The study of islam in the 1990's and post the 9/11 atrocity. Doubts and questions

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jul 17, 2011 at 08:34

I will select a few outstanding works from both the Arab world and the West that explore the origins of early Islam and the outcomes of the Arab invasion of the Middle East

1. Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid (D2010) was an Egyptian scholar who wrote al-itijah al-aqli fi al-tafsir or the rational approach to exegesis and his basic thesis is that the Qur'an is really a human creation at a point in time and the text of the Qur'an should be approached as a literary text and the tools of literary criticism be used in a new examination of the literature of the Qur'an. But as expected this was too much for islamists in Egypt and they found an arcane legal argument in the shari3a called al-hisba where he was declared as an apostate and had to divorce his wife. He and his wife left for an exile in Holland and he died in Egypt this past year

So much for free thinking in islam

2. Suliman Bashear who was a scholar at the University of Nablus reached the same conclusions as Wansbrough that Islam was late and it could not have originated in al-Hijaz through his examination of the very ealry exegesis of the Qur'an and it is all in his book muqadimma fi al-tarikh al-akhar and his Arabs and others in early Islam

3. In regard to the languages spoken by those civilizations that were the subjects of the arab invasion Franck Salameh in his book language memory and identity in the middle east the case in lebanon and Niloofar Haeri in her book sacred language ordinary people dilemmas of culture and politics in Egypt where both authors argue that the "languages" spoken in Lebanon and Egypt are not mere dialects of Arabic but real languages which means that it was the civilized that shaped these new languages and not the other way around or in other words Egyptians and Lebanese did not wake up one day and stopped speaking their languages be it Syriac or Coptic and they became Arabic speakers and so much for historical discontinuity

4. There is no doubt that Angelika Neuwirth's work is really great. and the problem that she addresses is why is the Qur'an has a very marginal role in islamic liturgy? "she found in the meccan material of the koran indications that it took shape in litirgical contexts which subsequently disappeared" (see Cook) and this is indeed very interesting and it really explains why does the Qur'an not make any sense most of the time?

5. Syriac in the Qur'an. Syriac is the main foreign language in the Qur'an and why is that? Christoph Luxenburg tells us that the Qur'an is really a Syriac text and indeed he proves that the likes of hur 3ayn cannot be Arabic and that surat al-kawthar or Q108 which has no meaning when we read it in arabic when in fact his reading of it makes much sense. So should we believe him? I'm still not sure that we can go that far and declare that the Qur'an is really a garshouni (Arabic text written in Syriac alphabet) as of yet, but for sure he is very interesting and more so his new reading of the inscriptions of al-masjid al-aqsa

6. Ibn warraq and his books and he really introduced to any one who is interested studies about the history of islam that are really hard to find and for this I give him high marks

7. Sayed al-Qimni is an Egyptian historian who tells us that the Arab invasion of Egypt was no more than colonialism and imperialism this would sound as logic to us but to Egyptians this is indeed news for which he has been attacked by islamists and he had to leave Egypt for a period

So where would the study of early islam go from here? My main concern is that the study of early islam is becoming part of Islamic studies and not of a history department which means that the outcome would be more pious fiction ant not real history and this is indeed very tragic

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