Criticism of the Quran
The Quran is viewed to be the scriptural foundation of Islam and is believed by Muslims to have been sent down by God (Arabic: الله, romanized: Allah) and revealed to Muhammad by the angel Jabreel (Gabriel).
[6] Copies of this codex or "Mus'haf" were sent to the major centers of what was by this time a rapidly expanding empire, and all other incomplete or "imperfect" variants of the Quranic revelation were ordered by Uthman to be destroyed.
All the aberrant streaks of his arrogant personality—its reckless rationalism, its world-domineering phantasy and its sectarian fanaticism—joined in an unholy conspiracy to dislodge the Muslim Scripture from its firmly entrenched position as the epitome of historic authenticity and moral unassailability.
[3] Seyyed Hossein Nasr has denounced the “rationalist and agnostic methods of higher criticism” as similar to dissecting and subjecting Jesus to “modern medical techniques” to determine whether he was born miraculously or was the son of Joseph.
[53]It is traditionally believed the earliest writings had the advantage of being checked by people who already knew the text by heart, for they had learned it at the time of the revelation itself and had subsequently recited it constantly.
Such findings thus render the vast majority of Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran untenable.Tests by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit indicated with a probability of more than 94 percent that the parchment dated from 568 to 645.
[82] Dr Saud al-Sarhan, Director of Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, questions whether the parchment might have been reused as a palimpsest, and also noted that the writing had chapter separators and dotted verse endings – features in Arabic scripts which are believed not to have been introduced to the Quran until later.
They said that while Muhammad was alive, Quranic texts were written without chapter decoration, marked verse endings or use of coloured inks; and did not follow any standard sequence of surahs.
[86] Critical research of historic events and timeliness of eyewitness accounts reveal the effort of later traditionalists to consciously promote, for nationalistic purposes, the centrist concept of Mecca and prophetic descent from Ismail, in order to grant a Hijazi orientation to the emerging religious identity of Islam: For, our attempt to date the relevant traditional material confirms on the whole the conclusions which Schacht arrived at from another field, specifically the tendency of isnads to grow backwards.
Orientalist Thomas Carlyle, [Note 17] called the Quran "toilsome reading and a wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite" with "endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement" and "insupportable stupidity".
[1]Scholar of the Semitic languages Theodor Noldeke collected a large quantity of morphological and syntactic grammatical forms in the Quran[116] that "do not enter into the general linguistic system of Arabic".
"Some of the Companions as well as some of their immediate successors and later Qur'anic commentators were convinced that these letters are abbreviations of certain words or even phrases relating to God and His attributes, and tried to 'reconstruct' them with much ingenuity; but since the possible combinations are practically unlimited, all such interpretations are highly arbitrary and, therefore, devoid of any real usefulness …" [133][134]Asad quotes Abu Bakr as saying : ‘In every divine writ (kitab) there is [an element of] mystery - and the mystery of the Qur'an is [indicated] in the openings of [some of] the suras.’" [133] The Quran mentions the "Jews, Christians, and Ṣābiʼūn" three times (2:62, 5:69, 22:17).
[147] In 2020, a Saudi news website published an article[148] claiming that while most Muslims believe the text established by third caliph 'Uthman bin 'Affan "is sacred and must not be amended", there are some 2500 "errors of spelling, syntax and grammar" within it.
The Quran contains references to more than fifty people and events also found in the Bible (including Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Lot, Moses, Saul, David and Goliath, Jonah, Jesus, Mary).
[159] Legends, parables or pieces of folklore that appear in the Quran, with similar motifs to Jewish traditions include Cain and Abel, Abraham destroying idols, Solomon conversing with a talking ant.
Non-Muslim historians – secular but also Jewish and Christian – in keeping with Occam's razor, have looked for simpler, non-divine/non-supernatural explanations for the connection[Note 21] (In Islamic language, dealing only with shahada, i.e. what can be perceived, described, and studied; and not with the unseen al-Ghaib, made known only by divine revelation).
Western academic scholars who have studied "the relationship between the Quran and the Judeo-Christian scriptural tradition"[163] include Abraham Geiger,[164] Tor Andræ,[165] Richard Bell,[166] and Charles Cutler Torrey.
According to a fifth-century Christian writer — Sozomen — some "Saracen" (Arab) tribes rediscovered their "Ishmaelite descent"[169] after coming into contact with Jews and had adopted Jewish laws and customs.
[175] In their book Hagarism, Michael Cook and Patricia Crone postulate that a number of features of Islam may have been borrowed from the Jewish breakaway sect of Samaritanism: "the idea of a scripture limited to the Pentateuch, a prophet like Moses (i.e. Muhammad), a holy book revealed like the Torah (the Quran), a sacred city (Mecca) with a nearby mountain (Jabal an-Nour -- the Samaratan mountain being Mount Gerizim) and shrine (the Kaaba) of an appropriate patriarch (Abraham), plus a caliphate modeled on an Aaronid priesthood.
Some early Islamic histories recount that as Muhammad was reciting Sūra Al-Najm (Q.53), as revealed to him by the angel Gabriel, Satan deceived him to utter the following lines after verses 19 and 20: "Have you thought of Al-lāt and al-'Uzzā and Manāt the third, the other; These are the exalted Gharaniq, whose intercession is hoped for."
[221] In a caveat to his acceptance of the incident, William Montgomery Watt, states: "Thus it was not for any worldly motive that Muhammad eventually turned down the offer of the Meccans, but for a genuinely religious reason; not for example, because he could not trust these men nor because any personal ambition would remain unsatisfied, but because acknowledgment of the goddesses would lead to the failure of the cause, of the mission he had been given by God.
In an inverted culmination of Watt's approach, Burton argued the narrative of the "satanic verses" was forged, based upon a demonstration of its actual utility to certain elements of the Muslim community – namely, those elite sections of society seeking an "occasion of revelation" for eradicatory modes of abrogation.
"[225] Eerik Dickinson also pointed out that the Quran's challenge to its opponents to prove any inconsistency in its content was pronounced in a hostile environment, also indicating that such an incident did not occur or it would have greatly damaged the Muslims.
[234] Critics argue that verses which allegedly explain modern scientific facts about subjects such as biology, the history of Earth, and evolution of human life, contain fallacies and are unscientific.
While it is generally agreed the Quran contains many verses proclaiming the wonders of nature — "Travel throughout the earth and see how He brings life into being" (Q.29:20) "Behold in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding ..." (Q.3:190) — it is strongly doubted by Ziauddin Sardar that "everything, from relativity, quantum mechanics, Big Bang theory, black holes and pulsars, genetics, embryology, modern geology, thermodynamics, even the laser and hydrogen fuel cells, have been 'found' in the Quran".
[241][242] In a similar vein to Jewish and Christian adherents to Genesis, many modern believers have argued for a non-literal interpretation (for example The Holy Quran: Arabic Text and English translation by Maulvi Sher Ali).
[297] Alternatively, Annemarie Schimmel says that the Quranic description of the houris should be viewed in a context of love; "every pious man who lives according to God's order will enter Paradise where rivers of milk and honey flow in cool, fragrant gardens and virgin beloveds await home..."[298] Under the Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Quran by Christoph Luxenberg, the words translating to "Houris" or "Virgins of Paradise" are instead interpreted as "Fruits (grapes)" and "high climbing (wine) bowers... made into first fruits.
The solution of this difficulty is found by saying that, although heavenly food, women etc.., have the name in common with their earthly equivalents, it is only by way of metaphorical indication and comparison without actual identity... authors have spiritualized the Houris.
[305] Karen Armstrong claims that there are "far more numerous passages in the Quran" which speak positively of the Jews and their great prophets, than those which were against the "rebellious Jewish tribes of Medina" (during Muhammad's time).
[307] The Christian doctrine of the Trinity states that God is a single being who exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a communion of three distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
