Academia:The New Islamic History Revisionism
by Shiraz Noor
[Editor's note: This is a vastly complex and hugely important subject, and so I would ask a few things from you, the reader. Try to lay preconceived notions and the anti-Islamic bias that much of Western culture fosters at the door--or the title, as it may be. Consider that every major religion today has countless skeletons, metaphoric or literal, in their collective closet. Remember, above all, (and this relates to preconceived notions) that no major world religion has ever been practiced without fundamentalism, hypocrisy, dogmatism, and sheer contradiction of the religion's own core principles surfacing in its history. Lastly, I asked Shiraz what he would want a reader to consider before embarking on this, and he said, in typical laconic fashion: "Take the information presented for what it's worth, and try not to jump to any conclusions about what's been said. These are, ultimately, just ideas." Ideas can be controversial, challenging and unsettling --and almost always, deserve to be heard. What else is Word! for? So read on, with an open mind.]
After Word! first launched back in August 2008, I’d wanted to write an article for the September issue on Islamic history revisionism, in light of the anniversary of September 11, 2001. Since the disastrous events on that day, moderate Muslims living in the West have experienced something of an existential crisis, similar to and yet quite different from what the Jews experienced as a result of the Holocaust.
Contrary to current popular belief, we’re perfectly nice people, and are as open-minded as anyone else with an influential personal belief system in a pluralist society would be expected to be. But nowadays, we often find ourselves trapped in between the sociopolitical hostility towards us and the often embarrassing behavior of fundamentalists, and at times have nowhere to turn but inward, into the basic fabric of our own identity—wherein it turns out that there’s quite a bit to discover.
It is from this introspection that I’ve thus undertaken an inquiry into early Islamic history and its many interpretations. My interest in writing something about the topic would have corresponded with the August release of a revisionist book co-authored by a well-known name in the field. I’ll get to him in due time.
Well, this article wasn’t written then, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there was already a fine article on 9/11 already set to appear that month, and I thought I’d give its author the honors. Secondly, that book never became available on the markets; it still isn’t. In this heated area of academia, such delays are perfectly understandable, frustrating though they may be.
Until the September 11 attacks brought the movement to a screeching halt, Islamic history revisionism had been gaining momentum for quite a while, dating back to the 1970s. It was during this time, for example, that Princeton professor Patricia Crone and her associate Michael Cook first laid down their astounding hypothesis: the religious uprising in seventh-century Arabia started out as an offshoot of Judaism known as Hagarism, introduced in order to give a religious identity to the descendants of Ishmael, son of Abraham and his concubine Hagar. Together, these “Hagarenes” worked with the Jews to reclaim the Holy Land from the Byzantines, and only after doing so did they realize it was necessary to refine their religion to prevent being assimilated-and hence, Islam and the Qur’an as we know them.
Unsurprisingly, the book caused a lot of controversy, both from offended Muslims and from other Western scholars who criticized their work as amateurish. What the book was very successful in, however, was making a compelling case for the rejection of reliance on early Muslim sources, which didn’t begin to surface until more than a century after the events had already taken place.
Since then, Crone has all but discredited the book she wrote on Hagarism. Her focus has since been on the geography of the time, where she has continued to argue that the historical context in which Islam arose is fraught with inconsistencies and mystery, although her views on the development of the Qur’an, for example, have become significantly more conservative. Thus she now writes that we can be reasonably sure that Muhammad alone was indeed its source.
Like many others, Patricia Crone has likely had to change her tune in these increasingly hostile circumstances.
The Traditional Account
Crone knows better than anyone else the difficulty of being a western scholar on early Islamic history. In the first place, perspectives on the rise of Islam have almost always been polarized by obvious biases. This is inevitable. Historically, Muslim scholars have worked with their own sources, within the framework of their religious beliefs, which ensure that these beliefs are never challenged. Meanwhile, outsider perspectives have been dominated by aggressive polemics against Islam, often by Christians who believe Islam was a mere impersonation, which ensures that their own beliefs remain unchallenged as well. In the twentieth century, what has emerged is an academic atmosphere suffocated by political correctness, publicity stunts and ad hominem attacks—and by no means have these realities escaped Crone herself.
The traditional account of the rise of Islam depicts Muhammad as illiterate man among pagans from the tribe of the Quraysh in early seventh-century Mecca, during a time of widespread ignorance and immorality. Born into paganism and having spent much of his life in contemplation, in a cave at Mount Hira he one day received revelation from the angel Gabriel, and was chosen to be a messenger for the Quraysh, to guide them away from their idol worship and back to the monotheism of Abraham. Over the next 23 years, he continued receiving revelation from God and guiding his people to the right path. In the face of intense persecution by the unbelievers, the Muslims migrated to Yathrib, henceforth known as Medina, and began to take up arms to defend themselves. After some time, they gained enough prominence to recapture Mecca from the pagans. By that point Muhammad had completed the development of the religion for his followers, and died peacefully, after which the Muslims continued to spread the message in every direction.
Before going any further, some basic historical points on the traditional account of the rise of Islam need to be considered.
- Muhammad lived during a period in which exploitative capitalism had taken over traditional tribal values. As a result, the rise of Islam was almost from the beginning rooted in a political struggle for an egalitarian society. In more modern terms, you could say that Muhammad preached a kind of socialist agenda.
- Blatant mythology gives rise to the belief that Muhammad’s monotheistic messages were alien to his audience. Instead, rather than giving completely new information, the Qur’an generally serves as a reminder of old lessons with which his target audience already had some familiarity thanks to the contemporary monotheistic presence. We will later examine how significant this presence may actually have been in the development of Islam and the Qur’an.
- This brings me to my final point. Muhammad was in fact a very pragmatic individual whose doctrinal undertones were greatly influenced by the receptiveness of his people to the message. This holds true in any plausible interpretation of the rise of Islam which accepts his existence. Figuring out how pragmatic he really was, we will soon find, is no simple matter.
Many of the revisionists have attempted to show that Islam as a religion was in fact not completed by the time Muhammad had died. On the surface, this should be pretty obvious. The Qur’an only forms part of Islam’s religious foundation-the other major component is the Sunnah consisting of Muhammad’s lifestyle and sayings, which weren’t codified into Hadith until the late ninth century (they had been orally passed down before that). What the revisionists argue, however, is that even the basic tenets of the Islamic faith weren’t formed until after the Arab empire had been established. In effect, it wasn’t the religion which gave rise to conquest; it was actually conquest which gave rise to the religion. The idea is fascinating; however, it opens up a huge can of worms. How does one decide, then, which information in the Muslim sources is true and which of it is fabrication?
It’s a Herculean task, but many of these Western scholars have found a good place to start: the holy Qur’an itself.
Gerd R. Puin: A Double Agent
By now, the story of the Sana’a manuscripts is well-known. Discovered in 1972, under the floors during a major renovation in Great Mosque in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city, the thousands of pieces of parchment were a paper grave–and a goldmine. Seven years later, the Yemeni Antiquities Authority met Gerd R. Puin, an expert on Qur’anic orthography, and over the next decades, the scripts were meticulously restored, analyzed, and revealed to contain the oldest extracts of the Qur’an still in existence.
In a development of exquisite irony, however, the Yemeni authorities actually got themselves involved with a revisionist, and Puin’s intentions have overtime been revealed to be anything but docile. Here’s the catch: Puin and his research team actually found that some of those extracts had been rewritten; they have the pictures to prove it. And while it’s most likely that the change was only a rearrangement in verse ordering, the finds have gotten many within the revisionist movement very excited.
Says Puin: “So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Qur’an is just God’s unaltered word. They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Qur’an has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Qur’an has a history too.” He believes that this can be achieved with the help of the Sana’a manuscripts.
Eight years later, he still has nothing to show for his promises-save for a few articles here and there. Nothing, that is, until August 2008, when he collaborated with Karl-Heinz Ohlig to write a book on what they argue is the hidden story of Islam’s rise to prominence in such a short period of time.
According to the book, titled The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History, early Arab rulers were part of a Syrian sect of Christianity. Similarly, the Qur’an is supposed to have its linguistic roots in Aramaic, and Muhammad as he was known to his earliest followers was actually Jesus Christ himself. (If you don’t believe me, check out a description of the book on Amazon. Unfortunately-or fortunately, depending on how you look at it-the book is not yet available in English due to an apparent delay. Yours truly continues waiting, but patience isn’t an infinite resource.) The hypothesis is rather similar to Crone’s own Hagarism, and indeed both books rely heavily on three main tools: archaeology, guesswork, and a total disregard for the traditional account which could potentially make those guesses less eccentric. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and for the time being, we can’t give much weight to what may well be just a bunch of hot air.
Puin has got it right on one thing, though: “The Qur’an claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen,’ or clear, but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Qur’anic text is just incomprehensible.” My explanation for that is that it’s a literary text, and hence not supposed to be clear. He, on the other hand, concludes perhaps prematurely that “there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on.”
Muslims point to verses within the Qur’an itself which attest to its legitimacy. There is much emphasis, at times redundant, within the book on addressing accusations (like the one above) which, we infer, were thrown against Muhammad during the various stages of his mission. These defensive verses address, among other claims, that he was a poet (”soothsayer”), that he borrowed his teachings from other sources, and that his teachings were a perversion of the previous Abrahamic religions. (The former two tend to be countered by mere negation, while the third accusation is interestingly boomeranged. Thus the Qur’an argues that the Jews defied the message of Moses and ended up as wanderers, while the Christians elevated Jesus to divine status, and in this, went astray.)
The repeated emphasis of these defenses may be ironically interpreted as a grand act of Freudian denial, revealing that Muhammad had been guilty as charged on all counts. But without further supporting evidence, the defensive verses alone prove nothing one way or the other.
A Second Look at the Traditional Sources
So what are the historical roots of the Qur’an, then, according to alternative perspectives? For those revisionists who want to believe that it wasn’t even developed until after Arab conquest was well underway, it’s a question which undoubtedly poses much difficulty. Fortunately for them, that’s not really their area of concern. We are therefore left with the traditional Islamic sources if we want to make the attempt ourselves.
A good place to start would be the poets. Pre-Islamic Arabia had a rich tradition of reciting poetry, and those who were skilled in the art were revered as wise, almost holy men. While there’s little written record of such poetry, it’s also perfectly plausible that these poetic verses were on the tips of the tongues of many, including Muhammad himself. As it’s well known that much of the Qur’an is indeed very poetic, and keeping in mind that pre-Islamic Meccans were already quite aware of Allah, the Creator, a non-traditionalist view of its development would certainly recognize a direct contribution from these early poets.
Another possible influence could be from encounters with other contemporary religions-namely, Judaism in other parts of Arabia, Christianity in Byzantine Syria and Abyssinia across the Red Sea, Zoroastrianism in Persia, and Sabianism in Iraq. The latter, especially, is a point of interest. Sabians, though little is known about them, are believed to have existed even before the time of Muhammad. According to Islamic sources, these people prayed at least five times a day, and their fundamental tenet was that there was no god but God himself-apparently they even fasted for thirty days a year. Whether the Muslims or the Sabians first came up with these practices is hard to determine, but as these Sabians seemed to resist total assimilation into Islam one might be inclined to believe that their religious traditions had been around for quite a while. In any case, the Sabians wouldn’t have been the only monotheistic presence to influence Islam.
Various figures in Muhammad’s life have been identified as devout monotheists, notably: Bahira, Zayd ibn Amr, and Waraqah ibn Nawfal. Bahira was a Christian priest from Syria who is said to have foretold Muhammad’s prophethood when encountering him as a child on a trading trip with his uncle-guardian Abu Talib. Zayd ibn Amr, who was the uncle of the second Islamic caliph (ruler) Umar, eventually adopted a primitive faith known as Hanifiyya, the unidentifiable “religion of Abraham” in the absence of an identifiably Arabian revelation. Waraqah ibn Nawfal, the cousin of Muhammad’s first wife Khadija, similarly converted to Christianity despite its limited compatibility with contemporary Bedouin language and culture. He is said to have been visited by the Muhammad’s soon after the first revelation, during which time he confirmed Muhammad’s prophethood, then died a few days later.
The traditional account of these individuals reveals that, instead of a Meccan population completely ignorant of monotheism, there was a budding restlessness that arose from the feeling that God had somehow been neglecting them from the guidance which the Jews and Christians had long since received.
The non-traditional interpretation, however, suggests something quite different. What if these individuals actually played a role in the development of Islam as a religion? As Christian polemicists have astutely pointed out, with their knowledge of the Biblical scriptures the Christians in Muhammad’s life such as Bahira and Waraqah could well have had an immense influence on the Qur’anic description of history, which has often been noted for its similarities to the Bible, albeit slightly more simplified. Similarly, the presence of individuals such as Zayd could just as well have had a profound influence on the refinement of Islam’s philosophical foundations–especially since he is believed to have also meditated regularly at Mount Hira where Muhammad is first said to have received revelation.
I present these perhaps dull details to make a point. The traditional view of the development of the Qur’an takes a lot for granted. Unless you believe that it was divinely originated (and if you don’t, the chances are you’re not allowed to say so), it’s difficult to imagine from historical and literary perspectives that one man alone could have uttered all the contents of the Qur’an. The main reason for this is that, stylistically, the Qur’an has many different voices and tones, which suggest multiple sources of contribution. This is why describing him as an illiterate man makes the notion of divine revelation all the more persuasive. If not revelation, many individuals who are said to have been close friends of Muhammad, or to have participated in the compilation of the Qur’an, would presumably have been active partners in its creation. This argument significantly strays from the current historical status quo, which is that he did it on his own. So we’re inclined to believe that he was in fact literate, maybe even some sort of genius-but then what function would his scribes have served? And why was the whole thing not put together until much later?
It’s all very hard to digest without a leap of faith. Or a complete historical re-examination.
A Gateway to Reconciliation
Islam has long tried to gain the kind of sympathy from the West which has been given to the Jews after the Holocaust. But these efforts ultimately failed because Islamic intellectualism remains embarrassingly dogmatic. This tendency can be traced back to Al-Ghazali, who in the eleventh century vehemently declared that philosophy has no place in Islam because it leads the believer astray. In the following years, Islam experienced what is known as “the closing of the gates” to independent thought, and the considerable intellectual prowess which Islam had had up until then quickly whittled away. Consequently, Islamic scholarship has been relatively stagnant for quite some time, and a cultural and intellectual renaissance is long overdue.
It should be obvious by now that the Qur’an is a literary text that should be viewed in historical context, not be interpreted with crude and unthinking literalism. Many progressive Muslims don’t hesitate to accept this. What’s finally beginning to be considered once more is the understanding that the Qur’an, like any other religious text, has a history of its own, however little understood it may be. Only by accepting this basic fact can this Abrahamic religion finally begin to catch up with the comparatively pragmatic theory of its Jewish and Christian counterparts, who hold that while the Torah and Bible were not the direct words of God, they were indeed divinely inspired.
Meanwhile, scholars such as Patricia Crone are continuing their efforts to reconstruct an Islamic history that’s free from unquestionable axioms. Once a more historically clear picture can be painted, Islam may finally be able to rid itself of its current hypocrisy of grabbing onto Biblical criticism without allowing any such criticism of the Qur’an, and return to a long-since-abandoned theological tradition in which criticism is not an enemy but rather a measure of truth, and a gateway to reconciliation.
Next>>
Further Reading on Islamic Revisionism:
This is a list of sources which have aided me in writing this article, but they’re also very useful for anyone looking for more background to the information I’ve presented.
A comprehensive description of revisionist theories centered on the Qur’an and its own potential history, entitled “What is the Koran?” Reading this article helped significantly in sparking my own interest.
Patricia Crone gives an overview of the current historical knowledge about Muhammad which is beyond reasonable doubt, as well as what remains to be determined, entitled “What do we actually know about Mohammed?”
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Karen Armstrong’s 1994 bestseller A History of God has a chapter dedicated to the development of Islam, and is an excellent source for an overview of the traditional account.
This essay written by a former Muslim, entitled “Who Authored the Qur’an?: An Enquiry”, is obviously very biased, but the information I’ve adapted from it is readily available elsewhere.
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Wikipedia is your friend.
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