Qur'an and the life of Muhammad being explained and supported by other texts developed from the 750s to 950s:
- Sira: the life of Muhammad through biographies (eg ibn Ishaq writing Sirat Rasul Allah less than a hundred years after the death of Muhammad)
- Hadith: the collected sayings and deeds of Muhammad worked out as valid by textual, biographical, chronological, linguistic, geographical and recording analyses
- Sunnah: the path of Islamic religious, social and legal custom (about which there is much debate)
- Tafsir: Qur'anic commentary
These provide the understanding of the Qur'an itself and Muhammad's life.
The Qur'an itself has these characteristics:
- There are 114 suras
- They are economic in language (compare with the King James Bible which is also economic)
- They are intended to be precise although picturesque
- These are quite different in length and form
- They are not chonological
- Late Madinah suras come before earlier Makkahn suras
- Madinah and Makkahn suras intermingle or become embedded within each other
- They are not themed
- They are simply longer to shorter by length
- Longer and better known suras were sometimes just placed before lesser known ones
- The text thus appears in effect as a patchwork
- Rhyme and meaning are locked together and reflect about in different locations
- The style shifts and continuities are broken because of the simplicity of being put together
- There was no attempt to edit away contradictions or inaccuracies
- There are great shifts in style, voice, and subject matter from verse to verse
- There are many inconsistencies:
- God is in the first and third person in the same sentence
- There are different versions of one account close by
- Divine rulings occasionally contradict
- The Qur'an states that it can abrogate its own message
- Muhammad himself probably combined revelations from earlier and later times in the same suras to tone down earlier immanentism yet to keep expectation (on a critical view)
- There is much repetition in the Qur'an that displays some development in Muhammad's thinking (again on a critical view)
All this has the strange consequence of binding the Qur'an into one!
It is possible, if not completely or perfectly, to identify the earlier, middle and later suras:
- The earliest are most poetic, and passionate, usually brief, and reflecting on the natural world and against pessimism and punishment
- His enquiring position becomes more assertive
- Whilst the poetry continues, the middle suras are more about persuading, warning, teaching, and judgement and then about Jewish and Christian historical views
- Finally, as a legislator of a new social and political system, the 29 Madinah based suras tackle the enemies and demonstrate strong belief requiring obedience to Allah and his prophet (with less poetry being evident)
But these also suggest a human history:
- The strange and variant vocabulary
- Likely omissions of text
- Grammatical shifts
- Deviant versions of the same stories
Another suggestion to a human history is to question the view that the Qur'an was collected from its remembered and written pieces, but rather was developed:
- There was the argument about versions, and thus one version was imposed
- There was huge historical change in the period of the first Muslim expansion which must affect how text is justified
- Those who comment on the validity of the Qur'an, Muhammad's life, etc. have their own backgrounds
- The 700s and 800s are well documented by these social historians but not the decades of the origins of Islam
- Form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism can be applied to the Qur'an
- Did the Qur'an evolve in 600s and 700s?
- Does it suggest Christian and Jewish dialogue only around Syria, Jordan, Israel and Iraq?
- Why has there been no source material from the area now Saudi Arabia?
- Therefore is the Qur'an a projection backwards (as is the New Testament to the Old) on to the founding prophet, thus described in some manner of other prophets?
The views above are those of John Wansbrough, once of University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. He wrote Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (1978).
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These are minority views but fragments found in 1972, going back to the 600s and 700s, during the restoration of the Great Mosque of Sanaa in Yemen, suggest a variable text:
- Gerd R. Puin, a specialist in Arabic calligraphy and Koranic paleography based at Saarland University, in Saarbrücken, Germany, has been examining these
- So has H. C. Graf von Bothmer, an Islamic-art historian, also at Saarland University
- Since the early 1980s more than 15,000 sheets of the Yemeni Korans have been restored and presented
- They sit in Yemen's House of Manuscripts
- Yemen is sensitive that a German has been working on them
- Yemen is also sensitive that they exist as a potential challenge to Muslim orthodoxy
- The two researchers were also sensitive themselves in case they lost access
- However, Von Bothmertook took over 35,000 microfilm pictures of the fragments, completed in 1997, and these are now in Germany
There are:
- Different verse orderings (very significant)
- Minor variations in text
- Unusual styles of orthography and artistic embellishment
- Text written over earlier washed away text
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- These suggest an evolving text rather than one period of production and gathering
- Nevertheless these variants are far less than the Bible
- It's the impact on Islamic belief that is significant because Islamic belief regarding the Qur'an is now so strict
There was once a debate among Muslims as to whether the Qur'an was uncreated and eternal or created in time:
- The Caliph al-Ma'mun (813-833) accepted a created view
- Mutazilism supported this brief orthodoxy, claiming that the Qur'an is metaphorical
- At the end of the 900s the pure uncreated view was reinforced and dominant again
- For non-believers, this is so puzzling because even in Arabic it looses its meaning and sense (about every fifth sentence)
- This itself renders translation difficult
Christians and others looked at the Qur'an and from its confusing literary condition concluded that it was human in construction, not divine.
However, Muslims have themselves catalogued the variations and inconsistencies:
- They say it forms a lattice structure
- It is interlocking and impossible to change or corrupt
- Every word is connected to every other
- The content and order therefore cannot be changed
- Muslims do not translate the Qur'an from Arabic as its purity is in Arabic
- Translations are no more than assitance in understanding while the real task is to memorise and recite
Therefore the nature of the writing as it stands allows two forms of recital:
- Tajwid is a musical style reading
- Tartil is a chant that is simple and slow
Children learn the text off by heart and those who know this are called hafiz.
What is beyond argument is that the Qur'an is very strong in drawing on the same content as in the Bible:
- God is the creator
- God is all powerful, all knowing, and all merciful
- God speaks and guides through prophets
- God when he knows will bring about the end of the world and the Day of Judgment
- Adam is ejected from Paradise
- Noah builds an ark
- Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son
- Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt
- Moses receives a revelation on Mount Sinai
- Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary
- Jesus has disciples who follow him
- Jesus is called the Messiah
- Jesus works miracles
- Jesus goes to heaven
The Qur'an adds some prophets of its own:
- Like Hud, Salih, Shuayb and Luqman
On a critical view ideas are from:
- Books of Abraham with Ad and Themoud which Muhammad later considered to be a forgery (he drops use of them from 616 CE)
- This was connected with him regarding himself as a Hanyf, founded by Abraham, though he changed this to Muslim
- Gnostic Christianity in the specific area that Jesus did not die on the cross and there is no need for a doctrine of the atonement
- This was either deliberately or with the consequence of assisting Jews in the reconciling of Judaism and Christianity into Islam
- Otherwise Muhammad's views followed other Jewish and Christian schools
- There were myths and legends too of a more local nature
- His writings follow a familiarity with texts either directly or as told by followers
- But he changed them for the purposes of Islam
These seem to be Muhammad's sources (on a critical view):
- His Jewish sources are Rabbinic moral precepts and Talmudic versions of scripture
- The Talmud was completed 100 years before Muhammad
- He used the Talmud his way
- There were likely Apochryphal gospels from Boheira (Sergius)
- His wife Chadijah and her cousin Waraka knew Jewish and Christian texts
- Arab tribes near Makkah converted to Christianity and were a source
- People in tribes unhappy with Judaism and Christianity were another source
- Going to Bostra with his uncle Abu Talib (where Christians worshipped transmitted ideas)
- This then suggests he received biblical knowledge from people
- Receiving it from people allows a claim of divine revelation (not transcribing)
- The Koreisch disbelieved his divine revelation and said he learnt it from the dictation of teachers
- Yet against this Muhammad produced his Suras for recital (therefore hardly dictation)
This is what the Qur'an states:
The faith follows on from the Qur'an.
The new Muslim declares the Shahaadah:
There is no god except God
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And Muhammad is His Messenger
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This means that:
- No god except God is Tawheed and the Muslim world view that makes us all equal and sharing and all directly close to God
- God wills and creates and is true existence
- We depend on God
- We are responsible to God and will be judged requiring a virtuous life
- God is known in revelation through his Messengers
- Muhammad completes progressive revelation
- God uses Angels to communicate
It follows from Tawheed that there are five Pillars of Islam:
As Salam alaykum (peace be upon you)
Sources:
Sardar, Z., Malik, Z. A. (1999), Introducing Muhammad, Cambridge: Icon Books, previously Muhammad for Beginners (1994). This is a very well summarised standard orthodox view worth keeping but at some strain (thankfully) with the usual cartoonish appearance of the Introducing series, because, of course, Muhammad cannot be pictured by believers.
Lester, T. (1999), What is the Koran? The Atlantic Monthly; January 1999; Volume 283, No. 1; pages 43-56, The Atlantic Monthly Company, [Online], Available World Wide Web, URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99jan/koran.htm. [Accessed again August 31, 2002, 02:00]This shows developments after the fragments were found in Yemen and studied in Germany.
Rodwell, J. M. (1909), The Koran: Translated from the Arabic, Everyman Library, London: J. M. Dent and Sons, especially the Preface, 1-18, and Introduction, by G. Margoliouth, vii-xi. This was very progressive for its day but very much a Christian imperial viewpoint and rearranges the Suras (but identifies all) for chronology (an impossible task as admitted)! It is also very English. It aims to be correct with something of the flavour of the original. I find this book increasingly useful even with a more "normal" Qur'an; I actually quite like the Introduction by G. Margoliouth, though not the use of "Muhammadan", which jars.
My own view is that Islam today has become misrepresented, though not simply by the West. It is a civilisation that in history has become corrupted (a kind of inferiority complex after the rise of Europe, imperialism, modernism and postmodernism/ the secular, and decline into non-democratic states) and its orthodoxy is rigid against critical approaches. My own view remains that God is a human creation, and so is the Qur'an, but it is still a book of impact both in its relatively rapid creation and in its effect. I think this is a slightly different approach from the Christian Rodwell, being more to do with education as critical enquiry, but also because it would be good to see a real revival in an open and confident Islam open to change. Reading the Qur'an by translation, I regard it and Muhammad as more interesting in a social and cultural context (from visionary faith in Makkah to regulatory faith in Madinah).I don't like its early basis in war, yet this is a faith which produced true civilisation and from which much can be learnt. In fact the West needs to learn a lot from aspects of Islamic social justice, and unless it does the West will be in trouble. I cannot accept the context which addresses men and does treat women as less equal, which is made worse by Islamic culture, a context which might be progressive for the time but which does not translate (and cannot because of the absolutism given to the text). Whilst Islam, as represented, is under a number of contemporary shadows, it is the West that is heading towards materialistic stupidity against which Islam has much to teach. Islam seems to me a clearer, less fussy faith than Christianity which has so many doctrinal qualifications that are under huge strain today and where there is so much revisionist and qualifying theology. Whilst I don't understand the view against art, Islamic caligraphy is artistic and beautiful (thus why I reproduced two). To me, the caligraphy suggests what the faith is about more than many of the texts.
Adrian Worsfold