Koran Contradictions?

[Hugh Slaman]

On another thread, "Contrived Gospel Stories", Kris and I agreed to have a friendly debate on the question of whether or not there are internal contradictions in the Koran.

Of course, everyone else is welcome to join in as well :hi:

Kris, my main goal in doing this is to convince you that it is at best very hard to find internal contraditions in the Koran. Now, you gave me a list of alleged internal contradictions from the website "Answering Islam". There are at least 60 or so contraditions on that list, so here is what I propose:

You, Kris, pick ONE contradiction from that list that you think is the MOST compelling case that list has to offer. In other words, you should pick the contradiction that causes the most difficulty for Muslims from the list.

I will then examine that contradiction together with you.

That way, if I can refute the most compelling contradiction you can find, that will cast doubt on the whole list. Thus, I will be shortening my work.

OK, then, I'm waiting for your reply.

Best,

Hugh

[dizzle]

There is though a monkey wrench in this whole thing which sometimes renders discussions like this in vain, and that is the Muslim doctrine of abrogation. It is a convenient escape hatch for any contradictory doctrinal passages at least, and thus a trump card. The abrogation does not have to be based on any other than Allah's whim, and thus is nontestable whatsoever.

[Hugh Slaman]

Dee Dee,

That is a very pertinent point, and will lead to a clarfication of our task.

However, we can remove that escape hatch for the Muslims as follows.

The doctrine of abrogation applies ONLY to COMMANDS given in the Koran. The claim is that God, in response to changing and varying conditions, abrogates or withdraws earlier commands in favour of new ones. Muslims believe He has been doing this, in relatively minor matters, for the whole of human history. Thus, from the Muslim perspective, some of the commands God gave through Moses were abrogated by Jesus.

The contradictions in the list Kris mentioned, however, almost always focus on ASSERTIONS in the Koran. The doctrine of abrogation does not apply to ASSERTIONS.

I think we can avoid the doctrine of abrogation altogether here, and focus only on alleged contradictions in the Koran involving ASSERTIONS. And Kris should select a contradiction from tht list only if it involves ASSERTIONS.

Best,

Hugh

[dizzle]

Hugh, are you Muslim?

[Hugh Slaman]

Dee Dee,

I am seriously thinking about it.

[Chuck_D]

Hugh Slaman:
Dee Dee,

The doctrine of abrogation applies ONLY to COMMANDS given in the Koran. The claim is that God, in response to changing and varying conditions, abrogates or withdraws earlier commands in favour of new ones. Muslims believe He has been doing this, in relatively minor matters, for the whole of human history. Thus, from the Muslim perspective, some of the commands God gave through Moses were abrogated by Jesus.

There are a few exceptions to this. There are a few cases where the LATER verse is abrogated by the EARLIER one, which makes one wonder why the later one was given in the first place. (this is according to Muslim scholars) I'll have to surf through Answering Islam to find the examples of this. I'll get back ASAP.

I will say that IMHO, contradiction mongering should NOT be used by Christians in evaluating other Scriptures, because contradiction usually depends on whose ox is gored. Many of the same ways we resolve or harmonize apparent contradictions in the Bible can apply to the Qur'an as well.

[Chuck_D]

As promised, here are a few quotes from Muslim scholars (by way of Answering Islam) about the abrogating verse proceeding that which is abrogated.

"Related to Sura 33:52: 'In Zamakhshari's opinion, 'A'esha's words show that verse 52 was abrogated by custom and by verse 49 ("O Prophet, We have made lawful for you...."). But an abrogating verse ought to come after the abrogated one. Nevertheless Soyuti, in his treatise on Qor'anic problems entitled ol-Etqan, maintains that in this case the earlier verse abrogated the later one.', page 128 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad", by Ali Dashti, pub. by Mazda


"The abrogator precedes the abrogated. In part 3, p. 69 the Suyuti remarks, 'In the Quran there is no abrogator (verse) without being preceded by an abrogated (verse) except in two verses, and some added a third one, while others added a fourth one.' (Al Itqan). Behind the Veil, Unmasking Islam, pub. by Voice of the Martyrs. page 226:


The entire text of the article can be found here: http://www.answering-islam.org/Silas/abrogation.htm

[Hugh Slaman]

Chuck,

Thank you for pointing that out to me. The view you quoted from Suyuti is very odd, and I would have to study the matter some more before I could comment.

I don't especially wish to defend abrogation here. I do not know much about it, nor is it relevant to the debate that, hopefully, Kris and I will have (at least not the way I set it up.)

As an aside, I don't think very highly of Silas' writings on Islam. He used to contribute regularly to soc.religion.islam, where, I'm afraid, he revealed that he was very much out of his depth. We haven't heard from him on that newsgroup for a while now.

Best,

Hugh

[Andrew]

Hugh, I suggest you need to think about this a little more. First, though, here is an extensive list of contradicitons:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra/index.html

What is the evidence to support Muhammad's claims to prophethood? Have you read any of the works of John Wansborough or Patricia Crone on the development of Islam? Have you considered the theological implications of accepting the Islamic account of Jesus' crucifixion? If one was to accept that Jesus was whisked off to heaven, someone else being crucified in his stead, then one must accept that Allah perpetrated the biggest deception the universe has ever known. Allah created a situation whereby the eye-witnesses (and those subsequently relying on them) were lead to believe, falsely, that Jesus was on the cross. Is that a god you can trust? One who, six hundred years after the event, supposedly tells people of this little trick and expects them to accept it, even though it contradicts not only the NT sources, but also the writings of Josephus and Tacitus.

[Kris]

I will debate you later Hugh, just got stuff in my personal life I need to deal with now

[Hugh Slaman]

Kris,

No problems. Just get back to me when you're ready.

Best,

Hugh.

[Hugh Slaman]

Andrew,

I was well aware of the list of contradictions at www.answering-islam.org. I have not examined every one, but the few that have caught my attention turned out not to be really contradictions at all. I look forward to examining more of them: I'm happy to do so in the context of a debate where my opponent can "keep me honest" :)

I had asked Kris to join me in this friendly debate, but he is not available now. Would you care to do so under the same conditions? Basically, you can select the alleged contradiction from that list which you find the most compelling, the one which you think a Muslim would have most difficulty expaining, and I will try my hand at explaining it. If I succeed, then that ought to cast doubt on the list as a whole, because I will have refuted the most plausible contradiction claim on there. If you're ready, we can begin.

" What is the evidence to support Muhammad's claims to prophethood?"

Well, as I said, I have not yet concluded that he was a Prophet. But the Koran is a very special and distinctive book: in how many books is the author consistently presented as God Himself? As I read it, even in the English translation, I do get the sense of being confronted with a vast, cosmic presence. It gives me the intuitive sense of not coming from a human mind. It is a book whose *sincerity* I find utterly impossible to doubt: it is a book in earnest, and not a deliberate fabrication. That alone makes its claims worth taking seriously.

I would of course like to back up these subjective glimmers of intuition with some more factual evidence. And I'm exploring that right now. I'm familiar with the traditional apologetic, and I want to deepen my understanding of the facts on which that apologetic is based.


"Have you read any of the works of John Wansborough or Patricia Crone on the development of Islam?"

Please, Andrew, be serious! :rofl:

Wansbrough I found to be unreadable: his prose seems designed to obfuscate. But he is very clear that he intends his ideas to be taken as "highly tentative" (I believe that is an exact quote from him), and I do not have time to waste on someone who is putting forward radical views of which he is evidently not convinced himself.

Patricia Crone co-authored the book "Hagarism" with Michael Cook. It is now nearly universally dismissed in the academic world, and if you read Michael Cook's more recent works, you find
that he doesn't take "Hagarism" seriously anymore: probably he just doesn't want to be a laughing-stock among his colleagues. But I have read "Hagarism", and it is merely a piece of anti-Muslim bigotry masquerading as scholarship. The arguments are embarrassingly weak, and do not deserve serious consideration (same with Crone's mentor Wansbrough.)

"If one was to accept that Jesus was whisked off to heaven, someone else being crucified in his stead, then one must accept that Allah perpetrated the biggest deception the universe has ever known. "

About as big as the deception He would have perpetrated if Crone's views were correct :)

Best,

Hugh

[Andrew]

Hugh,

"I look forward to examining more of them: I'm happy to do so in the context of a debate where my opponent can "keep me honest""

:thumb:

"But the Koran is a very special and distinctive book: in how many books is the author consistently presented as God Himself?"

Lol, that doesn't make it so!

"As I read it, even in the English translation, I do get the sense of being confronted with a vast, cosmic presence. It gives me the intuitive sense of not coming from a human mind. It is a book whose *sincerity* I find utterly impossible to doubt: it is a book in earnest, and not a deliberate fabrication. That alone makes its claims worth taking seriously."

I have now read the Qur'an four times back-to-front. :p And, of course, aspects of it requiring my attention for whatever reason. To be quite honest, I find it utterly depressing. However, what we are sharing are subjective reactions to the text and, really, don't say anything about validity. Lol, I don't wanna sound like a wuss, but listening to a lot of classical music (particularly the second movt of Mozart's concerto for flute and harp) can almost reduce me to tears-- I would say an almost 'spiritual' experience and one with many of those aspects you've described of your experiences with the Qur'an. Mozart's music isn't, however, divine!

I don't think scholars in their fields can be dismissed with a mere, "please, Andrew, be serious." It IS widely accepted that Hagarism is more radical that the evidence, perhaps, warrants, but the same certainly cannot be said of Meccan Trade which is on very firm footing. It's a dry read, though. :) You need to be dedicated.

C'mon, don't try and avoid that theological issue surrounding the crucifixion with a dismissive comment like that. :(

Andrew

[Hugh Slaman]

Andrew,

I will number these points.



(1) "I don't think scholars in their fields can be dismissed with a mere, "please, Andrew, be serious." "

Which I didn't do: I went on from that comment to summarize the reasons that I do not take those scholars very seriously.

The fact that somebody is a scholar in a field does not mean anything *by itself* to me, when the field exhibits the kind of widely varying opinion on fundamental questions that you find in contemporary Islamic studies.

Moreover, every field has its cranks or crackpots, and many scholars have agendas. This is only to be expected in a field like Islamic studies, given the controversial and sensitive nature of the topic. Similar comments would apply to New Testament studies, incidentally, (or the field in which I got my doctorate, for that matter, philosophy.)

(2) " I have now read the Qur'an four times back-to-front. And, of course, aspects of it requiring my attention for whatever reason. To be quite honest, I find it utterly depressing. However, what we are sharing are subjective reactions to the text and, really, don't say anything about validity. Lol, I don't wanna sound like a wuss, but listening to a lot of classical music (particularly the second movt of Mozart's concerto for flute and harp) can almost reduce me to tears-- I would say an almost 'spiritual' experience and one with many of those aspects you've described of your experiences with the Qur'an. Mozart's music isn't, however, divine!"


You seem to think that I was describing an emotional reaction to the Quran. That is probably why you are relating your own emotional reactions in your response to me(that it is "utterly depressing", or that certain pieces of music can reduce you to tears.)

But I wasn't trying to relate my emotional reactions to the Quran. I really don't think I've ever been moved very much by it.

I was trying to relate PERCEPTIONS as opposed to emotions, and these are perceptions of the kind that I rely on every day in my relationships, often without being able to pinpoint anything as the basis of my perception. For example, on many occasions I have felt absolutely sure that someone was lying, based on something about the way they talked, or their tone...but if I had tried to explain WHY I thought they were lying, I would never have been able to do so in a convincing way. Nevertheless I KNEW they were lying, and I was confirmed in that belief soon enough.

In the same way, I often know, by way of a kind of perception, that someone is being sincere. And the same with the Quran: I can see it is not a deliberate fraud, but an intensely earnest and sincere book.

I also have a fairly strong perception of something like a vast, cosmic presence behind the Quran.

I do not claim that any of this is conclusive. But it DOES mean that the Quran is worth taking seriously. Many writers, like Crone or Wansbrough, have dismissed the claims of Islam in advance. Not me. I treat it with deadly seriousness, as one genuinely possible candidate for the true religion (unlike, say Bahaism or Mormonism.)

(3) I wrote:
"But the Koran is a very special and distinctive book: in how many books is the author consistently presented as God Himself?"

You replied:
"Lol, that doesn't make it so!"

Well of COURSE that doesn't make it so!! :thumb:

I was trying to describe why I take the Koran SERIOUSLY as a candidate for being the speech of God. I have already stated that I am not at present a Muslim, so this was not an argument for the conclusion that it IS the speech of God.

I mean, independently of ANY religion at all, I find it quite plausible that there is a mind behind the vast world around us (that's another one of thse perceptions right there.) So then I find it plausible that this mind would communicate with us. One natural way to do so would be by way of a message, in some literary format which could reach many people, right?

I then find a book that purports to be from exactly such a mind, and STATES THAT IT IS FROM SUCH A MIND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. The book is obviously utterly sincere, as was the man who first promulgated it. Moreoever, I know of no other book which consistently presents itself as being the speech of the mind behind the world.

So I think to myself 'I'd better look into this! This really could be a communication from the mind I seem to perceive behind the world!"

And that, in schematic form, is how I ended up where I am.

(4) You wrote

"C'mon, don't try and avoid that theological issue surrounding the crucifixion with a dismissive comment like that."

I was hoping you would see more than just a dismissive comment. I was hoping to point out, in a succint way, that this theological issue exists also for people who take seriously the sceptical tradition in Islamic studies, which you seem to. In fact, I would argue that the theological issue you raise applies to Christians just as much as it does to Muslims, though it arises in a different form.

I did want to avoid the issue as well, since this was meant to be a thread about Koran contradictions. So go ahead and give me the most plausible contradiction you can find from the list you mentioned, and I will get to work.

:cheers:

[Happy Giraffe]

Just a few contradictions that I have picked from the site URL given above. Wondered what you made of them. :huh:
Ta

Quick or Slow Creation? Allah creates the heavens and the earth in six days [7:54] and many Muslims want to be modern and scientific, and make that six eons, but then again, He creates instantaneously [2:117], "Be! And it is


Heavens or Earth? Which was created first? First earth and then heaven [2:29], heaven and after that earth [79:27-30].

Calling together or ripping apart? In the process of creation heaven and earth were first apart and are called to come together [41:11], while 21:30 states that they were originally one piece and then ripped apart


No angel is arrogant, they all obey Allah [16:49-50], but: "And behold, we said to the ANGELS: 'Bow down to Adam'. And THEY bowed down, EXCEPT Iblis. He refused and was haughty." [2:34].


Messengers were never sent to other than their own people? So it is claimed in Sura 14:4 and 30:47. However, the Bible and the Qur'an, and the Muslim traditions confirm that Jonah was sent to a different nation.

[Andrew]

Hugh,

Whether or not someone has an agenda doesn't really say anything. The issue is whether they are making supported argument. In the case of Meccan Trade, Crone systematically undermines the idea that Mecca was the birthplace of Islam, demonstrating that not only was it not the trader of goods of sufficient value to sustain a society such as that described by the Islamic sources, but that it wasn't even on the trading route. Indeed, if it existed at all prior to Islamic development, it was a little barren blip. Crone's work is well supported by anthropological and archaeological evidence. Wansbrough has had to change his field of study due to death threats but in his Sectarian Milieu, he carefully analyses the evidence for the date one can put on the earliest Qur'an, the literary relationship between this and the Islamic materials, the development of such materials through their literary and social contexts and then makes the powerful case that Islam is the result of sectarian conflict and the rigorous self-definition that accompanies such conflict.

"You seem to think that I was describing an emotional reaction to the Quran. That is probably why you are relating your own emotional reactions in your response to me"

Partially, but not solely. The almost "'spiritual' experience" I noted is a perception ('though misguided) of something like transcendence. I am attracted to the music on this level, as well as on a more apparent level (the two are actually intertwined) but it doesn't make Mozart's music any less human.

"I mean, independently of ANY religion at all, I find it quite plausible that there is a mind behind the vast world around us (that's another one of thse perceptions right there.) So then I find it plausible that this mind would communicate with us. One natural way to do so would be by way of a message, in some literary format which could reach many people, right?"

No issue there. However, the Qur'an claims to be the final revelation from a god, a god who revealed Himself to a host of Biblical prophets. It is extraordinarily noteworthy that not only is this not prophesied (rather we note prophecy pointing to the salvific work of the Messiah), it doesn't conform to previous revelation. There is simply no evidence to warrant (and ample evidence against) making a life-changing commitment to the Islamic concept of deity.

"I then find a book that purports to be from exactly such a mind, and STATES THAT IT IS FROM SUCH A MIND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. The book is obviously utterly sincere, as was the man who first promulgated it. Moreoever, I know of no other book which consistently presents itself as being the speech of the mind behind the world."

First, we have agreed that the claim doesn't make the fact. That's an extraordinarily important fact to remember.

Second, what do you mean the book is utterly sincere? Which religious texts (of which there are many-- check here for a few: http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm) don't look like they're not taking themselves seriously? And, as Wansbrough notes, Islam is the product of some heavy-duty self-definition under the atmosphere of polemic sectarian controversy.

Third, I recommend you make a study of the actual state of the evidence ABOUT Muhammad. It isn't as early (actually VERY late) and you may believe. And of that PURPORTED evidence ABOUT Muhammad, it's certainly not flattering. Particularly a reading of the Sirat Rasulallah (the earliest biography on Muhammad and earlier than the collection of the hadith) shows a man who will abandon nearly every one of his principles for political gain. The Islamic writings also present a man who is seriously lacking in moral fibre, not least because of his sexual activity with Aisha when she was nine.

"I was hoping you would see more than just a dismissive comment. I was hoping to point out, in a succint way, that this theological issue exists also for people who take seriously the sceptical tradition in Islamic studies, which you seem to."

Is it a real theological issue whatever your fancy. The fact of the matter is that if one accepts the Qur'anic version of Jesus' plight, one must accept the deception of the known world on a matter of historical fact.

"So go ahead and give me the most plausible contradiction you can find from the list you mentioned, and I will get to work."

I assume you mean internal contradiction and I will present you with one. But, in the meanwhile, I offer the crucifixion as an example of an external contradiction-- an example where there is a collection of writings now known collectively as the New Testament that either record the crucifixion of Jesus or write on the presumption that it occurred (all close in date to the events), an example where a Jewish historian makes mention of the crucifixion as does, Tacitus, a Roman historian.

[Hugh Slaman]

Andrew,

"Whether or not someone has an agenda doesn't really say anything. "

It does when their commitment to an agenda distorts their perceptions, or leads to dishonesty. And human nature being what it is, that will happen more often than not when people have an agenda that they have formed independently of investigation.

In the case of sceptical revisionist scholarship on Islam, the agenda is clear enough: confidence in the Bible has been affected dramatically by critical studies of it, and much revisionist scholarship on Islam is driven both by the assumption that there must be a parallel way to undermine confidence in Islamic history, and the strong polemical desire to exhibit such a way. We certainly don't want those Muslims to sit confident in thinking that their centuries old hadith scholarship gives them an edge over the Bible, now do we? :)

"The issue is whether they are making supported argument."

Exactly. And it does NOT follow (or even come close to following) that someone is making a supported argument just because they are a "scholar in the field". Take a look at the many cognitive scientists who defend artificial intelligence, or take a look at Richard Dawkins and other evolutionists, or take a look at postmodern literary theory, and you will see what I mean.

In the case of Islamic studies, what reason is there to think that this field is worthy of my attention? I have seen none so far.

I may just take a look at Crone's book, though, since I am interested in the topic.

"However, the Qur'an claims to be the final revelation from a god, a god who revealed Himself to a host of Biblical prophets. It is extraordinarily noteworthy that not only is this not prophesied (rather we note prophecy pointing to the salvific work of the Messiah), it doesn't conform to previous revelation."

There are indeed discrepancies between the Bible and the Koran. To argue from these discrepancies to the conclusion that the Koran is not what it claims to be is to beg the question against Muslims.

"Second, what do you mean the book is utterly sincere? "

Have you ever met a person and known immediately from their visible conduct that they were being utterly sincere, without necessarily being able to say WHY you thought that? If you have, you know what I mean.

"And, as Wansbrough notes, Islam is the product of some heavy-duty self-definition under the atmosphere of polemic sectarian controversy."

Can you give me some verifiable reason to think that Wansbrough is worth my time? Many of his peers, even non-Muslims, do not respect him much at all.

"Third, I recommend you make a study of the actual state of the evidence ABOUT Muhammad. "

The best such studies are those of Harald Motzki, and in the essays of his that I have read, he is very close to the traditional islamic view.

"It isn't as early (actually VERY late) and you may believe."

Motzki has shown, on the contrary, that much of it does go back to the Companions...he has a recent article which argues exactly this for the Quran collection accounts. M.M. Azami presented a great deal of evidence concerning the use of writing to transmit hadith from the later part of the life of Muhammad onwards.

"The Islamic writings also present a man who is seriously lacking in moral fibre, not least because of his sexual activity with Aisha when she was nine."

There is much confusion on this topic. A good start can be made at

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Polemics/aishah.html

"Is it a real theological issue whatever your fancy. The fact of the matter is that if one accepts the Qur'anic version of Jesus' plight, one must accept the deception of the known world on a matter of historical fact."

Since when did Christendom = the known world?

By the same reasoning, if one accepts Crone's views, as you seem to, one must accept the deception of the known world on a matter of historical fact.

"I assume you mean internal contradiction and I will present you with one."

Thank you. There is much to discuss, and I prefer to take things one at a time. This thread was meant for the discussion of internal contradictions in the Koran. Other threads can be devoted to other topics.

[Hugh Slaman]

Andrew,

I just checked out the book from Crone you mentioned. It IS an interesting book. I think I will learn a lot from it, despite the glaring logical errors that have already caught my attention on some of its pages.

Best,

Hugh

[Andrew]

Hey, Hugh :)

Dismissing argument on the basis of an author's intentions is the fallacy argumentum ad hominem. One is free to analyse their argument in terms of their axioms and argument development, but not to dismiss them because of who they are.

"We certainly don't want those Muslims to sit confident in thinking that their centuries old hadith scholarship gives them an edge over the Bible, now do we?"

An edge over the Bible? Even if one accepts as historical the bulk of the hadith, there is nothing to substantiate a claim to prophethood. There are no miracles, Islam doesn't correspond to what, by its own reckoning, is previous revelation, indeed it holds out an entirely different concept of the divine. I might add that preservation doesn't, at all, imply truth but, as I say, isnads have been shredded over the past fifty years.

"In the case of Islamic studies, what reason is there to think that this field is worthy of my attention? I have seen none so far."

Well, you can be guided by people who study these issues for a living, or you can merely assume, at face value, that what you're reading is the narration of a companion of Muhammad.

"There are indeed discrepancies between the Bible and the Koran. To argue from these discrepancies to the conclusion that the Koran is not what it claims to be is to beg the question against Muslims."

No. The Islamic sources, by THEIR reckoning, place Islam at the end of the divine's interaction with humanity. When one goes back to these sources, one notes what I have written above.

"Have you ever met a person and known immediately from their visible conduct that they were being utterly sincere, without necessarily being able to say WHY you thought that? If you have, you know what I mean."

I'm not going to contend with your SUBJECTIVE experiences. I just hope you don't see such subjectivity as cause to make a committment to Islam. We can only discuss evidence here.

"Since when did Christendom = the known world?"

It isn't, and nor did I say so. The NT was written by Christians but, as I noted, the crucifixion is recorded by Josephus (a Jewish historian) and Tacitus (a Roman historian). Writing later and polemically, Lucian (another Roman) also mentions the crucifixion. I might add that apart from Muslims and a tiny bunch called Christ-mythers (who deny a historical Jesus walked the earth), the whole world accepts what is probably the most supported fact of antiquity. Now, if we were to accept the Islamic account of the crucifixion (which is against all the early evidence), one would have the scope of this theological problem!

As to Aisha, I have read that article. I especially liked the part when, after citing a hadith in which Muhammad dreams about Aisah even before the marriage the author states, "... like everything that the Prophet(P) did, there was wisdom behind it and lessons to be learned from it. The wisdom behind such incidents provides us guidance on the basis of human morality...." :eww: The article makes matters worse by citing hadith showing Aisha to be a girl, physically and emotionally. She didn't even know Muhammad was going to turn up and take her away! (Bukhari 5.234) The article attempts to dismiss our reaction to the relationship as 21st century bigotry but it cannot be reduced to merely that. At nine years old, a girl is mature neither physically or mentally and having sex with a child leads to physical and mental damage. Do you know what nine year old girls look like!

I'll discuss Wansbrough and others later.

Andrew

[Hugh Slaman]

Hi Andrew,

There is much to be said about what you've written. I will note only the following points in passing:

"Dismissing argument on the basis of an author's intentions is the fallacy argumentum ad hominem. One is free to analyse their argument in terms of their axioms and argument development, but not to dismiss them because of who they are."

Given what I've seen of human nature, a person with a primarily polemical agenda is unlikely to come up with arguments that are not significantly distorted by that very agenda. For that reason, such people are not near the top of my list of people to study. If I study them, I will not, of course, claim their arguments are actually invalid on the basis of who they are. But I am entirely free to dismiss their arguments as worthy of my time, on the basis of who they are. Is the difference clear?

I wish to study people who are motivated by a love of the truth. Classical Islamic scholars fit that description far better than do most contemporary scholars

You wrote

"Well, you can be guided by people who study these issues for a living"

Why? People make whole careers out of writing bad arguments!

Would you recommend that I be guided by Geza Vermes' views of Jesus simply because he makes a living studying issues pertaining to Jesus? Seriously?

The fact that somebody studies these issues for a living is no guide to the value of their work. One can easily make a living by dressing up mere propaganda as objective scholarship. And this is all too common, I'm afraid, in certain fields: Islamic studies, New Testament studies, cognitive science, literary theory, evolutionary theory, much of philosophy, much of political science, and on and on.

What have these people (Western Islamicists) actually ACHIEVED in their studies that I should take them seriously? Are Crone's ideas taken seriously by all who share the same level of expertise and prestige as she does? No. Are Wansbrough's? No. Are John Burton's? No. Are Motzki's? No. Is there a SINGLE issue of fundamental importance that all, or the vast majority of, the most qualified scholars in this area agree on?

You wrote:

"There are no miracles,"

This is an old claim from Christians. It is based on a mistaken reading of certain passages of the Quran, resulting from a form of wishful thinking that is on the lookout for any way to claim superiority over Islam. In fact, the authentic hadith literature (authenticated by professionals who lived much closer to the time of Muhammad than Crone at al., and who followed a much more sensible methodology than they do), contains vast numbers of detailed, eyewitness accounts of miracles performed by Muhammad. I will post a few as time permits. I will take those over most Gospel miracle stories any day at all.

Best,

Hugh

[Andrew]

Here's a summary of Schacht's work...

I should like to present some ideas on what I think, is a necessary revaluation of Islamic traditions in the light of our present knowledge; but am at a loss whether to call my conclusions something new and unprecedented or something old and well known. No one could have been more surprised than I was by the results which the evidence of the texts has forced upon me during the last ten years or so; but looking back I cannot see what other result could possibly be consistent with the very foundations of our historical and critical study of the first two or three centuries of Islam. One of these foundations, I may take it for granted, is Goldziher's discovery that the traditions from the Prophet and from his Companions do not contain more or less authentic information on the earliest period of Islam to which they claim to belong, but reflect opinions held during the first two and a half centuries after the Hijra.

This fundamental discovery, as I scarcely need emphasize, put our study of early Islam for the first time on a sound basis, and I know of no serious contribution to the history of early Islam in any of its aspects which does not take this character of Islamic traditions into account. But whilst general homage has continued to be paid to the work of Goldziher1, his results have gradually been whittled down and their implications neglected in the sixty years since they were first published. Historical intuition, as it was sometimes called, began to take the place of sound historical criticism2. This lowering of standards need not surprise us. It is only natural for a historian to wish to have positive conclusions, and I agree whole-heartedly that it is not satisfactory to regard the collections of Islamic traditions as a mass of contradictory views formulated at uncertain times by unknown persons.3 This, however, is a caricature rather than a definition of what follows from Goldziher's discovery, and I propose to show a workable and I think, a successful alternative to the counsel of despair which, finding no guiding thread through the mass of traditions, tries by arbitrary guesswork to build a seemingly historical picture of certain aspects of early Islam.

I elaborated my method while studying the origins of Muhammadan jurisprudence.4 Law is a particularly good subject on which to develop and test a method which claims to provide objective criteria for a critical approach to Islamic traditions, and that for two reasons. Firstly, our literary sources carry us back in law farther than, say, in history, and for the crucial second century they are much more abundant on law than on any other subject. Secondly, our judgement on the formal and abstract problems of law and legal science is less likely to be distorted by preconceived ideas (those expressed in our sources as well as our own), than if we had to judge directly on the issues of political and religious history of Islam.

For instance, the analysis of technical legal problems shows that the doctrine of the Medinese often lags behind and is dependent on that of the Iraqians; our sources show that the term "Sunna of the Prophet" is early, Iraqian and not Medinese; and the whole concept of Medina as the true home of the Sunna turns out to be a fiction of the early third Century and as yet unknown to the end of the second. This direct evidence of our sources enables us to draw conclusions which we could not draw with anything like the same certainty if we had to apply our historical intuition or personal prejudice to the historical tradition which is notoriously weighed in favor of Medina and against the Umayyads. I shall later have occasion to mention another group of examples, in which the evidence of legal traditions is of even greater material importance for the correct appreciation of the Umayyad period.

Let us consider the broad outlines of the reasoning by which we can arrive at the new approach to Islamic traditions which I have in mind. Volume VII of the printed edition of Shafi'i's Kitab al-Umm5 contains several treatises in which Shafi'i discusses the doctrines of his predecessors: Iraqians, Medinese, and Syrians. Widely as these ancient schools of law differ amongst themselves, they are agreed on one essential point, which divides them sharply from Shafi'i. According to the ancient schools, traditions from the Prophet as such do not as yet possess an overriding authority; only Shafi'i, obviously under the influence of the pressure group of traditionists, upholds consistently the doctrine that when there exists a tradition from the Prophet, no other argument is valid. Shaf'i's work is full of monotonous repetitions of this essential doctrine of his, and it is clear that this doctrine was a startling innovation in his time.

It is certain, too, that the great mass of legal traditions which invoke the authority of the Prophet, originated in the time of Shafi'i and later; we can observe this directly by following the successive stages of legal discussion and the ever-increasing number of relevant traditions incorporating gradual refinements. It can further be shown that legal traditions from the Prophet began to appear, approximately, in the second quarter of the second century A.H.. This explains why the doctrine of Medina as established by Malik in his Muwatta', disagrees often with traditions from the Prophet with Medinese isnads, related by Malik himself. These traditions sometimes express Iraqian doctrines and for this reason alone cannot represent the old Arab customary law of Medina as has been pretended.6 They had gained currency in Medina immediately before Malik and are the result of the activity of a pressure group of traditionists, whose alms were the same as those of a corresponding group in Iraq, each group in sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful opposition to its local school of law.

This is the first consideration; the second is as follows. In the course of his polemics against the ancient schools of law, Shafi'i continuously reproaches them for relying on traditions from persons other than the Prophet, from his Companions and their Successors, rather than on traditions from the Prophet himself. This is borne out by the evidence of the texts. Malik's Muwatta' con_tains 822 traditions from the Prophet as against 898 from others, that is 613 from Companions and 285 from Successors. Shaibani's edition of the Muwatta' contains 429 traditions from the Prophet as against 750 from others, that is 628 from Companions, 112 from Successors, and 10 from later authorities. The Kitab al Athar of Abu Yusuf contains 189 traditions from the Prophet, 372 from Com_panions, 549 from Successors. In the incomplete text of the Kitab al-Athar of Shaibani7 we find 131 traditions from the Prophet, 284 from Companions, 550 from Successors, and 6 from later authorities. It cannot be doubted that the stage of referring to the teaching and the example of the Prophet was preceded by, and grew out of, an earlier stage in which reference was made to Companions (and Successors) only. It is not the case, as has often been supposed a priori, that it was the most natural thing, from the first generation after the Prophet onward, to refer to his real or alleged rulings in all doubtful cases.8

The reference to Companions, as customary in the ancient schools of law, was not even of the same kind as the later reference to traditions from the Prophet, when a separate precedent was demanded for every individual decision. Instead of relying on individual traditions from Companions, the several schools adopted rather one or the other Companion as their eponym, or I might say patron saint, putting their doctrine as a whole under his aegis, and referring to him as their authority in general terms. In the case of the Kufians, for whom Ibn Mas'ud fills this role, we can still see clearly that the general reference to Ibn Mas'ud himself grew out of a similar reference to the Companions of Ibn Mas'ud as the alleged founders of the Kufan doctrine, and most of the members of this group who are mentioned by name, turn out to be relatives of the Kufian Successor, Ibrahim Nakha'i, who died in A.H. 95 or 96, and to whom most of the earliest Kufian doctrine was attributed in the first place. In other words: even the general reference to Companions (or to Successors), a stage which preceded the technical and formal reference to individual traditions from the Prophet, date only from about the year A.H. 100.

We must therefore abandon the gratuitous assumptions that there existed originally an authentic core of information going back to the time of the Prophet, that spurious and tendentious additions were made to it in every succeeding generation, that many of these were eliminated by the criticism of isnads as practised by the Muhammadan scholars, that other spurious traditions escaped rejection, but that the genuine core was not completely overlaid by later accretions. If we shed these prejudices we become free to consider the Islamic traditions objectively in their historical context, within the framework of the development of the problems to which they refer, and this enables us to find a number of criteria for establishing the relative and even the absolute chronology of a great many traditions. We find these criteria both in the text and in the isnad of traditions, and I should like to mention some of the more obvious conclusions.

[Andrew]

One of these is that isnads have a tendency to grow backwards, that after going back to, say, a Successor to begin with, they are subsequently often carried back to a Companion and finally to the Prophet himself;9 in general we can say: the more perfect the isnad, the later the tradition. Whenever traditions claim an additional guarantee by presenting themselves as transmitted amongst members of one family, e.g., from father to son and grandson, from aunt to nephew, or from master to freedman, it can be positively shown that these family isnads are not a primary indication of authenticity, but only a device for securing its appeara_nce.10 In other words: the existence of a family isnad, contrary to what it pre_tends, is a positive indication that the tradition in question is not authentic. This applies, for instance, to the legal and historical traditions related, according to their isnads, on the authority of 'Urwa b. Zubayr by his son Hisham, and on the authority of Ibn 'Umar either by his sun Salim or by his freedman Nafi. I do not deny, of course, that 'Urwa was the father of Hisham, or Ibn 'Umar the father of Salim, or that a person called Nafi' was a freedman of Ibn 'Umar. But it is cer_tain that neither 'Urwa nor Ibn 'Umar had anything do to with the traditions in question, and it can even be positively shown that the references to Hisham, Salim, and Nafi' themselves are spurious.

Our new approach to traditions disposes of the fictitious reputation as forgers acquired by some Companions of the Prophet. I mentioned how the nat_ural desire to push back the frontiers of the unknown, caused some scholars after Goldziher to presume the authenticity of more and more traditions until they found themselves back in the generation of the Companions, in the thirty years after the death of the Prophet. From making the first step into the time of the Prophet himself, they were prevented by the influence of Goldziher's achievement and by their own critical sense. But then they had to credit the Companions of the Prophet, during the first thirty years or so after the death of their master, with the large-scale fabrication of spurious and contradictory information about him. This opinion seemed to gain credence from the fact that some groups of tra_ditions which go under the name of individual Companions, show indeed common features, and from these features the alleged characteristics and ten_dencies of the personalities and doctrines of particular Companions were deduced.11 The common characteristics and tendencies, however, are not those of the Companions themselves but of schools of thought in the second century, which put themselves under the aegis of the Companions in question in the way I have described before, and it is unwarranted to consider the Companions of the Prophet personally responsible for the large-scale creation of spurious traditions.

All this can be proved in detail with regard to legal traditions, and I should now like to say a few words on the application of the same method of research to traditions concerning other subjects. We ought, of course, not to overlook the possibility of different developments in different fields. Goldziher has pointed out that those traditions that were current in the Umiyyad period, were hardly concerned with law but rather with ethics, asceticism, eschatology, and politics.12 This is confirmed by additional evidence and by the modest remains of Umayyid literature which have come to light since.13 "As early as the year 128 we read of an official appointing a committee of pious men to make a collection of sunan or approved practices and sayir rules of conduct, which were then to be written out by his scribe";14 but this refers to the recording of a political program of government, and not to legal matters or traditions.

A.J. Wensinck, in studying the traditions concerning points of dogma, came to the conclusion that they reflected the development of dogma only as far as the end of the Umayyid period.15 "The main explanation of this," Wensinck adds, "is that the large mass of materials contained in the canonical collections, though it received its final form in the middle of the third century A.H., covers a period reaching no farther than the beginning of the second century." But this generalization goes beyond the facts of the case, and Wensinck's assumption that the same applies to traditions concerning questions of law, is contradicted by the whole evidence of the ancient texts. That the development of dogmatic tradition was indeed different from that of legal ones becomes obvious, for example, from Shaibani's Kitab al-Athar, where the dogmatic sections (pp. 56-60) consist almost entirely of traditions from the Prophet himself, whereas they form only a small minority in the other sections.

Even so, dogmatic traditions from the Prophet ought not to be dated back into the first century indiscriminately. The dogmatic treatise ascribed to Hasan Basri, whether or not it is genuinely his, cannot be later than the very early years of the second century,16 and it shows that dogmatic traditions on the important problem of free will and human responsibility hardly existed at the time of its composition. There is no trace of traditions from the Prophet, and the author states explicitly: "Every opinion which is not based on the Koran, is erroneous." Two important dogmatic traditions in particular (they occur in the classical collections) cannot yet have existed when the treatise was written. The reasoning of one, "the writing of the recording pens has dried, and on every forehead is written Blessed or Damned," is decried by the author, as an excuse of his opponents for breaking Allah's commands, and the argument, of the other, that one should not [‘not’ was missing in the original article, but clearly intended] hobble one's camel but put one's trust in Allah, is used by the author against what became later the orthodox doctrine.17 If we compare the relevant chapters in Malik's Muwatta' and in Shaibini's Kitab al-Athar (the authors of these two works died in A.H. 179 and 189, respectively), the growth of dogmatic traditions, concerning the same problem, about the middle of the second century becomes obvious.

[Andrew]

A field on which the new method can be applied with particular age is the vast field of traditions pertaining to history. The authorities for legal and historical information are to a great extent identical; apart from protagonist such as 'Umar, 'Ali, Mu'awiya, and 'Umar b. 'Abdal 'Aziz. I will mention only important transmitters of traditions such as 'Urwa and Hisham, of whom I spoke before, Zuhri and Sha'bi. If the family isnad with the names 'Urwa and Hisham in it serves to lend authority to legal traditions put into circulation after the time of Hisham, the same applies to historical traditions with the same isnad. If we can show that the legal opinions attributed to Sha'bi are invariably spurious, that this ancient worthy of Kufa had nothing to do with the nascent religious law of Islam as it was being elaborated in his hometown, and that his name was later claimed by two contending schools of thought we are able to assess his political activity much more objectively than if we looked at it through the colored glass of the religious and legal prejudices of a later generation.

As regards the biography of the Prophet, traditions of legal and of historical interest cannot possibly be divided from one another. The important point is that to a much higher degree than hitherto suspected, seemingly historical information on the Prophet is only the background for legal doctrines and therefore devoid of independent value. For instance, the Medinese regarded the marriage concluded by a pilgrim as invalid, the Meccans and the Iraqians regarded it as valid. The Medinese projected their doctrine back to Ibn 'Umar and, with spurious circum_stantial details, to 'Umar himself. The opposite doctrine was expressed in a tradi_tion to the effect that the Prophet married Maymuna as a pilgrim. This tradition was countered, on the part of the Medinese, by another tradition related by Sulaiman b. Yasar who was a freedman of Maymuna to the effect that the Prophet married her in Medina, and therefore not as a pilgrim, and by more explicit tra_dition to the same effect related by Yazid b. Asamm, a nephew of Maymuna,18 We see that even the details of this important event in the life of the Prophet are not based on authentic historical recollection, notwithstanding the family isnads; but are fictitious and intended to support legal doctrines.

This transformation of legal propositions into pseudo historical information is one aspect; another is what might be called the independent growth of alleged historical material concerning the biography of the Prophet. We can observe this growth directly over the greater part of the second century in the discussions on the law of war, concerning which the biography of the Prophet was searched for precedents. The polemical nature of these discussions makes it safe to conclude that whenever an author does not mention a relevant historical tradition which agrees with his own doctrine and disagrees with that of his opponents, he was not aware of it, in other words, it cannot have as yet existed in his time. We find new traditions at every successive stage of doctrine, and the lawyers occasionally object to historical traditions adduced by their opponents because they are unknown to or not accepted by the specialists on the biography of the Prophet. A considerable part of the standard biography of the Prophet in Medina, as it appeared in the second half of the second century A.H., was of very recent origin and is therefore without independent historical value.19

But the real test of the new approach to Islamic traditions which I advocate lies not in the negative and critical conclusions derived from it, important and timely as these may be; it lies in the value of the method as a tool for arriving at new and positive results. Here are some of these results in so far as they relate to Umayyad administration. An attentive study of legal traditions reveals by certain indications, that a number of problems of early Muhammadan law arose from Umayyad administrative practice. If we collect the points which we must postulate an Umayyad administrative regulation is the starting-point of Muhammadan jurisprudence, we find that practically all fall under the three great head_ings of fiscal law, law of war and penal law.

For instance: the Umayyad administration imposed the zakat tax on horses, it used to deduct the zakat from Government pensions; it levied zakat tax on the property of minors. When payments were made in kind the administrition issued assignments on its stores which were considered negotiable. The Government gave detailed regulations on the levying of tolls is a prospective residuary heirs it restricted legacies to one-third of the estate. As regards the law of war, it was the policy of the Umayyads not to lay waste the enemy country wantonly; the Government controlled the distribution of booty, and recognized the customary right of the killer to the spoils.

The Umayyad administration did not interfere with the working of the old Arab lex talionis, it only supervised the payment of weregeld: it deducted the sums due from the pension account of the culprit or of his tribe, if necessary in three yearly installments, and paid them to the family of the victim; if a Christian was killed, only half the weregeld was paid to his family but the Treasury took the other half. Concerning the purely Islamic hadd punishments and similar penalties, the administration took a greater interest, though its practice differed in some respects from that regarded as normal later. The non-Muslim slave who tried to escape to the enemy was killed or crucified at the discretion of the Government, but the Government refused to cut off the hands of slaves who had escaped in Islamic territory and stolen, and reserved to itself the right to carry out all hadd punishments for theft on slaves. It was the practice under the Umayyads not to apply hadd punishments in the army in enemy country, for fear of desert_ion, but military commanders were otherwise entitled to apply them, and ban_ishment as part of the punishment for fornication was introduced in the interest of public morals. Traces of Umayyad regulations outside the three fields mentioned are confined to the administration of justice, to the remarriage of wives whose husbands disappeared and were no more heard of, and to fixing the position of the grandfather in the law of inheritance.

The points I have mentioned are not simple surmises; they are based on positive indications in traditions, if we are prepared to look at them historically and critically. I can fairly claim it as a confirmation of the soundness of my method that it shows the existence of Umayyad administrative regulations on those subjects on which we should more or less have expected them. But the full inference from the details I mentioned has never been drawn. This is the best proof that a truly historical and critical study of Islamic traditions is not only destructive but constructive that it helps us not only to demolish the one-sided traditional sham-_castle, but to use its materials for building a truer more adequate, and more sat_isfactory model of the past.

Since I presented these conclusions to the Twenty-first Congress of Orien_talists in Paris, I have found an independent confirmation of them in a paper of R. Brunschvig, "Ibn 'Abdalhakam et la Conquête de l'Afrique du Nord par les Arabes."21 In this critical study Professor Brunschvig examines "historical" tra_ditions relating to the Arab conquest of North Africa and shows how deeply imbued they are with legal interest, how the seemingly straightforward state_ments on historical persons and events are often nothing but decisions of legal problems, provided with alleged historical precedents; he concludes that the whole of the "historical" narrative is subject to grave doubts, that only the barest outlines represent, or are likely to represent, authentic historical recollection, and that the details are unreliable.

To sum up: In the field of law, the "Sunna" of the Prophet based on formal traditions from him, developed out of the "living tradition" of each of the ancient schools of law, the common doctrine of its specialists. Some of its features might, of course, in the last resort, go back to an early period, but it acquired its super-structure of formal traditions from the Prophet with proper isnads only about the middle of the second century A.H., as a result of the activity of the traditionists. The imposing appearance of the isnads in the classical collections of traditions ought not to blind us to the true character of these traditions, which is that of a comparatively recent systematization of the "living tradition." The same is true in the field of history; here too, the vague collective memory of the community was formalized, systematized, replenished with details, and shaped into formal traditions with proper isnads only in the second century A.H..

[Andrew]

NOTES

This paper was read to Section VIII (A) of the 21st International Congress of Orientalists, Paris, July, l948. I have added notes and a few paragraphs.

1 H.A.R. Gibb, Mohammadanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 196, calls Goldziher's Muhammedanische Studien "the standard critical study of the Hadith."

2 C. H. Becker, Islamstudien, vol.1 (Leipzig, 1924-1932), pp. 522, 526, uses the expressions "der historische Instinkt" and "das historische Gefühl" in an otherwise fair and balanced review of Lammens, Fatima. But the reaction to Lammens's one-sided thesis ought not to have left to a reversion from historical criticism, a thing which Becker himself had feared would happen.

3 I borrow this formula from A. N. Poliak, in AJCL 57, (1940): 52.

4 See my forthcoming book, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

5 Shafi’i, Kitab al Umm (Cairo: Bulaq Press, 1325/1907).

6 E.g., by C. A. Nallino, Raccolta di Scritti, vol. 4 (Rome, 1942), p. 89. Nallino arguments take no account of the legal texts of the second century A.H.

7 Abu Usuf, Kitab al-Athar (Cairo, 1355-1936).

8 Shaibani, Kitab al-Athar (Lahore, 1329/1911).

9 Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, vol. 2 (Halle, 1889-1890), p. 72, rightly emphasizes the fact that only very few decisions of the Prophet on legal subjects can have been current in the Umayyad period.

10 This has already been pointed out by Goldziher in his Muhammedanische Studien, ii. p.157, and in ZDMG I (1896): 483f.

11 This has already been noticed by Gertrude H. Stern, Marriage in Early Islam, (London, 1939), pp. 12, 16, although Miss Stern on the whole seems to take isnads to readily at their face value.

12 The most ambitious effort of this kind was made by Prince L. Caetani, Annal dell Islam, vol.1 (Milan, 1905-1926) Introduction, 19,24-29.

13 Muhammedanische Studien, ii. p. 72f.

14 See C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, vol. 1 (Weimar 1898-1902), (and Supplementbände). pp. 64ff. Brockelmann erroneously states that Muhammad b. 'Abdalrahman 'Amiri, one of the reputed earliest collectors of legal traditions from the Prophet, died in 120; he died in A.H. 158 (Ibn Hajar'Asqalani, Tahdhib al Tahdhih, ix, no.503).

15 D. S. Margoliouth, The Early Development of Mohammadanism (London, 1914), p.91, referring to Tabari, Annales, ii, p. 1918.

16 A. J. Wensinck, The Muslim Creed (Cambridge, 1932), pp. 52, 59.

17 Text, ed. H. Ritter, in Der Islam, 21 (1933): 67ff. translation and commentary by J. Obermann, in JAOS 55 (1935): 1380

18 The first tradition has parallels, somewhat differently worded, in Shaibani's Kitab al-Athar, pp.56, 60 (not yet in the Muwatta), and appears for the first time in Ibn Hanbal.

19 See Shaibani, Muwatta' (Lucknow, 1297 and 1306), p. 208: Malik, Muwatta, (Cairo, 1310), ii, p. 183; Shafi'i, Kitab Ikhtilaf al-Hadith, on the margin of his Kitab al Umm, vii, p. 238.

20 This conclusion agrees well with the evidence, correctly interpreted, of the frag_ments of Musa b. 'Uqba's (d. 141) Kitab al-Maghazi. I intend to discuss it in detail in a separate paper.

21 In Annales de l'lnstitut d'Études Orientales (Faculté des Lettres de l'Universite' d'Alger), vi, 1942-1947, pp. 108-56. The paper is dated January 1945, and was published in October, 1948.

[dizzle]

Dear Andrew and Hugh:

I am thoroughly enjoying your exchanges. It is very informative.

On a side note Andrew, just as an FYI, normally at TWeb we discourage the posting of large blocks of text by splitting up posts... however, in this case, I see you are not expecting Hugh to respond to the whole thing, and I do not believe he would have an objection, and in light of the direction of this thread, I would have approved such a rule exception. FYI, just for future reference, ordinarily, that is discouraged. Thank you for the very informative exchange. As a Christian who is not that educated on Islam while not totally ignorant, this thread is very interesting to me.

[Andrew]

Hugh,

"Why? People make whole careers out of writing bad arguments! Would you recommend that I be guided by Geza Vermes' views of Jesus simply because he makes a living studying issues pertaining to Jesus? Seriously?"

I said, one can analyse the axioms and development of argument but one cannot reject an author simply because of who they are. Anyway, we're getting away from discussions of Islam.

"This is an old claim from Christians."

Hey, old doesn't mean dud!

"It is based on a mistaken reading of certain passages of the Quran, resulting from a form of wishful thinking that is on the lookout for any way to claim superiority over Islam."

Let's discuss.

"the authentic hadith literature (authenticated by professionals who lived much closer to the time of Muhammad than Crone at al., and who followed a much more sensible methodology than they do), contains vast numbers of detailed, eyewitness accounts of miracles performed by Muhammad. I will post a few as time permits."

Like the supposed splitting of the moon? Even today you will hear Muslims claim that the American astronauts, upon landing on the moon took pictures of a large crack, or fissure on the moon's surface, which is what remains from Muhammad's split.

"I will take those over most Gospel miracle stories any day at all."

Really? Bearing in mind the hadith were compiled centuries after hijra, it's hard to imagine an even remotely comparative value. And what about corroboration from hostile sources? Josephus also records Jesus as being a miracle worker and Jewish tradition, writing polemically, tries to explain Jesus' miracles (which presupposes they were actually performed) as socery.

[Andrew]

Sorry, Dee Dee. I attempted to attach an HTML so he could read it but I see that doesn't work.

Won't do it again.

[Hugh Slaman]

Hey Andrew,


"I said, one can analyse the axioms and development of argument but one cannot reject an author simply because of who they are."

It really depends on what you mean by "reject an author". If you mean, "conclude that his arguments are invalid", then yes, I agree with you, an argument should be assessed on its merits as an argument alone.

If, on the other hand, by "reject an author", you mean "dismiss him as unworthy of the time needed to assess his arguments", then I disagree with you: I will indeed continue to dismiss authors based on who they are.

"Anyway, we're getting away from discussions of Islam."

I think this point is important and deserves to be stressed: people do not automatically get a hearing for their views and arguments concerning Islam because they bear the title "scholar". Many scholars are cranks, even in the sciences.

""It is based on a mistaken reading of certain passages of the Quran, resulting from a form of wishful thinking that is on the lookout for any way to claim superiority over Islam."

Let's discuss."

Sure, but one thing at a time, please! I'm already feeling overwhelmed. This was meant to be a thread on contradictions, and I have not yet even been able to respond to any. We should pick a particular, specific topic to discuss, and then another one.

If we don't proceed in an orderly way, we will just go around in circles.

"Like the supposed splitting of the moon? "

That was reported by over ten Companions. Can you think of a Gospel miracle that has so many eyewitnesses to back it up?

There are also many instances of trees moving and speaking at Muhammad's command, water flowing from rocks at his touch, miraculous multiplication of dates and water, miraculous healing, prophecies, communication with animals....the list of miracles declared authentic by hadith scholars is quite overwhelming, in fact.

"Bearing in mind the hadith were compiled centuries after hijra, it's hard to imagine an even remotely comparative value."

The fact that the hadith were compiled centuries after hijra is irrelevant. That refers only to the first comprehensive collections to be made: smaller written collections were well-known before that, from the days of the Prophet in fact (see Azami's dissertation for details.)

The question is: were these hadiths being reliably transmitted? That is where the science of isnad comes into the picture: many miracle stories will have multiple isnads involving independent authorities. Moreover, writing was used as a means of transmission of hadiths from the earliest days, as established by Azami in his doctoral dissertation from Cambridge, "Studies in Early Hadith Literature."

There are very good reasons to take isnads seriously (I will summarize them later). The Gospels, on the other hand, are taken by Muslims to be weak precisely because of our lack of knowledge of their isnads. We just don't know enough about who it was who transmitted these at each stage to warrant confidence in their contents.

On the contrary, the miracle stories in Bukhari can be traced back, step by step, to an eyewitness, by way of scholars who had been carefully screened for their conscientiousness, reliability, and rigour in transmitting reports.

One of the weaknesses of Crone's work is that she cannot avail herself of the enormous amount of work done by early Muslim scholars in distinguishing between reliable and unreliable authorities.

It seems to be generally accepted that Schact's work on this topic was riddled with mistakes. Azami also wrote a book entirely devoted to criticising Schact's views.

"And what about corroboration from hostile sources?"

Among the many pagan accusations to which the Quran responds are the claims that Muhammad was a "sorcerer". The Quran reassures him that many earlier prophets faced the same accusation.

[Andrew]

Hugh,

"[The splitting of the moon] was reported by over ten Companions. Can you think of a Gospel miracle that has so many eyewitnesses to back it up?"

First, outside those who merely adopt the traditional view of hadith because they are Muslims themselves, no modern scholar takes seriously the claim that the hadith can be traced back to Muhammad and his Companions. Rather, they "do not contain more or less authentic information on the earliest period of Islam to which they claim to belong, but reflect opinions held during the first two and a half centuries after the Hijra." (Schacht) Analysing the development of the hadith and its nexus with law, he notes:

"... our sources show that the term "Sunna of the Prophet" is early, Iraqian and not Medinese; and the whole concept of Medina as the true home of the Sunna turns out to be a fiction of the early third Century and as yet unknown to the end of the second."

"The reference to Companions, as customary in the ancient schools of law, was not even of the same kind as the later reference to traditions from the Prophet, when a separate precedent was demanded for every individual decision. Instead of relying on individual traditions from Companions, the several schools adopted rather one or the other Companion as their eponym, or I might say patron saint, putting their doctrine as a whole under his aegis, and referring to him as their authority in general terms."

"... isnads have a tendency to grow backwards, that after going back to, say, a Successor to begin with, they are subsequently often carried back to a Companion and finally to the Prophet himself; in general we can say: the more perfect the isnad, the later the tradition."

"In the field of law, the "Sunna" of the Prophet based on formal traditions from him, developed out of the "living tradition" of each of the ancient schools of law, the common doctrine of its specialists. Some of its features might, of course, in the last resort, go back to an early period, but it acquired its super-structure of formal traditions from the Prophet with proper isnads only about the middle of the second century A.H., as a result of the activity of the traditionists. The imposing appearance of the isnads in the classical collections of traditions ought not to blind us to the true character of these traditions, which is that of a comparatively recent systematization of the "living tradition." The same is true in the field of history; here too, the vague collective memory of the community was formalized, systematized, replenished with details, and shaped into formal traditions with proper isnads only in the second century A.H.."

Second, the miracle sounds like something out of the NT Apochrypha and can be seen as an example of vivid imaginations working from:
1) a Qur'an that is conspicuously miracle-free
2) on the figurative language of the Qur'an (sura 54)

"One of the weaknesses of Crone's work is that she cannot avail herself of the enormous amount of work done by early Muslim scholars in distinguishing between reliable and unreliable authorities."

So unreliable do the modern non-Muslim scholars find the traditional account, Crone has memorably written, that "one could, were one so inclined, rewrite most of Montgomery Watt's biography of Muhammad in reverse."

"Among the many pagan accusations to which the Quran responds are the claims that Muhammad was a "sorcerer". The Quran reassures him that many earlier prophets faced the same accusation."

Lol, corroboration doesn't mean look at the Qur'an, look away, then look at the Qur'an again. Not only do the different books comprising the NT corroborate each other, each being a different work, when one looks beyond what is now called the NT altogether, one finds Jesus' miracles are presupposed in hostile Jewish writings.

Now, I brought up the NT Apochrypha before, let's return to it. Reading through the Qur’an, one will read two curious tales about Jesus:
1) Jesus speaking from the cradle (suras 3:36, 19:28-34)
2) Jesus turning clay birds into living birds (suras 3:49, 5:110)

The sources of these fictitious stories have been easily identified:

#1 Jesus speaking from the cradle is a borrowing from The Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, a second century Arabic apocryphal fable from Egypt. The original reads thus:

... Jesus spake when he was in the cradle, and said to his mother: "Mary, I am Jesus the Son of God, the Word, which thou didst bring forth according to the declaration of the angel Gabriel, and My Father hath sent me for the salvation of the world."

#2 The myth of the clay bird miracle derives from The Gospel of Thomas the Israelite (NB// not the same as the Gospel of Thomas). The original reads:

The child Jesus, when 5 years of age, was playing on the road by a dirty stream of running water; and having brought it all together into ditches, immediately made it pure and clean; by saying a single word. Then having moistened some earth, he made of it twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath day when he did these things. There were many other children playing with him. Now a Jew, seeing what Jesus did, that he was playing on the Sabbath day, went his way to (Jesus') father Joseph. He said, "Behold, your son is at the stream of dirty water, and having taken up some mud, has made of it twelve sparrows, thus desecrating the Sabbath. On this Joseph went to the spot, and cried out, "Why did you do these things on the Sabbath day which it is not lawful to do?" Jesus then clapped his hands at the sparrows and cried aloud to them, "Go off!" So they, clucking, flew away. The Jews seeing it were astonished, and went and told their rulers what they had seen Jesus do."

Andrew

[Hugh Slaman]

Andrew,

"First, outside those who merely adopt the traditional view of hadith because they are Muslims themselves, no modern scholar takes seriously the claim that the hadith can be traced back to Muhammad and his Companions."

Yeah, and no modern Jesuit scholar believes that the Pope is fallible.

:rofl: How exactly do you know this? Did you do a survey of each and every one of the modern scholars who take seriously the traditional view of hadith, and conclude that they only do so because they are Muslims themselves?

Even if this WERE true, it would prove NOTHING, because of the abysmal overall state of contemporary scholarship, and the fact that many "modern scholars" are much more interested in pursuing a polemical agenda than they are in establishing the truth.

And in fact this claim is FALSE. I recommend that you read:

Motzki, Harald, "The Musannaf of 'Abd al-Razzaq al-San'ani as a Source of Authentic Ahadith of the First Century A.H." Journal of Near Eastern Studies , (1991) 50:1,pp. 1-21.

Based on analysis of a portion of Abd al-Razzaq's Musannaf, the author establishes a correlation between the qualities of a large number of hadiths and the isnad through which they were purportedly transmitted. The author argues that the correlation implies that the isnads were in general **not randomly attached to matns, and hence the matns are for the most part likely to be genuinely attributed. **

(Matn = text of the hadith)

Also by Harald Motzki we have

---, "Quo vadis, Hadit-Forschung? Eine kritische Untersuchung von G.H.A. Juynboll: 'Nafi' the mawla of Ibn 'Umar, and his position in Muslim Hadit Literature,'" Der Islam, vol. 73, no. 1, 1996, pp. 40-80.

which is a defense of the historicity of an important class of hadiths going back to ibn 'Umar, a Companion and the son of the second Caliph.

Motzki also gave the sceptical view a thorough beating in

H. Motzki, "The Collection Of The Qur'an: A Reconsideration Of The
Western Views In Light Of Recent Methodological Developments", Der Islam, 2001, Vol. 78., p. 31

Here is a quote from that last essay:

"However, Muslims account are much earlier and thus much nearer to the
time of the events than hitherto assumed in Western scholarship.
Admittedly, these accounts contain some details which seem to be
implausible or, to put it more cautiously, await explanation, but the
Western views which claim to replace them by more plausible and
historically more reliable accounts are obviously far away from what they
make themselves out to be."


Finally from the same author, we have his book on the origins of Islamic law,


---, Die Anfange der islamischen Jurisprudenz: ihre Entwicklung in Mekka bis zur Mitte des 2./8. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart: Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft: Kommissionsverlag F. Steiner, 1991. Series title: Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes; Bd. L, 2., Pp. ix + 292, price: DM 96.

Reviewed by Irene Schneider in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, 114.4 (1994), pp. 684-685

Schneider says that Motzki "attempts, through a detailed analysis of Meccan transmitters and with the help of examples taken from family law, i.e., the K. an-nikah and K. at-talaq (pp. 67ff.), to show that many traditions can be safely assumed to be genuine, stemming from the time of the Companions and Successors. He is convinced that traditions originating from the Prophet existed and were known."

Please note the last part of this passage:

**many traditions can be safely assumed to be genuine, stemming from the time of the Companions and Successors.**

Also interesting for you would be the works of M. M. Azami, who wrote

On Schacht's Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1985. Cambridge, UK: The Islamic Texts Society, 1994

which is a POINT BY POINT refutation of Joseph Schacht, whose work you quote as if it had never been questioned.

I am unimpressed with your repeated quotation of Schact. His conclusions have taken a considerable beating in recent times.

Bottom line, Andrew: it won't do to just say "Modern scholars think hadith can't be traced back to the Companions" because modern scholars DISAGREE A LOT.

I will quote more on Schacht as time permits, since you seem to put a lot of trust in him.

As for Crone, in the book you mentioned "Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam", it has been throughly criticised in the review of it by the major Islamicist scholar R. B. Serjeant (himself a professor at Princeton):

"Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam: Misconceptions and Flawed Polemics," Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 110, No. 3, 1990, 472-486.

"Second, the miracle sounds like something out of the NT Apochrypha "

Well, any miracle could sound like that, because all miracles are essentially similar in being violations of natural laws.

"and can be seen as an example of vivid imaginations working from:
1) a Qur'an that is conspicuously miracle-free"

Only to those who want to see it that way.

"on the figurative language of the Qur'an (sura 54)"

Wrong: it is perfectly literal, and the only reason to see it as figurative is the prior assumption that miracles did not happen in conncection with the ministry of Muhammad.

The fact that there are similarities between apocryphal accounts and the Koran does not prove the Koran borrowed anything from the latter. It could just as easily be that the apocryphal accounts preserve some of the genuine elements of the story of Jesus, elements which were divinely revealed to Muhammad.

"Lol, corroboration doesn't mean look at the Qur'an, look away, then look at the Qur'an again. "

Part of the function of the Quran was to respond to the accusations of the pagan Quraysh. Therefore, it gives us evidence for what those accusations were. Among those accusations was that Muhammad was a sorcerer. Thus, even those hostile to him admitted to there being supernatural about him.

As for Jesus' miracles presupposed in hostile Jewsh writings, remember that for Jews, it was perfectly possible for a false prophet to perform miracles: after all, the Devil is a supernatural being, and people did believe in magic back then.

(Muslims think the same, and Muslims believe that the Antichrist will perform phenomenal miracles.)

Thus, the Jews just did not have any motivation to deny the miracle reports about Jesus: that a demonically possessed man should do supernatural things was not difficult for them to accept.

Thus, what is written in Jewish writings can't be taken as independent corroboration of the miracle stories, because the Jews are likely just following Christian reports.

[Chuck_D]

Thus, what is written in Jewish writings can't be taken as independent corroboration of the miracle stories, because the Jews are likely just following Christian reports.


Ick. :eww:

This common skeptical comment needs to be put to rest once and for all.

First of all, there is no reason to believe it is likely that the Jews just followed Christian reports. They had their own schools, traditions and sages who would've had independent, alternate explanations of the miraculous events if they had really happened. Just because ancient people (including Jews) accepted the general possibility of miracles does not mean they were gullibe when it came to specific claims, especially if contrary evidence were ready at hand. See here http://www.christian-thinktank.com/mqfx.html

Secondly, at least with Josephus, Jesus is treated very differently from many other alleged miracle workers.

"It cannot be stressed too much that when Josephus polemicizes against "false prophets" and "charlatans" like Theudas (Ant. 20.5.1 §97-98) or the unnamed Egyptian (Ant. 20.8.6 § 160-70; cf. J. W. 2.13.5 §261-62), he presents them as promising the people signs of deliverance. Shortly before the final storming of Jerusalem a "false prophet" promises "signs of deliverance" and persuades many desperate Jews to flee to the temple (J. W. 6.5.2 §285). Josephus likewise speaks in more general terms of "deceivers," who enticed people into rebellion by promising them that if they followed them into the wilderness, there God would show them "the signs of deliverance" (J W. 2.13.4 §259; cf. Ant. 20.8.6 §167-68). In A.D. 73 a weaver called Jonathan persuaded the Jews of Cyrene to follow him into the wilderness, so that there he could show them "signs and apparitions" (J.W. 7.9.1 §437-42). All of these popular leaders, whatever their precise agenda, are sometimes referred to by scholars as "sign prophets." In one sense that is correct, since they all promise "signs" or the equivalent thereof. But the phrase "sign prophets" can easily lead the unwary reader astray. Josephus never says that any of these "deceivers" actually performed miracles. Strictly speaking, they do not belong under the rubric of "miracle-worker...Thus, Jesus of Nazareth stands out as a relative exception in The Antiquities in that he is a named figure in 1st-century Jewish Palestine to whom Josephus is willing to attribute a number of miraculous deeds (Ant. 18.3.3 §63). " [MJ:2:592]

Thirdly, why even bring this up? As someone inclined to believe the Qur'an, don't you believe Jesus probably worked miracles anyway?

[Hugh Slaman]

[/Quote]
Thirdly, why even bring this up? As someone inclined to believe the Qur'an, don't you believe Jesus probably worked miracles anyway? [/QUOTE]

Of course! Indeed, I was somewhat inclined to believe in Jesus' miracles before I started taking the Quran seriously.

But the issue between Andrew and myself (one of several we have active right now) is on the relative merits of the miracle reports of the Gospels and the miracle reports concerning Muhammad in the Muslim tradition.

Now one of the points Andrew is making is that there is corroboration of miracles for the NT miracles from otherwise hostile sources, and he mentioned specifically the Jews.

I am still not convinced that the Jewish reference to Jesus as a "sorcerer" implies that they represent an independent source of corroboration. A plausible explanation of this is as follows: Jews at soem stage knew what Christians were claiming, and knew that they had no concrete evidence to disprove it (how do you disprove such a thing anyway, especially half a century after the fact?) So for polemical purposes, they conceded the Christian claim that Jesus had supernatural powers, but gave it a hostile twist by claiming he was a "sorcerer". This way, they would have a ready answer to the Christian claim that Jesus performed miracles, and one which they could use to create doubts in the minds of the Christians themselves.

[Chuck_D]

Hugh Slaman:
I am still not convinced that the Jewish reference to Jesus as a "sorcerer" implies that they represent an independent source of corroboration. A plausible explanation of this is as follows: Jews at soem stage knew what Christians were claiming, and knew that they had no concrete evidence to disprove it (how do you disprove such a thing anyway, especially half a century after the fact?) So for polemical purposes, they conceded the Christian claim that Jesus had supernatural powers, but gave it a hostile twist by claiming he was a "sorcerer". This way, they would have a ready answer to the Christian claim that Jesus performed miracles, and one which they could use to create doubts in the minds of the Christians themselves.

I won't hijack you and Andrew's conversation, so I won't belabor this tangent. After just two more comments :)

First, Josephus was a historian and his statement about Jesus isn't a polemic. His statement doesn't read like "for the sake of argument, lets say that He did many wonderful works." He presented it as fact, even though he proved skeptical about miracle workers in general.

Secondly, your explanation might be plausible in regards to polemics against Christians (like Justin's dialogue with "Trypho"), but the admission of miracle also pops up in internal documents like the Talmud, which weren't directed at Christians, but at insulating other Jews. If they had a competing tradition ("the Christians say Yeshu did X, but Rabbi Eliezer wrote/said Y") they would've offered it for their own people who would've considered it authoritative. They wouldn't have let evidence like that go to waste if it existed, which makes me think it's more likely than not that no such evidence existed.

Now back to you guys. ;)

[Hugh Slaman]

Chuck,

You're right, I forgot Josephus was Jewish:duh:

Best,

Hugh

[Hugh Slaman]

Finally, I get to discuss a Koran contradiction, which was, of course, the purpose of this thread :yipee:

I begin with one suggested by Happy Giraffe, who wrote:

"Just a few contradictions that I have picked from the site URL given above. Wondered what you made of them."

He then went on to write:

"No angel is arrogant, they all obey Allah [16:49-50], but: "And behold, we said to the ANGELS: 'Bow down to Adam'. And THEY bowed down, EXCEPT Iblis. He refused and was haughty." [2:34]."

The contradiction comes down to this: all angels are obedient to their Lord, so how is it that one, Iblis (the Islamic name for Satan), disobeyed an order (for which he has damned, and which led to the Fall, and so on)?

Let us have a look at the first set of verses in the alleged contradiction.

"016.049
And to Allah doth obeisance all that is in the heavens and on earth, whether moving (living) creatures or the angels: for none are arrogant (before their Lord).
016.050
They all revere their Lord, high above them, and they do all that they are commanded."

Now, on the face of it, we have not just a contradiction with the Koranic story of the Fall, but even a contradiction with one of the main themes of the Koran itself, namely the sinfulness and disobedience of man!! The reason is that verse 49 clearly states

"And to Allah doth obeisance *all* that is in the heavens and on earth,"

What is the explanation of this?

Actually, this is one of the places where the limitations of translation reveal themselves. The word "all" in the passage above translates the Arabic word "kull". This is an expression of generality, but it DOES NOT always express absolute comprehensiveness. Rather, its use allows for rare and isolated exceptions; there are many instances of this non-absolute generality in Arabic, where it conveys extraordinary abundance or frequency.

There is a saying among Islamic scholars "The rare is like the nonexistent". This means that in speech, it is permissible to overlook rare cases while asserting generalities.

One may object that the disobedience of man is hardly rare, rathe rit is all too frequent! But of course, frequency is relative to context. Relative to the whole unimaginably vast creation of God, containing, according to the Islamic tradition, uncountably many angels and other creatures we have never dreamt of, the disobedience of man may well be rare, no more than a blip on the horizon. Note also, that the Quran and the Islamic tradition at large consistently present seemingly inanimate objects as having some mode of consciousness attached to them. The speaking of trees and rocks is among the most oft-related miracles of Muhammad.

In view of this, I don't see any further need to address this alleged contradiction.

Best,

Hugh

[Hugh Slaman]

I want to put an end to the claim that Muhammad never performed miracles. At least, I hope to make it clear that a careful study of the literature reveals that many of his Companions believed they had seen miracles, and related them in great detail.

An interesting feature of these eyewitness reports is that they do not normally just assert a miraculous feature (eg "He raised a man from the dead"). Rather, they typically relate the sequence of events that the eyewitness saw, including observable details, and leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. This, to my mind, adds to their credibility as eyewitness reports...it is certainly how I, and most people I know, would relate unusual occurrences.

Here is an example from a young Companion named Jabir.

Jabir bin `Abd Allah narrated:

There was a Jew in Madina who would lend me money up to the date-harvest season. - Jabir had a piece of land which was on the way to Ruma. - One year the trees produced little, so repayment was delayed. The Jew came to me at the time of harvest but I could gather nothing from my land. I asked him to
give me another year's respite but he refused. The news reached the Prophet - Allah bless and greet him and his Family - whereupon he said to his companions, "Let us go and ask the Jew for a respite for Jabir." They all came to me in my garden and the Prophet began to speak with the Jew but the latter kept saying, "Abu al-Qasim, I will not grant him respite!" When the Prophet saw this, he stood up and walked around the orchard then came back and talked to the Jew some more, but the latter kept refusing his request. I got up and brought some fresh ripe dates (rutab) and put them in front of the Prophet - Allah bless and greet him. He ate then said to me, "Where is your hut, O Jabir?" I informed him and he said, "Spread out a bed for me in it." I spread out a bed and he entered and napped. When he woke up, I brought him some more dates and he ate again then got up and talked to the Jew once more but the latter again refused his request. Then the Prophet took another walk amid the date-palms - their branches were now full of fruit - and said, "O Jabir! Harvest your dates and repay your debt." The Jew stayed with me while I was plucking the dates until I repaid him his debt in full and there remained with me the same amount of dates. I went out until I reached the Prophet and told him of the good news, whereupon he said, "I testify that I am the Messenger of Allah."

(From Sahih Bukhari)

Here is yet another example, although it may be doubted whether this is a miracle, or rather testimony to the extraordinary effects that belief in someone (in this case Muhammad) can have.

Umar - Allah be well-pleased with him - narrated:

The Messenger of Allah - Allah bless and greet him and his Family - went out one day with `Umar ibn al-Khattab. A woman came up to them and said to the Prophet: "O Messenger of Allah, I am a respectable Muslim woman but I have a husband in my house who is like a woman." The Prophet said: "Call your husband." She called him - he was a cobbler - and the Prophet (saws) said to him: "What do you say about your wife , `Abd Allah?" He replied: "By the One Who honored you! I have tried my best with her. [lit.: My head has not remained dry away from her.]" His wife said: "Hardly once a month!" The Prophet (saws) said to her: "Do you hate him?" She said "Yes". The Prophet (saws) said: "Bring your heads close together." He placed the woman's forehead against her husband's and said: "O Allah! Make harmony between them and make them love one another." Later, the Prophet (saws) was passing by the bedding market together with `Umar ibn al-Khattab, whereupon the same woman came out carrying skins on top of her head. When she saw the Prophet (saws) she threw them down, came over to him, and kissed his feet. The Messenger of Allah said: "How are you with your husband?" She replied: "By the One Who honored you! There is no new possession, nor old inheritance, nor child of mine dearer to me than him!" The Prophet (saws) said: "I bear witness that I am the Messenger of Allah." Whereupon `Umar said: "And I bear witness that you are the Messenger of Allah."

(From Bayhaqi's "Proofs of Prophethood", with a chain of transmitters going through Bukhari.)

I will post some more, to give people an idea of the range and frequency with which these narratives occur.

They play a prominent part in classical Muslim apologetics, but they have been disowned since the last century by Muslims of a modernist bent.

[Hugh Slaman]

A few more examples:

From the Muwatta of Malik ibn Anas

Yahya related to me from Malik from Abu'z-Zubayr al-Makki from Abu't-Tufayl Amir ibn Wathila that Muadh ibn Jabal told him that they went out with the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in the year of Tabuk, and the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, joined dhuhr with asr and maghrib with isha. Muadh said, "One day he delayed the prayer, and then came out and prayed dhuhr and asr together. Then he said, 'Tomorrow you will come, insha' llah, to the spring of Tabuk. But you will not get there until well into the morning. No one who arrives should touch any of its water until I come.' We came to it and two men had got to it before us and the spring was dripping with a little water. The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, asked them, 'Have you touched any of its water?' They said, 'Yes.' The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, reviled them and said what Allah wished him to say. Then they took water with their hands from the spring little by little until it had been collected in something. Then the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, washed his face and hands in it. Then he put it back into the spring and the spring flowed with an abundance of water and the people drew water from it. The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, 'If you live long enough, Muadh, you will soon see this place filled with gardens.' "

From Sahih Bukhari:

It is related that Anas said, "The people of Madina suffered a drought in the time of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. While the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was giving the sermon on Friday, a man stood up and said, 'O Messenger of Allah, the horses are dying and the sheep are dying, so pray to Allah to give us rain.' He raised his hands and prayed." Anas said, "The sky was clear as a bell [lit. glass] and then a wind blew up, forming clouds and then they gathered together and then the heavens opened up. We went out wading throught the water until we reached our houses. We continued to have rain until the next Friday. That man or someone else stood up and said, 'The houses are collapsing, so pray to Allah to hold it back.' The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, smiled and said, 'O Allah, around us and not on us.' I looked at the clouds and they cleared away from Madina as if it was in a crown."

Also from Sahih Bukhari:

It is related that 'Abdullah ibn Masud said, "We used to consider signs as a blessing while you consider that they are to cause fear. We were with the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, on a journey and there was little water. He said, 'Seek out the remaining water.' They brought a vessel which contained a little water. He put his hand into the vessel and then said, 'Come to the blessed pure water, and the blessing is from Allah,' I saw the water flowing out from between the fingers of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and we also used to hear the glorification of the food while it was being eaten."

From Sahih Bukhari:

It is related that Jabir ibn 'Abdullah was heard to say, "On Friday, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, used to stand by a tree or a palm. A woman - or man - of the Ansar asked, 'O Messenger of Allah, shall we make a pulpit for you?' He replied, 'If you like.' So they made a pulpit for him. When the pulpit was made for him, on the Friday, he moved to the minbar and the palm tree cried like a child. Then the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, came down and embraced it, and it began to sob like a child being quietened. He said, 'It was crying for what it used to hear of the remembrance by it.'"

It is related from Ibn 'Umar, "The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, used to give the khutba leaning on a palm trunk. When he took the minbar, he moved to it and the trunk moaned and he went to it and placed his hand of it."

****************************************************

I think everyone gets the idea. One could go on and on and on with these reports from the canonical collections.

[Andrew]

Hey, Hugh.

Been busy but I'm poking my head in again. :)

I can only reiterate that outside of the Islamic realm, modern scholarship doesn't accept the traditional view as the the history of Islam and its sources. To some extent I have followed the trends in such study. From the relatively conservative ideas of Renan, we see more critical examine of the sources by the likes of Lammens and Becker. Lammens undertook some important studies into, inter alia, the relationship between the the sirat materials and the Qur'an. In more recent times, other scholars have developed the field of study, including Arthur Jeffrey, Joseph Schacht, Lawrence Conrad, Andrew Rippin, Judith Koren and Yehuda Nevo. We also see the significance of John Wansbrough and his literary critical methods.

"The fact that there are similarities between apocryphal accounts and the Koran does not prove the Koran borrowed anything from the latter. It could just as easily be that the apocryphal accounts preserve some of the genuine elements of the story of Jesus, elements which were divinely revealed to Muhammad."

One can hypothesise any number of things, however obscure. The fact remains that these earlier sources are rejected as spurious by NT scholarship and 1) fit within the fictitious milieu of NT apochrypha and 2) are chronologically well after Jesus' walk on earth. There are entire lists of such borrowings. Here's another example to consider, taken from second century Jewish folklore:

Qur'an- sura 27:17-44:

(aya 17) "And before Solomon were marshalled his hosts-of Jinns and men, and birds, and they were all kept in order and ranks.
(aya 20) "And he took a muster of the Birds; and he said: 'Why is it I see not the Hoopoe? Or is he among the absentees?

(aya 21) "I will certainly punish him with a severe penalty, or execute him, unless he bring me a clear reason (for absence).

(aya 22) "But the Hoopoe tarried not far: he (came up and) said: 'I have compassed (territory) which thou hast not compassed, and I have come to thee from Saba with tidings true.

(aya 23) "I found (there) a woman ruling over them and provided with every requisite; and she has a magnificent throne...

(aya 27) "(Solomon) said: 'Soon shall we see whether thou hast told the truth or lied!

(aya 28) "Go thou, with this letter of mine, and deliver it to them: then draw back from them, and (wait to) see what answer they return.

(aya 29) "(The queen) said: "Ye chiefs! Here is- delivered to me-a letter worthy of respect.

(aya 30) "It is from Solomon, and is (as follows): 'In the name of Allah, most Gracious, Most Merciful: Be ye not arrogant against me, but come to me in submission (to the true Religion).'

(aya 32) "She said: 'Ye chiefs! Advise me in (this) my affair: no affair have I decided except in your presence.'

(aya 33) "They said: 'We are endued with strength, and given to vehement war: but the command is with thee; so consider what thou wilt command.'

(aya 35) "She said...'But I am going to send him a present, and (wait) to see with what (answer) return (my) ambassadors.'

(aya 42) "So when she arrived...

(aya 44) "... she was asked to enter the lofty Palace: but when she saw it, she thought it was a lake of water, and she (tucked up her skirts), uncovering her legs. He said: 'This is but a palace paved smooth with slabs of glass.'"

II Targum of Esther:

"Solomon...gave orders...I will send King and armies against thee...(of) Genii [jinn] beasts of the land the birds of the air.
Just then the Red-cock (a bird), enjoying itself, could not be found; King Solomon said that they should seize it and bring it by force, and indeed he sought to kill it.

But just then, the cock appeared in the presence of the King and said, 'I had seen the whole world (and) know the city and kingdom (of Sheba) which is not subject to thee, My Lord King. They are ruled by a woman called the Queen of Sheba. Then I found the fortified city in the Eastlands (Sheba) and around it are stones of gold and silver in the streets.'

By chance the Queen of Sheba was out in the morning worshipping the sea, the scribes prepared a letter, which was placed under the bird's wing and away it flew and (it) reached the Fort of Sheba. Seeing the letter under its wing (Sheba) opened it and read it.

'King Solomon sends to you his Salaams. Now if it please thee to come and ask after my welfare, I will set thee high above all. But if it please thee not, I will send kings and armies against thee.'

The Queen of Sheba heard it, she tore her garments, and sending for her Nobles asked their advice. They knew not Solomon, but advised her to send vessels by the sea, full of beautiful ornaments and gems...also to send a letter to him.

When at last she came, Solomon sent a messenger...to meet her...Solomon, hearing she had come, arose and sat down in the palace of glass.

When the Queen of Sheba saw it, she thought the glass floor was water, and so in crossing over lifted up her garments. When Solomon seeing the hair about her legs, (He) cried out to her..."

It is rather obvious, once you have read the two accounts above, where the author of the story of Solomon and Sheba in the Qur'an obtained his data. The two stories are uncannily similar. The jinns, the birds, and in particular the messenger bird, which he couldn't at first find, and then used as a liaison between himself and the Queen of Sheba, along with the letter and the glass floor, are unique to these two accounts.

Not only can the sources be identified, but the Qur'an sometimes conflates these sources, resulting in unhistorical assertions that contradict archaeology. See, for example, the following:

[Qur’an 28:38] And Pharaoh said: O chiefs! I know not that ye have a god other than me, so kindle for me (a fire), O Haman, to bake the mud; and set up for me a lofty tower in order that I may survey the god of Moses; and lo! I deem him of the liars.

First, to the archaeological evidence: The Egyptians constructed their public buildings with cut stone, not bricks. The Mesopotamians, by comparison, constructed most of their public buildings with baked bricks since they lacked a good source of cut stone. Baked bricks were not used in Egypt before the Roman period (Maspero, G & Grevel, H, Manual of Egyptian Archaeology at 4). Furthermore, “the ordinary Egyptian brick is a mere oblong block of mud mixed with chopped straw and a little sand, and dried in the sun ... one man is told to break up the ground; others carry the clods, and pile them in a heap, while others again mix them with water, knead the clay with their feet, and reduce it to a homogeneous paste. This paste, when sufficiently worked, is pressed by the head workman in moulds made of hard wood, while an assistant carries away the bricks as fast as they are shaped, and lays them out in rows a little distance apart, to dry in the sun” (Manual of Egyptian Archaeology at 3).

Now let’s consider the source of the Qur'an on this point: Interestingly, there is a well-known story that fits these details. In Genesis 11:3-4a we read:

“They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches heaven,…”

Compare it with the above aya. The similarities are so obvious as to be uncanny. This, however, is the story of the Tower of Babel. The original story of Moses and Pharaoh, as reported in the book of Exodus, reports accurately the Israelites being forced to make bricks with straw, which are then sun-dried. This story has no mentioning of a tower for Pharaoh to reach God. It seems that the author of the Qur'an confused or, for other reasons, conflated these two stories from the Bible, the Exodus of Israel and the Tower of Babel.

There is another aspect to this story deserving of scrutiny, too. See that name Haman in the aya? He was a well-known enemy of the Jewish people, a court official of the Persian king Ahasueros [Xerxes], a man who like the Egyptian Pharaoh tried to eliminate the Israelites [Esther 3:8-9] - only several hundred years later. Indeed, Haman did build something high, for in Esther 5:14 we read:

“His wife and all his friends said to him, "Have a gallows built, seventy-five feet high, and ask the king in the morning to have Mordecai hanged on it. Then go with the king to the dinner and by happy." This suggestion delighted Haman, and he had the gallows built.”

Thus we have a conflation of not only two, but three historical events into the Qur’an. The conclusion is inevitable: rather than being the word of Allah, the Qur'an draws on earlier sources, bungling them up in the process.

"Part of the function of the Quran was to respond to the accusations of the pagan Quraysh. Therefore, it gives us evidence for what those accusations were. Among those accusations was that Muhammad was a sorcerer. Thus, even those hostile to him admitted to there being supernatural about him."

Where's the independent testimony? What you're discussing in the testimony of the Qur'an.

When one reads the Qur'an, it seems that the Skeptics are told that he is a "warner," a "guide," and a "bearer of glad tidings" (refer to Suras 2:118-119; 6:37 and 124; 13:7; and 17:59).

Actually, although I assert that the Islamic materials are both late and can be seen as literary formulations without historical basis, even if one accepts the Islamic materials, there are close parallels with it and demon possession. I especially like the hadith where Muhammad is so lost that he thought he was having sex with his wives when, in fact, he wasn’t! :rofl: See here (#660):
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/071.sbt.html#007.071.660

I'd like to point out that there is NO logical correlation between these two statements:

"As for Jesus' miracles presupposed in hostile Jewsh writings, remember that for Jews, it was perfectly possible for a false prophet to perform miracles: after all, the Devil is a supernatural being, and people did believe in magic back then."

And,

"Thus, what is written in Jewish writings can't be taken as independent corroboration of the miracle stories, because the Jews are likely just following Christian reports."

[Andrew]

Hugh, you might be interested in having a read of this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99jan/koran.htm

[kiwimac]

Hugh,

What is the problem, from your POV, with the Baha'i faith or with Mormonism?

Kiwimac

[Epoetker]

Just going to add my two cents on how the Koran can appear to have God behind it. Then I will run away and let y'all hash it out.

Wasn't Mohammed a big student of Jewish and Christian theology even before his supposed visitation by Gabriel? If you feed yourself on texts which most people here would put up their hands to say "Yep, God-breathed, no doubt about it!":hi:

then I'm assuming that the narrative style is going to give some divine authenticity to your work. Heck, there's nothing in my Bible against Mohammed actually being a true prophet, but (and here's what most Muslims I've talked to don't seem to get) there's also nothing against prophets going bad and using their God-given talents for not-so-Godly purposes. Or for certain malevolent forces attempting to use the new rising star for THEIR own purposes. I believe that a certain Old Testament chapter gave guidelines on how to test prophets and spirits (wish I could remember it-will some Scriptural scholar here enlightenate me?) Those who failed the test were, I believe, stoned.

[charis humin]

Epoetker:

I believe that a certain Old Testament chapter gave guidelines on how to test prophets and spirits (wish I could remember it-will some Scriptural scholar here enlightenate me?) Those who failed the test were, I believe, stoned.

I wouldn't say I'm a scriptural scholar but I can give you the reference: Deuteronomy 13:1-5

[Richard Romano]

"My main goal in doing this is to convince you that it is at best very hard to find internal contraditions in the Koran. Now, you gave me a list of alleged internal contradictions from the website"


Dear Hugh Slaman,

I appreciate the fact that you are considering Islam, since you feel that there aren't any internal contradictions within the text of the Koran.

I feel that you are approaching your possible proselytization incorrectly, since you should be comparing the claims of the writer of the Koran, Mohammed, with Jesus, the founder of Christianity.

Mohammed speaks quite favourably about Jesus, and even admits his perfection, miracle working, and virgin birth...these are all aspects that Mohammed never accomplishes in his lifetime and his calling is not essentially "miraculous." There is a hint that Mohammed only recorded the things about Jesus that he picked up from heretical sects of Christianity whom he came across in his travels. Most of the things he says about Jesus are compatible with the teachings of the Ebionites...which leads to our assumption that Mohammed recorded heretical things about Jesus, rather than ascribing to the true picture of Christ faithfully preserved in the New Testament canon. It is possible, then, to see that the New Testament is not a source for him, since it would literally demolish his aspirations of beginning a new religion. So he fortifies his belief structure by depicting a Jesus who is not God and therefore cannot save.

If you have never dealt with this primary focus, then that should be a starting point, since to begin with the idea that the Koran doesn't have any real contradictions is setting up a false paradigm from which you don't make any comparisons to what qualifies as essential to "truth." The lives of the founders will indicate that Jesus is head and shoulders above all others, and he vindicates his claims through the process of his death and resurrection.

I would appreciate to hear your comments in this regard, since I feel that others on this forum have already adequately alluded to the problems with the Koran.

God bless.

Richard Romano

[Ric]

Hugh Slaman, please chick here (http://theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=16920#post16920)

[moonlight3]

Hugh/Andrew:
Following these exchanges, most interesting.
Just one question if both of you don't mind:
Did the Koran refer to the miracles of Mohammad? If yes, to which?

[jerrydk]

...
But I am entirely free to dismiss their arguments as worthy of my time, on the basis of who they are. Is the difference clear?
...
HughI understand your point, Hugh. I agree that perceptions can influence how much motivation I have to study someone's argument. But the logic remains, you cannot KNOW their argument is not worthy of your time unless you know their argument. I have gained valuable knowledge from persons I "knew" had dishonest and/or unloving agendas.

Jerry

[butterfly791]

Can i just say that we should not believe evrything we see on the internet especially when it comes to religion. There was this site I saw which insulted muslims really badly and I was disgusted. So as I said please do not believ all you see on the net...

Thank you

Khadija

[butterfly791]

And by the way Hugh, I rate you for considering Islam.
I hope all goes well. Inshallah!!

Kind Regards

Khadija Islam

[Bagger_Vance]

Dee Dee,

I am seriously thinking about it.

There was a time when I seriously considered becoming a Muslim as well. If you look past they christian hype you'll see a religion that is much more tolerant than christianity.

[shunyadragon]

There was a time when I seriously considered becoming a Muslim as well. If you look past they christian hype you'll see a religion that is much more tolerant than christianity.

I studied Islam also, most to understand Islam better. I did find Islam more historically tolerant than Christinaity in some ways, but it presented a worldview that was out of date. Like Judaism and Christianity, the application of Islam to the real world today requires some rather contorted interpretation of scripture.

I have long passed slinging the stones of contradictions to disprove the validity of the claim of a religion or faith. I consider the contradictions and problems with scriptures as significant evidence against the exclusiveness of the claims of doctrines and belief, because all scriptures share this problem.

All these scriptures are written in an old worldview where these issues were not considered contraditions as we would see them looking back hundreds or thousands of years into the past.

Even the Baha'i writings of the 19th century appear to some contraditions, though less, than ancient writings. Studing these writings I found that translation creates some interesting problems that also make writings seem contradictory.

[Christian2]

Hello,

I, too, studied Islam to determine if there was any truth to it. This was before I became a real Christian. I was brought up Christian but somewhere along the line I found that I did not really believe in God. In conjunction with Islam I also studied Christianity.

I rejected Islam but it had to do with a lot more than contradictions and abrogation (nasikh) of verses in the Qur'an. I would suggest to someone who is considering Islam to investigate this religion very carefully. They might start with reading the books of ex-Muslim, Mark Gabriel: "Jesus and Muhammad," Islam and the Jews," and "Islam and Terrorism."

Dr Gabriel's credentials:

Bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in Islamic History and Culture from Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt, Graduating second in his class of six thousand students for his bachelor's degree. This ranking was based on cumulative scores or oral and written exams given at the end of each school year, One of the youngest lecturers ever hired at Al-Azhar University. He started lecturing after he finished his master's degree and was working to finish his doctorate, Traveling lecturer. The university sent him to countries around the Middle East as a lecturer in Islamic history, Served as the imam at a mosque in the Cairo suburbs, Later Gabriel became a Christian and pursued a Christian education which include: Discipleship Training School with Youth With A Mission in Cape Town, South Africa, Master's degree in World Religion from Florida Christian University in Orlando, Florida (2001), Doctorate degree in Christian Education from Florida Christian University in Orland, Florida (2002), Induction as a fellow in the Oxford Society of Scholars, September 2003.

Then read everything you can on the Answering-islam site which compares the teachings of Islam vs. Christianity and also refutes articles written on the polemic Muslim sites.

Shalom

[shunyadragon]

Hello,

I, too, studied Islam to determine if there was any truth to it. This was before I became a real Christian. I was brought up Christian but somewhere along the line I found that I did not really believe in God. In conjunction with Islam I also studied Christianity.

I rejected Islam but it had to do with a lot more than contradictions and abrogation (nasikh) of verses in the Qur'an. I would suggest to someone who is considering Islam to investigate this religion very carefully. They might start with reading the books of ex-Muslim, Mark Gabriel: "Jesus and Muhammad," Islam and the Jews," and "Islam and Terrorism."

Dr Gabriel's credentials:

Bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in Islamic History and Culture from Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt, Graduating second in his class of six thousand students for his bachelor's degree. This ranking was based on cumulative scores or oral and written exams given at the end of each school year, One of the youngest lecturers ever hired at Al-Azhar University. He started lecturing after he finished his master's degree and was working to finish his doctorate, Traveling lecturer. The university sent him to countries around the Middle East as a lecturer in Islamic history, Served as the imam at a mosque in the Cairo suburbs, Later Gabriel became a Christian and pursued a Christian education which include: Discipleship Training School with Youth With A Mission in Cape Town, South Africa, Master's degree in World Religion from Florida Christian University in Orlando, Florida (2001), Doctorate degree in Christian Education from Florida Christian University in Orland, Florida (2002), Induction as a fellow in the Oxford Society of Scholars, September 2003.

Then read everything you can on the Answering-islam site which compares the teachings of Islam vs. Christianity and also refutes articles written on the polemic Muslim sites.

Shalom

I am familiar with him and the site. I can agree with some things and points they make, but the fact still stands, this is coming from stone throwers in glass houses. Your conclusion that there is more abrogation and contradictions in Islam is only a relative statement from a believers point of view. The Bible is riff with problems of reliability of the scriptures, contradictions and unresolved issues.

The bottom line is Judaism, Christianity and Islam all face the same problems, ancient scripture writen from an ancient worldview with only limited relavance to toda's world.

[Christian2]

Hello shunyadragon,

Your conclusion that there is more abrogation and contradictions in Islam is only a relative statement from a believers point of view. The Bible is riff with problems of reliability of the scriptures, contradictions and unresolved issues.

From what I have seen the Christians and the Muslims have an answer for any contradictions in their Holy Books. But, like I said, to me it was more than contradictions in the Qur'an that led me to reject Islam. The Qur'an, for instance, includes way too many "revelations" from Allah that stem from Christian and Jewish folklore. In addition, YHVH said that He hates divorce and said not to multiply wives; but Allah allows divorce and up to four wives. I see a distinction difference in the character of Allah and YHVH. I do not believe that they are the same God; they do not come from the same source in my opinion.

It is also my experience in dealing with what some conclude as contradictions in the Bible that the error is on the side of the critic.

The bottom line is Judaism, Christianity and Islam all face the same problems, ancient scripture writen from an ancient worldview with only limited relavance to toda's world.

I disagree as far as Christianity is concerned. If all on the face of the earth lived by the teachings of Jesus Christ, there would be peace in this world. A Christian is commanded to follow Jesus; Jesus being our example who we are to be. OTOH, Muhammad is the example of how a Muslim should be. Muhammad asked his daughter to clean the blood off his sword; Jesus didn't use a sword. Jesus washed His disciples feet.

I choose Jesus as my example.

Shalom