A Quaker Perspective on the Qur’an and the Bible -- Page 5

However, there is no scholarly consensus about the significance and extent of variations in Qur’anic texts prior to Uthman. Most secular scholars tend to agree with the traditional view of Islamic scholars that the Qur’an was revealed to Mohammad in its entirety and redacted into its present form during the reign of Uthman.

Some "iconoclastic" scholars, such as John Wansbrough and his students Michael Cook and Patricia Crone, have questioned whether the Qur’an as we know it was revealed in its entirety to Muhammad, since the earliest surviving copies of the complete Qur’an date back to around a hunderd years after the Prophet’s death. These iconoclasts argue that the original Qur’an was expanded and altered as the Islamic empire evolved.

It should be noted, however, that some Muslims question the motives of these secular scholars. As we have seen, those who are seeking to discredit Islam (such as Sarker) use this scholarship to undermine faith in the Qur’an as an inspired text. For centuries Christian scholars have argued that the Qur’an is a forgery, a plagiarism of Christian and Jewish sources, etc. In an article entitled "The Great Koran con trick" Martin Bright examines the pros and cons of this new scholarship. Bright makes it clear that Patricia Crone has a dark view of Islam as religion. According to Bright:

In Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Crone argued that the early Muslim converts turned to Islam because it promised an Arab state based on conquest, rape and pillage. "God could scarcely have been more explicit. He told the Arabs that they had a right to despoil others of their women, children and land, or indeed that they had a duty to do so: holy war consisted in obeying."

Bright notes that Ziauddin Sardar is one of the few Muslim intellectuals to have responded to these new iconoclastic scholars:

[Sardar] has called their work: "Eurocentrism of the most extreme, purblind kind, which assumes that not a single word written by Muslims can be accepted as evidence". Writing in the aftermath of the Rushdie affair, Sardar placed the western revisionists firmly in the post-colonial orientalist camp, from where colonial "experts" have consistently told Muslims that they know best about the origins of their primitive, barbarian religion. "The triumphant conclusion of Crone and Cook," he says, "was that Islam is an amalgam of Jewish texts, theology and ritual tradition."

Whatever the merits of the new scholarship, it is clear that politics played a role in the canonization of Islamic scriptures as well as of the Christian gospels. Politics may play a role even in "objective" scholarship.

It is also clear that the divergences between versions of the Qur’an were not as wide as those between versions of the Christian gospel. In his recent book Constantine’s Bible, David L. Dungan points out that dozens of Gospels were composed in the first couple of centuries after the death of Jesus. One of the tasks of Eusebius (and the Catholic Church) was to winnow this plethora of gospels down to four. This process took place immediately prior to and during the time of Constantine for political as well as theological reasons so that the Church (and the Roman empire) would have a unified scripture and so that theological dissent could be suppressed. Uthman may have had a similar intention, but his job was much simpler since there was only one Qur’an and the discrepancies, if any, were probably minor.

Another controversy regarding the Qur’an involves the Satanic Verses (which Salman Rushdie used as a theme in his book of the same name). According to one of Mohammad’s biographers, Ibn Ishaq, the Prophet wanted so much to please his opponents in Mecca that God supposedly sent him verses implying it was acceptable to seek intercession from certain popular idols such as al-Hat, al-Uzza and Manat. Mohammad allegedly confessed later that it was Satan, not God, who had inspired him to promulgate these verses and they were retracted.

Almost all modern Islamic scholars reject this story as historically improbable and lacking the kind of corroboration required to be considered an authentic haddith (or saying) of the Prophet. Others have said that it doesn’t really matter if Mohammad was tricked by Satan since he was human, and therefore fallible; what matters is that God corrected his mistake and it doesn’t appear in the Qur’an today.

Because scriptures play such an important role in the faith development of "people of the book," such disputes are inevitable. The wisest approach is to be aware of these controversies and not to let them blind us to the insights and wisdom that we can acquire from a careful and sensitive reading of scripture. Augustine affirmed that the goal of the religious life is to practice "faith, hope, and love." A person who "keeps a firm hold upon these [virtues], does not need the Scriptures except for the purpose of instructing others" (Dungan, p. 135). Most liberal Quakers, as well as many Muslims, Christians, and Jews, would probably agree with Augustine on this point.

Translation and Politicization of the Scriptures

Muslims believe that the Qur’an cannot be translated because the Arabic of the Qur’an is divinely inspired and too beautiful to be rendered into another language. Therefore, any rendering of the text into another language is considered an interpretation, not a translation.

The same might be said about translations of the Bible: each one is an interpretation, not simply a word-for-word rendering of the text. Each of the many Bibles that I own has a different interpretive perspective. My Catholic Bible contains commentary that accepts textual-historical criticism and promotes a Catholic take on the Gospels (complete with pictures of the stations of the cross). The language of this Catholic version is modern and very readable. My conservative Protestant Bible rejects textual-historical criticism and sees the Bible as the inerrant word of God. It uses the King James translation which conservative Christians seem to favor as if it were authorized not by a self-serving King but by God Himself. My Jubilee African-American Bible offers an African-American perspective on faith and social justice. This version uses plain, modern English that can be read aloud with great effect.

A similar diversity of perspectives can be found among different translations-interpretations of the Qur’an. But unlike Christians, Muslims in America today can be penalized for having the "wrong" interpretation of their scripture.

Let me give an example. In my pamphlet Islam from a Quaker Perspective, I recommended a translation/version of the Qur’an by the eminent Muslim scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Recently I was shocked, but not surprised, to learn that this version has been banned from school libraries in Los Angeles because of its alleged anti-Semitism.

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