Cluedo for the lamenters of Asma Bint Marwan

 

It appears that a few historians and critics of Islam have yet to understand the value of the Islamic scholarship on history and its transmission through the ages. Islamic historical sources can be divided into three categories.

 

Seerah (Sira) or the biographies of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). These contain orally transmitted history of the life and times of the Prophet. Ibn Ishaq's Sira is the earliest known record of Holy Prophet's life, but no known transcripts survived. We rely on Ibn Hisham's rendering of Ibn Ishaq's manuscripts for reference.

 

 

Hadith and their commentaries. All narrators of these prophetic sayings and incidents from his and his companions' lives are recorded in chronological order before narrating the story or quotation.

 

 

Tafseer and other early scholarly works: Early books on Quranic exegesis also contain some historic materials not found on other books.  

It has been well established principle of Islamic scholarship that in the matter of Shariah (laws, do's and dont's) Sira books cannot be relied upon due to the poor transmission of the events from the time of the Prophet. That is why Imam Hanbal, one of the first jurist Imams specifically indicated his mistrust of Ibn Ishaq Sira for deciding on the matters of jurisprudence.

 

Quran remains the unaltered and unadulterated Word of God in a Muslim's eyes; the source of dispute within Islam is not the words of Quran, but what they mean? And to the more literalistic, Orthodox Sects, these words cannot mean anything more than what the Prophet or his companions or some esteemed Imams have already said.

 

This not only provides ammunition to the endless ongoing schisms within Islam, but also helps fuel the Islamophobic propaganda by the bigots.

 

From the most violent Shia-Sunni war to the ridiculous debates on whether God has hands and feet, all disputes are deeply rooted in a bunch of texts which require constant scrutiny and criticism.

 

I keep hearing and reading about the vengeful killings of some 'esteemed' satirist poets in Medina and Makkah ordered by the Prophet Muhammad.

 

Tom Holland and Douglas Murray have both mentioned Asma bint Marwan, a Jewish poetess of Medina who lampooned the Prophet and was executed by one of his companions.

 

The argument goes that Charlie Hebdo attack was not so out of character, considering the founder of Islam himself did not tolerate any satire aimed at him.

 

But the fact is that what these commentators and scholars consider to be a fact, isn't actually true.

 

When you read the story of Asma's alleged killing, it becomes clear that this was a poorly fabricated tale. Firstly, this incidence was only reported by Ibn Ishaq and Waqidi in their Sira and not in the more authentic books of Hadith.

 

One may say that this was a deliberate omission by the Hadith collectors, but then you will find many other Ahadith in their collections which could have been discarded for the same purposes. This is simply not the scholarly tradition of the collectors of Hadith. They tested all narrations based on two criteria.

 

a. Chain of narrators, which must be continuous and sound.

 

b. The content of the story. Which must match between different chains of narrators.

 

Even then, the Hadith scholars would class the narrations as weak, doubtful, reliable, authentic etc., based on their own opinions. Debates on individual hadith reports have raged on ever since; usually it is one of the links in the 'chain' which is found unsound, unreliable, old, suffering from amnesia or just a habitual fabricator. Very few Ahadith have been spared this criticism.

 

In the presence of such an unforgiving evaluation, most of these sensational stories about magic, jinns, blasphemous poets and poetesses and imagined satanic verses can be proved as fabrications or misheard, misremembered or confused accounts.

 

Take the tale of Asma bint Marwan. According to the Sira literature she is said to have been killed barely a year and half into Hijrah, by a blind man, in the middle of the night, in her own home.

 

The blind man was Umair ibn Adiyy according to Ibn Ishaq.

But Al-Qastalani states that according to Ibn Duraid the assassin was called Ghashmir.

Another source Suhaili reveals that she was murdered by her own husband.

Yet Al-Qastalani also opined that she may have been killed by her own people.

 

But lets for once imagine that it was the blind Umair who killed Asma the poetess with the sword, in her house.

 

But another historian states that Umair did not kill Asma, but his own sister, Binte Adiyy.

 

The murdered was blind. The most popular version of the story says that he felt his way into Asma's house, found her, identified her and then plunged a blade into her chest. Or was it his sister? Indeed he was blind.

 

But so are those who actually believe that this event took place.

 

OK, say that in the presence of such contradictory stories, one or two mavericks still wish to rely on this story as fact.

 

Consider this..

 

It is year 2 After Hijra. Muslims are in a bitter conflict with the Meccans. The battle of Badr has already taken place.  Banu Qanuqa, one of the Jewish tribes of Medina have denounced the treaty with the Muslims and have been expelled.

 

But why would Muslims start a conflict with their fellow Jewish citizens who remain their allies barely a year into their treaty of Medina. Such murders would certainly have antagonised the proud Jewish tribes and given them a reason to rebel.

 

We know for a fact that Kaa'b bin Ashraf was executed for treason around the same time. He was a leader Banu Nadir Jews in Medina, but his guilt was so obvious that no one dared to defend him or dispute the decision.

 

In short, Hadith books do not mention the assassination of Asma or Abu ifak (another alleged satirist), there is no concrete evidence of the event every taking place. All the circumstantial evidence is against it.

 

And above all, the Prophet of Islam, May peace be upon him, would never have punished those who attacked his character. If you know the man, you will also come to respect and love his nobility, forgiveness and sense of justice.

 

Quran and the West - A history of prejudice.

When UKIP’s Lord Pearson says that Muslims should address the violence in the Quran, he is most definitely not pretending to be ignorant. He should know that there is a counter narrative available for those who wish to listen; that of a peaceful, non-political Islam in which Quran and the Sunnah (conduct of the Prophet of Islam) still hold a central, fundamental position.

Even Lord Pearson’s critics can’t help but defend his ‘intellectual’ message.

Andrew Brown says that in a ‘literal sense’ the Quran does contain an ‘unpleasant and violent political message’. I wonder what exactly he means by the phrase ‘in a literal sense’. What is literal? Is it ‘taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or exaggeration.’ as Google informs us?

Or in the case of the Quran it must mean contextomizing the text?. i.e., the literal reading of the Quran which teaches its readers a violent political message can only be done if each ‘problem’ verse is read in its usual and most basic sense… without any context: Both historic and textual.

Let us discuss a bit of historic context.

The first contact of the Muslims with the West was a hostile one. The Byzantine Empire shrank and eventually retreated under the onslaught of Muslim armies from the time of Umar, the second Caliph. Since then, misrepresenting Islam has become an age old western tradition.

We have a Greek-Syriac text from the time of Umar which informs its readers of a ‘false prophet of the Saracens’ whose armies have invaded Palestine.

That was an inevitable, unavoidable war. Empires did not suffer barbarian tribes for too long before sending armies to neutralize them. But these were no barbarians. They were a society of converts to a religion which taught morality and required its followers to proselytize it to the world. A clash was inevitable. And for the Byzantines, it resulted in a defeat.

By now you must be wondering why I am digressing from the issue of context to the problematic Quranic verses. If you want that discussion, pick up a copy of the Quran and a book on the Sira of the Prophet.

I want to discuss the historical context of these periodic statements put out by politicians and academics about revising the Quran, discarding some of it, denouncing it, even banning it. That is the real problem here.

So where were we? Yes, Islam’s encounters with the Byzantine empire...

Centuries later, by the time Islamic civilization was in decline, Orientalist missionaries started producing literature on Islam. They belonged to many denominations of the Christian faith, but had one thing in common. They could not bear to accept any virtues in the Holy Prophet or his message.

According to them the rise of Islam had nothing to do with the actual message of the Quran. Socio-economically speaking, Islam was a product of an Arab renaissance of sorts. With a culture in love with its language and tribes taking pride in their poets – A nation was aching to unite under a cause to challenge the Byzantine and Persian Empires who had dismissed them as illiterate nomads for too long.

Add to the mix a poet who aspired to be a prophet the same as those who came to the Israelites.

D C MacDonald writes about how Quran came into being;

‘Muhammad’s brain had for long been treasuring up such things (sic. segments of Old Testament); but treasuring them up with the most singular, most unparalleled inaccuracy; and then making them over with the utmost freedom of imagination.’

Take SW Koelle for example, another 19th century Orientalist who faithfully reproduces passage after passage from Ibn e Ishaq’s Sira while commenting on the person of the Prophet with the aim to negate any heroic quality that was apparent or implied in those writings.

In the 17th Century, George Sale translated the Quran into English and in his opening notes introduced it as ‘the Book what that false prophet very grosly invented’.

Title page of Sale's translation of the Quran

With such a rich history of academic prejudice, no wonder that the western scholarship never could look at the Quran in a neutral light. They hated and feared both the book and its bearers.

The same thought process has been inherited by the present day Orientalist-Historians. No longer burdened by Christian faith, they do not want to glorify Christ the Saviour and demean all the false prophets who came after him. But because Islam challenges the perceived notions of those who research it with an open mind, it does take a lot of effort to oppose it.

The first reaction is to reject the text as a forgery; something post-scripted to fit a changing geo-political landscape of Arabia. Any parallels with the older scriptures are considered plagiarisms and interpolations by unknown editors of the Quran. Any departures from the Bibilical narratives are just mistakes and evidence that the author of the Quran must have taken any apocryphal stories and adopted them for their new book.

Patricia Crone accepts that the Quran was indeed uttered by a person called Muhammad, but she is not convinced if Mecca ever existed. Similar doubts have been raised by Tom Holland in his recent work. Another attempt to discredit the Quran was made by Luxenberg,who thinks that it originated as a Syriac text outside of Arabia and transformed into classic Arabic over a period of time.

One of the new theories states that Islam was in fact a doomsday cult which just carried on growing. Early Muslims were awaiting the Armageddon imminently. Maybe this explains the fanaticism of the Muslim armies who conquered the world.

 

However, the message of the Quran, its conviction on absolute justice, equality of human kind, rights of women and social justice, has all been ignored due to prejudice. Muslims did not come out of Arabia with a nationalist cause; they came out because they had something to share with the world. And they made sure the world knew of this treasure - the Quran.

We cannot deny that there is a problem with the Muslim world today. It is a problem of literal reading: but not of the Quran itself. It is of the disparate Hadith texts which require even more context and validations than the Quran. The creed of Salafis and Wahabis, the two factions of Sunni Islam providing almost all the fighters in ISIS and Al-Qaeda, are Hadith-centric. i.e. They believe the Quran to be the word of God, but they dare not understand its words without a Hadith reference. This means that if a verse’s explanation is not accompanied by an alleged explanation by the prophet himself or his esteemed companions, or those who came immediately after them - it is not a valid interpretation.

In fact, in Orthodox Sunni Islam, the Quran has been the secondary source of doctrinal authority for many centuries.

This approach restricts the understanding of the Quran to a particular era of history which is only remembered for its violence. Nations were at war with each other, slavery was still a common practice and society was still being ruled by very tribal traditions. The ideas of citizenship, loyalty and national identities were very different then.

 

In fact it was the Quran which spurred on the Muslim civilizations around the world to take huge leaps in philosophy, science, arts and culture which benefited the whole of mankind.

How strange it must be to live in the 21st century; in the era of the Internet and smartphones and idealizing a medieval lifestyle at the same time.

So the next time someone blames Quran for the punishment of beheadings and hanging for apostasy, blasphemy and heresy, or stoning to death for adultery or homosexuality, please remember that Quran does not prescribe such punishments at all.

This debate on how to interpret Quran has been going on among theMuslims for many centuries, and it will continue for the time to come. But if history has taught us anything, it is that reform is an ongoing process which may take centuries.

The problem is not the Quran, it never has been. The problem has been those who twisted the meanings of the Quran to create suspicions, and those who ignored its message. And above all, those Muslims who were given this gift and they chose to replace it with the opinions of men.

In the Shadow of the Sword III; History, Myths and Prophecies

 Dhul-Qarnayn with the help of jinn, building  the Iron Wall to keep the barbarian Gog and Magog from civilized peoples.Courtesy: Wikimedia

Tom Holland mentions in his book the stories and legends popular among the Christians and Jews living in and around the Fertile Crescent. These are the tales of the seven sleepers, of the two-horned king and of Gog and Magog which also are mentioned in the Quran. A valid question can be raised perhaps, that why such stories of a victorious King, of mystical time-travelling Christians and of demonic hordes locked away behind a metallic wall were reproduced in the Quran? What kind of plagiarism is this! Was this an attempt by the “authors” of Quran to entice their Israelite cousins into the new-found Ishmaelite Empire? Or was it an effort to impress the Quraish with the knowledge of fantastic happenings which could only have come from God?

Let us examine the Islamic source material while ignoring the classical Muslim scholarship on this issue. I ignore it because classical Islamic scholars like Tabari, Ibn Ishaq etc. have borrowed heavily from Jewish and Christian sources to fill the gaps in their own understanding of history. Their commentaries on Quran often cite tales and fables of the Israelites. So Islamic understanding of Quran isn’t necessarily “Quranic” on many matters. For example, Book of Genesis becomes the guide for Muslim understanding of creation myths. Similarly whatever Quran mentions with references to Torah and Gospels, gets superimposed by the popular Judaeo-Christian opinion. Muslims start believing in ascension of Jesus and his return in latter days. Although they take care that rather than dying and rising up again, he is replaced on the cross with a look-alike (a story which existed in one of the lesser known gospels). Ibn Kathir went so far as to state that the earth rested on the horns of a bull. None of these stories can be verified by the Quranic text.

As the main thrust of Tom Holland’s argument is that Quran is a book manufactured, borrowed and edited to support an empire for the Arabs, I would like to compare these stories and legends with Quranic source material to see if there is any evidence of Divine knowledge in it.

A few points of clarification before I proceed further:

1. If Quran records an event or the past, regardless of its existence in Torah or folklore, the Quranic account will always be free of error. i.e., there will be no supernatural happenings, demons; time-travel etc. and it will be consistent with the scientific findings.

2. The story of Moses and “Khidr” is actually a vision of Moses which foretells of the future interactions between Israelites and the Muslims.

3. The story of Dhul-Qarnayn is significant because of its prophetic nature. i.e., Yajooj and Majooj making reappearance in the latter days.

For centuries Muslims have believed that Dhul-Qarnayn, the two horned king was Alexander the great. Some have asserted that the story has been copied from the “Romance of Alexander” which conveniently converts a pagan warrior into a soldier of God. But a closer look at the Quranic text and verified historic evidence shows that it was Cyrus the great who was the pious king. Also, Jewish records interpret Daniel’s vision about the two horned ram as Cyrus, their liberator. This understanding is consistent with other verses of Quran which also counts Sabians (Zoroastrians) as those who will be judged as monotheists along with Muslims and “people of the Book”. Quran also informs us of the geographical limits of Cyrus’s empire and location where the wall was built to keep Gog and Magog out.

The identity of this prophet-king matches the prophecy of Daniel in Torah, and not the myths prevalent among the masses. Thus Quran presents the correct history without error and also predicts the future. Exactly what a Divinely revealed scripture should do. When I say that the correct history was recorded, please note that the alleged supernatural beings helping the King build the wall and any myths regarding Gog and Magog are absent from Surah Kahf.

Now let’s see what Quran says about the future. Although it mentions Gog and Magog only twice, it does not elaborate on their origins or identity. Contemporary Jews put the title of Gog and Magog to everyone who came to harm them, including the Saracens. To them, Gog and Magog would inevitably be followed by the Messiah. Cyrus has been called a “Messiah” by Torah, so it was understandable that a future Messiah should also battle against the menace that is Yajooj and Majooj.

Quran says that in future Gog and Magog will cross all barriers and will spread on the earth causing mischief. If Biblical genealogy is to be believed, Japhethites (Gog and Magog) now inhabit Europe, Russia and North America.

This brings us finally to the story of the seven sleepers as was popular among the Syriac speaking Christians. Quran calls them Ashab-e-Kahf (Kahf=KHF=Cave) and does not give a number. Also, if we only read the text, it can be understood that these people of the cave may have belonged to various times and locations across the Roman Empire during the 3oo years of persecution. It also becomes clear that Quran does not mention a set number of the cave dwellers, which means that they were many in number who lived in the catacombs and caves around the Roman empire, virtually cut off from the daily business of life.

A test for the authenticity of Quran would be to prove that any of the historic accounts mentioned in it are erroneous in the light of the modern research. History at the time of late antiquity appears to be re-written and in many cases fabricated to validate a dynasty or religious order. Alexander or his historian sought to replace the memory of Cyrus with that of the invading conqueror. Umayyids and Abbasids were known to make use of fabricated hadith to help their popularity in the masses. Jews and Christians were also waiting for the Messiah or his second coming and their narratives were driven by this expectation. If Tom Holland’s theory is correct, Quran should be full of historic errors considering it narrates many stories from the past. In his book he does mentions such errors, but always through the agency of early Islamic commentators, who in turn were taking the best guess from many versions of history available to them.

If Quran is to be a collection of stories from syriac Christian and Jewish literature, it should also have the errors that they contain. An idea for another book for Mr. Holland perhaps?

In the Shadow of the Sword II; Quran and Sana'a manuscripts



A segment of the "Sana'a Papyrus"



Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful; This verse appears in Quran 114 times, at the beginning of each Surah or chapter apart from one exception. Surah Tauba (Chapter 9) starts without this verse. But Bismillah, as this verse is commonly referred to, also appears in the middle of another Surah. Completing 114 appearances in Quran, equaling the total number of Chapters in it. An interesting trivia which I learnt as a child growing in a Muslim household.

While reading Tom Holland’s “In the shadow of the sword” it never occurred to me that the total number of “Bismillah’s” in Quran will have any relevance to his critique of the origins of Islam. The book itself is a very interesting read. The author has complete mastery over the era which saw the end of the glory days of both Roman and Persian empires. Be it Peroz’s last ditch attempt to regain lost prestige of the house of Sassan, or Justinian’s endeavors to bring Rome back into the Roman Empire, the book paints a picture so well defined and detailed as far as Romans and Persians are concerned. But when it comes to Mecca, Mr. Holland resorts to broad brush strokes. He laments the lack of historic evidence, ruins, engravings, coinage etc. but still assumes so much based on what little “secular” evidence exists.

So, what of the authenticity of Quran? Tom Holland observes that the paradise of Quran sounds very similar to the Greek myths. Why are there so many frequent references to agriculture, olives etc? Could it be that the author(s) of Quran had an eye on the Fertile Crescent, or even better, was it written in Mesopotamia? To a Muslim, such questions are obviously bordering the ridiculous, but a secular reader should also be taken aback by the naivety of such fantastic assumptions.

Mr. Holland’s assertion that Quran is not as infallible and unchanged as Muslims would like to believe because

a. There is no evidence that Quran ever existed as a single text during the life of the Prophet of Islam (pbuh) and

b. The Sana’a manuscripts, discovered in 1970s have evidence that Quran was revised and amended.

As for the first argument, it can be said that the author has willingly ignored the distinctly oral tradition of the Arabs. The fact that thousands of verses of classic Arab poets were preserved without much adulteration in pre-Islamic Arabia: The fact that even in this day and age, millions of Muslims have memorized the full text of the Quran, and can recite it whole without consulting a paper copy.

And when it comes to Sana’a manuscripts, Mr. Holland gets a bit overexcited due to the knee jerk Muslim reaction to the German scholar in charge of the restoration of the Sana’a scrolls. Gerd Puin stated that the scrolls were re-written where various alterations were made to the spellings and order of the verses. Also, in his opinion Quran is not a clear book, its vague and may contain texts from before the time of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Tom Holland has taken a similar stance in his book. But Sadeghi-Gourdarzi critique of Puins’ work (Gerd’s wife published more material recently) debunks the theory that Quranic text has been inconsistent and also confirms the mainstream Muslim understanding of how Quran was compiled and its recitation standardized. If anything at all, Sana’a scrolls are a testament to the early Islamic efforts to ensure Quran was preserved on paper (Papyrus) and disseminated far and wide for the new converts. Sana’a scrolls were washed and re-written with the Mushaf-e-Uthman. And residual traces of old ink show the older version of Quran where many words were spelled differently and some verses/surahs were in different order.

One thing struck me while reading the research on the manuscripts. Scholars working on a particular section of the manuscripts found that they were looking the earliest written version of the end of the 8th and beginning of the 9th Surah. There was no Bismillah written at the beginning of the 9th Surah. So in addition to finding no textual contradictions (additions or deletions) between the Sana’a scrolls and the modern day Quran, there is consistency in minutest details which takes us back to the time of the Prophet of Islam (pbuh). For those insterested I would recommend looking into the "absent" Bismillah before Surah Tauba, which links the revelation of the Surah with cetain events int he life of the Prophet (pbuh). Regardless of what Tom Holland thinks of the authenticity Hadith and Seerah literature, this evidence alone can refute the myth of the "authored Quran".

In his book, Tom Holland also poses a number of other questions which I will address in near future. InshaAllah

In the shadow of the sword

I recently heard a radio interview of Tom Holland speaking about his new book, In the shadow of the sword, which presents his own interpretation of the origins of Islam. From what Mr. Holland said, it appears that he was very excited to present to the world this new idea that Islam borrowed heavily from older religions. The assertion is that Makkah, a town in the middle of the desert could not produce a man who could write such elegant prose.  

For a secular/atheist writer and researcher, arriving at such a conclusion does not require in-depth research. This is how the world works. Empires rise and fall, major centres of learning produce big poets and philosophers. Major civilizations attract the scholars and scientists to their cities. Anyone unconvinced by the Divine origins of any world religion should have doubts on the authenticity of any Holy Book.

But for me, Quran is the word of God, and it proves itself to be so. It does not need interpretation of historical events and what was happening around the world to prove its authenticity. Any book claiming to be the Word of God should have the evidence of its authencity within it.

So, in an unknown town in the middle of the desert, a man proclaims to be God’s prophet, just as Moses was a prophet to Israelites. Quran not only acknowledges this link, but also tells the Muslims that they must learn from the mistakes of the Jews and Christians. Quran also claims to be the continuity and culmination of the same message which was sent from the One God to all the nations and tribes before. So any similarity and resemblance between Islam and other world faith is not coincidental at all, but very deliberate. Islam is to the world faiths what human beings are to the rest of life on this planet. We share the same roots, but we evolved into better forms over the years.

Take the Islamic ritual of daily prayers. Muslims stand still, bow down, kneel, prostate, sit in submission with heads bowed, hands folded etc. etc. All done during the same prayer. You can find a hint of all faiths in this ritual.

Just like Hindus, Muslims believe in many attributes of God. Just like Buddhism, Islamic philosophy teaches to suppress the ego to find One True God. Just like the Zoroastrianism, Islam focuses on the fight between the good self and the evil self within us. Just like Judaism, Islam teaches to fast and pray on regular times during the day. Just like Christianity, Islam tells us to forgive and be meek and humble.

My point is, Muslims already know that Islam shares many values, rituals and ideas with the older religions. It is because all faiths came from the same God, who over many millennia sent His Guidance to mankind still getting to grips with its new found evolutionary superiority.

Anything to do with documented history will not resolve this question. Let us examine the content of Quran. If it stands the test, it is real, authentic Word of God. If it doesn’t, it is a fabrication, a work of elegant prose if you like.

There are many verses which I can quote. But I will only mention a few. I will not even attempt to interpret them. But please feel free to tell me which city in the world 1500 years ago had the knowledge such as I quote below?

 

We created them and strengthened their make; and when We will so decide, We will change their form to something completely different. (76:29)

 

Woe to every backbiter, slanderer,

Who amasses wealth and counts it over and over.

He imagines that his wealth will make him immortal.

Nay! he shall surely be cast into the "hotamah". (tiniest of the particles)

And what should make thee know what the "hotamah" is?

Allah's fire as preserved fuel,

Which will leap suddenly on to the hearts.

It is locked up in outstretched pillars to be used against them.(104:2-10)

 

Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together,

then We clove them asunder and We created every living thing out of the water.

Will they not then believe? (21:30)

 

And it is We Who have constructed the heaven with Might,

and it is We Who are steadily expanding it. (Qur'an 51:47)

 And after him We said to the Children of Israel, 'Dwell Ye in the promised land; and when the time of the promise of the Latter Days come, We shall bring you together out of various people. (17:105)