Talk Islam

willow

  • 12:32:02 pm on July 13, 2008 | # | |
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    Anybody read Ibn Warraq’s The Origins of the Koran? Thoughts? How scary is it?

     

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  • thabet 12:05 am on July 14, 2008 | #

    The book is mainly a collection of essays by Warraq, which he believes will show the true origins of the Qur’an.

    I don’t think Ibn Warraq actually understands any of the material he promotes in his books. If it looks ‘anti-Islamic’ he uses it, even where the two pieces of information may contradict each other (e.g. he relies on scholars who have very different approaches to Qur’anic studies without ever letting his reader know he understands the differnece!).

    Reviews of the book by professional scholars in Western journals have trashed the book (I have only come across two reviews, one by someone who is also a practicing Muslim). Here is what one reviewer in JAOS said:

    “Arrogance and amateurish deductions abound; and all is sounded in the key of gormless hysteria…”

    Personally, I think the areas his work covers is literary and textual criticism and history; not theology (not much of a theological component to a lot of the essays he reproduces).

  • Sabir 12:43 pm on July 14, 2008 | #

    His book Why I am not a Muslim exhibits the same fatal flaw. There doesn’t seem to be any sense of a thesis or argument in his work other than “Islam is false, and any one of these pieces of evidence proves it.” He seems either unconcerned with or oblivious to the fact that much of the evidence he presents is mutually inconsistent; at one point, he quotes a Christian writer who claims Muhammad (SAW) was possessed by demons, and elsewhere he quotes a historian who argues that Muhammad (SAW) never actually existed. His writing style is also blatantly unscholarly and unprofessional; Why I am not a Muslim includes a chapter on Muhammad’s (SAW) life as related by Muslim sources in which Warraq fails to provide specific citations for any of his claims, except to simply say that they are based on Muslim sources. The guy is nothing but a hack.

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