National Review Online
The year 1880 saw the publication of a book
that ranks as the single most important study of Islam ever. Written in
German by a young Jewish Hungarian scholar, Ignaz Goldziher, and
bearing the nondescript title Muslim Studies (Muhammedanische Studien), it argued that the hadith,
the vast body of sayings and actions attributed to the Islamic prophet
Muhammad, lacked historical validity. Rather than provide reliable
details about Muhammad's life, Goldziher established, the hadith emerged
from debates two or three centuries later about the nature of Islam.
(That is like today's Americans debating
the Constitution's much-disputed Second Amendment, concerning the right
to bear arms, by claiming newly discovered oral transmissions going back
to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Obviously, their quotations
would inform us not what was said 225 years ago but about current
views.)
Portrait of Ignaz Goldziher.
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Since Goldziher's day, scholars have been
actively pursuing his approach, deepening and developing it into an
full-scale account of early Islamic history, one which disputes nearly
every detail of Muhammad's life as conventionally understood - born in
570 A.D., first revelation in 610, flight to Medina in 622, death in
632. But this revisionist history has remained a virtual secret among
specialists. For example, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, authors of
the synoptic Hagarism (Cambridge University Press, 1977), deliberately wrote obliquely, thereby hiding their message.
Now, however, two scholars have separately ended this secrecy: Tom Holland with In the Shadow of the Sword (Doubleday) and Robert Spencer with Did Muhammad Exist? (ISI). As their titles suggest, Spencer is the bolder author and so my focus here.
In a well-written, sober, and clear
account, he begins by demonstrating the inconsistencies and mysteries in
the conventional account concerning Muhammad's life, the Koran, and
early Islam. For example, whereas the Koran insists that Muhammad did
not perform miracles, the hadith ascribe him thaumaturgic powers -
multiplying food, healing the injured, drawing water from the ground and
sky, and even sending lightening from his pickax. Which is it? Hadith
claim Mecca was a great trading city but, strangely, the historical
record reveals it as no such thing.
The Christian quality of early Islam is no
less strange, specifically "traces of a Christian text underlying the
Qur'an." Properly understood, these traces elucidate otherwise
incomprehensible passages. Conventionally read, verse 19:24 has Mary
nonsensically hearing, as she gives birth to Jesus, "Do not be sad, your
Lord has placed a rivulet beneath you." Revisionists transform this
into the sensible (and piously Christian), "Do not be sad, your Lord has
made your delivery legitimate." Puzzling verses about the "Night of
Power" commemorating Muhammad's first revelation make sense when
understood as describing Christmas. Chapter 96 of the Koran,
astonishingly, invites readers to a Eucharist.
Cover of Did Muhammad Exist.
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Building on this Christian base,
revisionists postulate a radically new account of early Islam. Noting
that coins and inscriptions from the seventh century mention neither
Muhammad, the Koran, nor Islam, they conclude that the new religion did
not appear until about 70 years after Muhammad's supposed death. Spencer
finds that "the first decades of the Arab conquest show the conquerors
holding not to Islam as we know it but to a vague creed [Hagarism,
focused on Abraham and Ishmael] with ties to some form of Christianity
and Judaism." In very brief: "the Muhammad of Islamic tradition did not
exist, or if he did, he was substantially different from how that
tradition portrays him" – namely an Anti-Trinitarian Christian rebel
leader in Arabia.
Only about 700 A.D., when the rulers of a
now-vast Arabian empire felt the need for a unifying political theology,
did they cobble together the Islamic religion. The key figure in this
enterprise appears to have been the brutal governor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn
Yusuf. No wonder, writes Spencer, that Islam is "such a profoundly
political religion" with uniquely prominent martial and imperial
qualities. No wonder it conflicts with modern mores.
The revisionist account is no idle academic
exercise but, as when Judaism and Christianity encountered the Higher
Criticism 150 years ago, a deep, unsettling challenge to faith. It will
likely leave Islam a less literal and doctrinaire religion with
particularly beneficial implications in the case of Islam, still mired
in doctrines of supremacism and misogyny. Applause, then for plans to
translate Did Muhammad Exist? into major Muslim languages and to make it available gratis on the Internet. May the revolution begin.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2012 All rights reserved by Daniel Pipes.
1 comment:
Brilliantly written.
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