The Revisionist Notion of Islam
DKleinecke
have a mixed reaction.
Islamic Awareness deserves a great deal of credit for making available
to all of us the early inscriptions, coins etc. in Arabic.
Unfortunately their comments on the material are all too often
tendentious and misleading.
The chief concern of Islamic Awareness appears to be a group of
possibly fabulous monsters called "Christian Missionaries". So far as
I can tell, the only actual example they have of "Christian
Missionaries" is people behind the Answering Islam web site who
probably do deserve to be call missionaries, although they scarcely
represent Christianity. But that squabble is not what I want to
discuss in this message.
Islamic Awareness does not seem to comprehend the point-of-view of the
revisionists who doubtless represent a much more significant attack on
traditional Islam than any missionaries.
Briefly the revisionist point of view is that in Arabia during the
last pre-Islamic century religion was monotheistic, the name of deity
was Allah and the modes of worship were a chaotic mixture of Jewish
traditions (both proto-talmudic and heterodox), Jewish-Christian
traditions and mainline Christian (in at least three different
flavors) traditions. A small amount of the old paganism probably also
survived and there may have still more influences.
Muhammad was a religious reformer, or at least revivalist, who left
behind him a legacy of teaching not much different than the teaching
that proceeded him. Two generations later when the Arabic Empire felt
the need to differentiate itself religiously the ruler, most likely
Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, revived the teachings of Muhammad. For most
of the next century these teachings were mulled over and repeated
until finally a selection was made from what survived and canonized as
the Qur'an.
What Islamic Awareness seems unable to grasp is that, to the
revisionist, the Qur'an grew out of this mass of quranic literature.
Thus a given passage that is now found in the Qur'an might well
predate the final Qur'an we know today by two centuries or more. Even
an entire surat might predate the Qur'an by two centuries.
To the revisionists the intellectual content of the Qur'an was already
in place in Arabia before Muhammad was born. Presumably Muhammad
helped organize it. Perhaps not - there is nothing in the Qur'an that
can be said, with confidence, that it was part of Muhammad's
revelation. The final version comes from the court of the Abbascid
Caliphs - but, most likely, everything in it is older than that.
How might the revisionists be refuted? About the only thing that would
prove that the Qur'an was canonized at an earlier date would be a
complete (or incomplete in a manner that permits restoration of the
missing parts) copy of the Qur'an reliably dated earlier than the
closing years of the second Islamic century. Portions of the Qur'an
dated earlier prove nothing. The revisionist models predicts that they
will exists.
One of the consequences of the revisionist model that bothers Muslims
a great deal is the fact that it says that Islam predates the Qur'an.
The Muslim world was clearly Islamic when the Dome on the Rock was
built. The model says the Dome was built a century before the Qur'an
was canonized. This seems a priori impossible to Muslims - but it is a
genuine possibility.
Perhaps some day we will reach essential agreement on these issues.