Thank you for pointing that link out. I loked and looked… and missed what was right in front of me.
And yes, the comments here on the Torah and New Testament have given me pointers towards how this should be done properly. Obviously the historical context is very useful for discussing why one set of rules or another was established, what was the spirit of the rule and what impact it had in contrast with the presilamic environment, or for commenting on the incendiary antisemitic fragments and how in fact their scope might be so narrow as to only apply to the Jews back then. Muslims, like Christians, can and will go out of their way to interpret verses in a way that favours their actual, current values or beliefs.
It is also interesting to see how the Qran builds upon the pre-existing narrative of the Torah and Gospel, but dismisses them as corrupted and altered by the Powers that Be (specifically the priesthood and ruling classes) to suit their own interests, and presents its own retelling of the events (when it bothers retelling stuff instead of cryptically, elliptically and confusingly mentioning a couple of names).
However, the Qran wasn’t written all at once either, but it was written by one single man, in sporadic bursts, over the course of twenty years.
But what I want to study here are the bits of the Qran that are abot faith and the afterlife, not about rules which, all things considered, were remarkably sensible, coherent, cohesive and progressive by their day’s standards. See the comments to the next post.
It is also interesting to see how the Qran builds upon the pre-existing narrative of the Torah and Gospel, but dismisses them as corrupted and altered by the Powers that Be (specifically the priesthood and ruling classes)
I always found it fascinating that Muslims believe this, yet it never occurs to them to ask whether the Qran has similarly been corrupted in the centuries since Mahmoud.
It’s Muhammad, not Mahmoud :(. Even if I’m now an atheist, I still think he was a pretty cool guy, eh brought peace and social justice and considerable progress in gender equality for the time (women were upgraded from “cattle”/”comodity” to “eternal minors under tutelage”, which from their perspective must have been pretty awesome) and doesn’t afraid of nothing.
And yes, as for your question, Richard is right on the money, save for one detail.
I think the standard answer to this is that the text has been transmitted exactly, down to the last jot and tittle. In fact, the vowel marks of written Arabic were developed in order to make this possible. (The same is true of Hebrew and the Torah.) One can then ask whether the interpretation of this exact text has changed, to which the standard answer is no, for the last thousand years no new interpretation has been allowed (the so-called “closing of the gate of ijtihad”). In modern times, some Muslims are questioning this, but I don’t think they’re making much progress.
Actually, they are making a lot of progress. Some of it is due to many scholars and activists who are strongly motivated to thrust Islam into the future, such as neo-fundamentalist Tarik Ramadan, whom I rather like personally because while he has values that aren’t “liberal” in the American sense of the word, he is very rational (insofar as that term can be applied in this context, “sane” would perhaps be a better word) and thorough and consistent about them. This is exceptional because many “liberal” muslim thinkers are better described as “contemporizers”, in that they seek the prestige and approval of modern Western ideologies, and are ready to glaze over and ignore aspects of their religions for the sake of this admirative aping, while this guy does not give in one iota, preferring to go back to the texts at whom people have stopped looking, and separate the traditions that are labelled “islamic” from what is actually in the Qran, and dismissing the hadith that are most suspicious of being fabricated. For example, stoning adulterers, while thought worldwide to be an islamic law, is in fact in direct contradiction with the Qran, which prescribes flogging and public humiliation: while that is an extremely harsh punishment by modern standards, for the time it was extremely soft… perhaps people back then were dissatisfied with that. As for Mr. Ramadan, see, I don’t agree with his values at all. That’s part of why I abandoned Islam. But what I like of him is how honest and coherent he is about it: most Muslims only take half measures in the direction most convenient to them, including those that pretend to abide by the strict fundamentals. This is another reason why I abandoned Islam (as for Theism, I abandoned it for epistemological and empirical reasons which have nothing to do with morality or ethics, but rather with intellectual integrity).
But I digress. The matter of the question is that the Qran, Hadith and Islamic jurisprudence are under tighter scrutiny than they have ever been. Much work is being done, many questions are being boldly asked, and many are being answered. The internet, and the anonymity it entails, are of course decisive factors. If you want to learn more, I suggest the Wikipedia portal on Islam, which is very exhaustive and where I have learned the answers to questions no-one in my entourage had ever been able to answer, and Wikiislam which delights in bringing up the most controversial and polemic stuff, as you can tell from the main page.
Thank you for pointing that link out. I loked and looked… and missed what was right in front of me.
And yes, the comments here on the Torah and New Testament have given me pointers towards how this should be done properly. Obviously the historical context is very useful for discussing why one set of rules or another was established, what was the spirit of the rule and what impact it had in contrast with the presilamic environment, or for commenting on the incendiary antisemitic fragments and how in fact their scope might be so narrow as to only apply to the Jews back then. Muslims, like Christians, can and will go out of their way to interpret verses in a way that favours their actual, current values or beliefs.
It is also interesting to see how the Qran builds upon the pre-existing narrative of the Torah and Gospel, but dismisses them as corrupted and altered by the Powers that Be (specifically the priesthood and ruling classes) to suit their own interests, and presents its own retelling of the events (when it bothers retelling stuff instead of cryptically, elliptically and confusingly mentioning a couple of names).
However, the Qran wasn’t written all at once either, but it was written by one single man, in sporadic bursts, over the course of twenty years.
But what I want to study here are the bits of the Qran that are abot faith and the afterlife, not about rules which, all things considered, were remarkably sensible, coherent, cohesive and progressive by their day’s standards. See the comments to the next post.
I always found it fascinating that Muslims believe this, yet it never occurs to them to ask whether the Qran has similarly been corrupted in the centuries since Mahmoud.
It’s Muhammad, not Mahmoud :(. Even if I’m now an atheist, I still think he was a pretty cool guy, eh brought peace and social justice and considerable progress in gender equality for the time (women were upgraded from “cattle”/”comodity” to “eternal minors under tutelage”, which from their perspective must have been pretty awesome) and doesn’t afraid of nothing.
And yes, as for your question, Richard is right on the money, save for one detail.
I think the standard answer to this is that the text has been transmitted exactly, down to the last jot and tittle. In fact, the vowel marks of written Arabic were developed in order to make this possible. (The same is true of Hebrew and the Torah.) One can then ask whether the interpretation of this exact text has changed, to which the standard answer is no, for the last thousand years no new interpretation has been allowed (the so-called “closing of the gate of ijtihad”). In modern times, some Muslims are questioning this, but I don’t think they’re making much progress.
Actually, they are making a lot of progress. Some of it is due to many scholars and activists who are strongly motivated to thrust Islam into the future, such as neo-fundamentalist Tarik Ramadan, whom I rather like personally because while he has values that aren’t “liberal” in the American sense of the word, he is very rational (insofar as that term can be applied in this context, “sane” would perhaps be a better word) and thorough and consistent about them. This is exceptional because many “liberal” muslim thinkers are better described as “contemporizers”, in that they seek the prestige and approval of modern Western ideologies, and are ready to glaze over and ignore aspects of their religions for the sake of this admirative aping, while this guy does not give in one iota, preferring to go back to the texts at whom people have stopped looking, and separate the traditions that are labelled “islamic” from what is actually in the Qran, and dismissing the hadith that are most suspicious of being fabricated. For example, stoning adulterers, while thought worldwide to be an islamic law, is in fact in direct contradiction with the Qran, which prescribes flogging and public humiliation: while that is an extremely harsh punishment by modern standards, for the time it was extremely soft… perhaps people back then were dissatisfied with that. As for Mr. Ramadan, see, I don’t agree with his values at all. That’s part of why I abandoned Islam. But what I like of him is how honest and coherent he is about it: most Muslims only take half measures in the direction most convenient to them, including those that pretend to abide by the strict fundamentals. This is another reason why I abandoned Islam (as for Theism, I abandoned it for epistemological and empirical reasons which have nothing to do with morality or ethics, but rather with intellectual integrity).
But I digress. The matter of the question is that the Qran, Hadith and Islamic jurisprudence are under tighter scrutiny than they have ever been. Much work is being done, many questions are being boldly asked, and many are being answered. The internet, and the anonymity it entails, are of course decisive factors. If you want to learn more, I suggest the Wikipedia portal on Islam, which is very exhaustive and where I have learned the answers to questions no-one in my entourage had ever been able to answer, and Wikiislam which delights in bringing up the most controversial and polemic stuff, as you can tell from the main page.
Thanks for those references and context.