Within the thread "What are you afraid of ???" it was an easy job for me to return the reproach of "dirty tricks" against Christian missionaries to a number of Muslim missionaries. In particular I pointed to the hoax of the fabulous 42,000 Koran manuscripts collected in Munich before WWII and showing no textual difference. I exposed this hoax in my latest contribution to the above mentioned thread.
Now I will simply report what actually was the matter with this collection in Munich.
In the 1920s Gotthelf Bergstraesser, Munich, had in co-operation with Arthur Jeffery from Columbia University started the project of a critical edition of the Koran text, based on the oldest manuscripts available at that time. Their variant readings should be presented in footnotes. As a prelimininary result there was finally gathered a comprehensible mass of material stored with Bergstraesser in Munich, not the least a collection of about 15,000 photographs of folios of very old Koran codices from all over the world.
Please realize: 15,000 photographs and by no means 15,000 or even 42,000 Korans!
Bergstraesser died in 1933. His immediate successor Pretzl fell in WWII. So Anton Spitaler, a pupil of Bergstraesser's and successor on his chair in Munich, inherited the task of continuing his work after the war. Spitaler however spread the rumour that the collected materials had perished in the bomb attacks on Munich in the last months of WWII. Still in a note from 1972 in a publication of his Spitaler fostered this rumor. Nobody doubted this information, me included.
Now, in the ending 1990s it comes out that he was in possession of these approximately 15,000 photographs all the time since 1945, apparently to keep everybody else aloof from them in order to reserve exclusively to himself the right and the possibility of exploiting them in the hope of producing something outstanding in Koran scholarship - what in the end he was obviously incapable to achieve.
Meanwhile he has transferred the photographs - or what is left of them - to his pupil Angelika Neuwirth.
> Please realize: 15,000 photographs and by no means 15,000 or even 42,000 > Korans!
Heger thinks that we all are fools in SRI not to realize the difference between photographs and MSS; more so the that 15,000 photographs does not constitute 42,000 Qur'ans. It is what I called a classic case of preaching
>from the pulpit. > Bergstraesser died in 1933. His immediate successor Pretzl fell in WWII. > So Anton Spitaler, a pupil of Bergstraesser's and successor on his chair > in Munich, inherited the task of continuing his work after the war. > Spitaler however spread the rumour that the collected materials had > perished in the bomb attacks on Munich in the last months of WWII. Still > in a note from 1972 in a publication of his Spitaler fostered this > rumor. Nobody doubted this information, me included.
> Now, in the ending 1990s it comes out that he was in possession of these > approximately 15,000 photographs all the time since 1945, apparently to > keep everybody else aloof from them in order to reserve exclusively to > himself the right and the possibility of exploiting them in the hope of > producing something outstanding in Koran scholarship - what in the end > he was obviously incapable to achieve.
> Meanwhile he has transferred the photographs - or what is left of them - > to his pupil Angelika Neuwirth.
So, who are the real culprits? The Germans, of course! What an interesting expose? Heger wanted to show that Muslims like Hamidullah are lying; whereas he ended up showing that it is the Germans who have lied and cheated.
>> Please realize: 15,000 photographs and by no means 15,000 or even 42,000 >> Korans!
>Heger thinks that we all are fools in SRI not to realize the difference >between photographs and MSS; more so the that 15,000 photographs does not >constitute 42,000 Qur'ans. It is what I called a classic case of preaching >from the pulpit.
Give me a break, Saifullah! It was you and a number of other Muslims and allegedly Dr Hamidullah, too, who spread the rumor of these 42,000 Korans in Munich which were said to display no textual variances. So it is you who was exposed to be wrong. And it is you who should be embarrassed to have spread what easily could be recognized as a bombast and to have made fun of Muslim scholarship.
> >> Please realize: 15,000 photographs and by no means 15,000 or even 42,000 > >> Korans!
> >Heger thinks that we all are fools in SRI not to realize the difference > >between photographs and MSS; more so the that 15,000 photographs does not > >constitute 42,000 Qur'ans. It is what I called a classic case of preaching > >from the pulpit.
> Give me a break, Saifullah! It was you and a number of other Muslims and > allegedly Dr Hamidullah, too, who spread the rumor of these 42,000 Korans in > Munich which were said to display no textual variances. So it is you who was > exposed to be wrong. And it is you who should be embarrassed to have spread > what easily could be recognized as a bombast and to have made fun of Muslim > scholarship.
Well, we did not spread the rumour. We backed up our claim with the evidence from Hamidullah's book.
Now your claim is that we have been "exposed to be wrong". Wrong with what? That Hamidullah did not meet Pretzl in Paris? Or that Pretzl did not say (or did say) that 42,000 Mss photos that existed in Archive at Munich did not show textual variance? Or 42,000 Mss photos did not exist at all?
Show me your evidence! Or we would be very happy to re-conclude that it was Taha who is spreading the lies and that he should be ashamed of it! You see it can be that simply if you do not bring your evidence.
