Thank you Jaladhi

Submitted by Lactantius Jr. (European Union), Dec 14, 2006 at 06:31

To Jaladhi

Thank you for your kind words. In my interactions with Muslims, I seek to source everything I say in Islam and Christianity's most authoritative documents, allowing them to speak for themselves, and having experienced "out of context" as a common response from Muslims about anything showing Islam "negatively," I take care to set things in context, so as to undercut the inevitable "out of context" response.

In my comments on "The Islam of Muhammad," I cited the Qur'an, Hadith from Sahi Bukhari and a quotation from al-Tabari. There really is no other source for Islam than its own most authoritative documents, and feel it very telling to make the following comments about Sahi Bukhari, Ibn Ishaq and At-Tabari's compilations.

Al-Bukhari His collection of Sahi(‘authentic' ‘genuine' ‘sound in isnad') Hadith is said to be the result of sixteen years of labour, and out of 600,000 hadiths that he examined, he accepted only 7,397 as authentic (some others say 2,602, 9,082 with repetition), but whatever he rejected as ‘inauthentic,' plenty of what he included, does not show Muhammad to have been "the model for all mankind" claimed of him by Islam. Online English translations of Sahih Bukhari and Sahi Muslim also, can be found on the website of the Muslim Student's Association of the University of Southern California, at:- http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/ titled "Compendium of Muslim Texts"

Ibn Ishaq

The most comprehensive and most important biography of Muhammad was written by Ibn Ishaq (Muhammad Ibn Ishaq Ibn Yasar Ibn Khiyar) titled Sirat Rasullullah and what we have today is Ibn Hisham's recension of it, dated around 60 years after Ibn Ishaq's death in AD 767, with Ibn Hisham saying that he edited Ishaq's biography and omitted certain details that were deemed too offensive to Muslims. Alfred Guillaume translated this edition into The Life of Muhammad and tried to reconstruct Ibn Ishaq's manuscript using quotations from other Muslim scholars. This biography provides one of the most important sources of Muhammad's life, a helpful online index being available at:-

http://www.answering-islam.org/Silas/ibn_hisham_index.doc

AT-TABARI (Abu Ja`far Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari.) who died AD 923, Baghdad, Iraq, was an important Muslim scholar who compiled one of the most extensive collections of scholars' opinions, and is often quoted by later scholars. Through his quotations, Alfred Guillaume was also able to recover part of the missing portions from Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad, which were removed in Ibn Hisham's recension. His work helping to consolidate Sunni orthodoxy.

With kind regards and best wishes

Lactantius Jr.

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