Studying the Quran in 1976: The Quran Versus many Non-Muslim
Writers
You should keep in mind that this took place in 1976.
This was before the Iranian Revolution and Islam being plastered all over the
media. I didn’t know any Muslims at the time. (I was living in a
relatively small college town and I incorrectly assumed that there were no
Muslims there.) Thus, there was no one trying to convince me of the truth of
Islam. In fact, I eventually converted to Islam before ever meeting a
Muslim, doing my best to learn the prayers from a book written by a missionary,
T. P. Hughes’ The Dictionary of Islam.
Therefore, the information I was receiving about Islam came
mostly from non-Muslims writing about Islam. There were very few books
available to me at that time written by Muslims. In fact, I only recall
coming across one work written by a Muslim, a relatively small work by
Maudoodi.[1] However, I was able to
find a couple of copies of the Quran translated by Muslims. In
particular, I was reading the translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
In essence, it was truly the Quran versus a number of works
written by non-Muslims. In general, these non-Muslims were forced to
praise Islam every now and then but always tried to find some fault with the
very basis of the faith. Thus, they came up with many theories about the
Prophet Muhammad and the Quran. I would be reading their critique
side-by-side with the Quran.
Most of the authors I was reading were clearly saying that
the Quran was not a revelation from God but simply written by the Prophet Muhammad,
may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him. Such was the view
expressed by Richard Bell in The Qur'an: Translated With a Critical
Re-arrangement of the Surahs,Arberry in his introduction to his
translation of the Quran, Kenneth Cragg in The Call of the Minaret, ad
nauseum.[2]
However, as Montgomery Watt noted, this in itself presented
a host of questions. If Muhammad were a phony, did he do what he did
maliciously? He was not known to be an insincere or malicious person
beforehand, what then led to his change? Furthermore, if he did it
maliciously, how did he come up with all of the information contained in the
Quran, especially while living in a place like Mecca ? Did he have teachers; if so, who
were they and where is it documented that he had teachers?
To be frank, I was not very impressed with those who claimed
that the Prophet had some teacher who gave him all of the information
that later made up the Quran. In general, those authors would refer to
chance or one-time meetings between the Prophet and specific individuals.
Thus, for example, Muir and Margoliouth attributed the information found
in the Quran to Baheerah, a monk that the Prophet may have met in Syria during
his youth while part of a trading caravan, long before he claimed to be a
Prophet. Such arguments are flatly illogical and extremely
far-fetched. I did not spend much time with them.
Some critics were forced to admit that the Prophet Muhammad
was known to be an extremely honest and sincere person. They also noted
how he did not really materially benefit from his actions, as he continued to
live a very sincere and humble life. Therefore, they concluded that he
was honest and sincere but terribly deluded. But still, if he were
deluded, where did this information come from? Some made it seem like it was
from his subconscious. Anderson
even called it “wishful thinking.” Others actually said that he was
suffering from epileptic seizures and that the revelations were the result of
such seizures. These theories may have been convincing to anyone who
simply read what these authors wrote without taking the time to read and study
the Quran itself. As shall be noted later in this lecture, there is
simply too much information in the Quran that could not have possibly have come
from one’s own subconscious.
Another common claim that I had read was that the Prophet Muhammad
was some kind of “nationalist” leader whose main goal was to unite the Arabs.
Typical of this way of thinking is what was stated in The New
Catholic Encyclopedia: “About the age of 40 he received his ‘prophetic
call’ to unite Arabs under a monotheism.”[3] This approach can be considered
more complementary, as it does not seek to ridicule the Prophet in any
way. Yet, at the same time, it made no sense to me just on the basis of
one reading of the Quran. It is sufficient to note that there is not one
passage in the Quran that is addressed to the Arabs. In the Quran, God
speaks to humankind or the people, believers and disbelievers. If this
book were meant for the Arabs only, why are they never addressed directly and,
instead, these general terms that cross all of humanity are used?
In any case, the plethora of their different views
concerning the Prophet was a sign to me that something unfathomable to those
authors had occurred. This was all evidence to me that there was really
something to the Quran, as otherwise just could have just discounted it as a
trivial work, not worth the effort of refuting or discussing. It actually
got me even more interested in the Quran. This is something that you will
see again later: The works that should have dissuaded me from further pursuing
the Quran made me more convinced that I need to pursue it further.
Footnotes:
[1] Not
too long afterwards I came across a book written by someone with a Muslim name.
This book was The Spirit of Islam written by Sir Syed Ameer Ali. This
book was written by a notorious modernist and, even at that time, I found it in
contradiction to everything that I had learned about Islam. Most prominently,
Syed Ameer Ali clearly believed that it was the Prophet Muhammad himself
who had written the Quran.
[2] For
a review and critique of many of the views of the Orientalists (non-Muslims
writing about Islam), the interested reader may consult the following works:
Mohammad Khalifa, The Sublime Quran and Orientalism (London: Longman,
1983); Muhammad Mohar Ali, The Quran and the Orientalists (Ipswich , England
[3] New
Catholic Encyclopedia (Washington: The Catholic University of America,
1981), vol. 1, p. 715. Quoted from Hamza Mustafa Njozi, The Sources
of the Quran: A Critical Review of the Authorship Theories (Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia: World Assembly of Muslim Youth, 1991), p. 17. Obviously, not all the
books that I read at that time are available to me at this time, some thirty years
later. However, I do recall the basic works that I read and the basic messages
that they gave. For the most part, though, the direct quotes have been
“reconstructed” through sources available to me at the time of this writing.
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