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The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (Hardcover)
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The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (Hardcover)
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More than one hundred years ago Western scholars began to
investigate the origins of Islam, using the highest standards of
objective historical scholarship of the time. Their aim was to
determine what could be known about Muhammad and the rise of early
Islam quite apart from the pious and totally unobjective traditions
preserved by the Muslim religious community. In some ways this
research was inspired by a similar investigation of Christianity
made famous by Albert Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus.
Today although much has been learned about early Christianity,
little comparable progress has been made in the field of Islamic
Studies. Here objective historical research has long been severely
handicapped both by the resistance of Muslim societies to Western
analysis of their sacred traditions and by the apologetic
approaches of many Western scholars, who have compromised their
investigations for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities.
It is in this context that Ibn Warraq presents this important
anthology of the best studies of Muhammad and early Islam ranging
from the very beginnings of Islamic Studies in the nineteenth
century to contemporary research. In his selection and in an
introductory essay, Warraq makes it clear that some very serious
scholarly controversies lie at the heart of Islam. First, the Koran
itself, the Muslim sacred scripture and the foundation of Islamic
culture, is called into question as the basis for objective
historical knowledge of Muhammad. Some scholars have also
questioned the reliability of most of the other early Arabic
documents that supposedly attest to events in the life of Muhammad
and his followers. Was the Koran dictated by Muhammad at all? Was
it actually compiled any earlier than a hundred years after the
Prophet's death? How much of Muslim sacred tradition, in the light
of objective historical analysis, must be dismissed as unreliable
hearsay? Were the motives of the first Muslim conquerors during the
Jihad truly religious in nature or largely mercenary? These
disturbing questions, long suppressed throughout the history of
Islamic scholarship, are here raised again in these erudite and
thoroughly researched essays by noted scholars.
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