Revisionist school of Islamic studies
[11] They believe these methodologies provide "hard facts" and an ability to crosscheck, whereas traditional Islamic accounts—written 150 to 250 years after Muhammad—are/were subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters.
[15] It is sometimes contrasted with "traditionist" historians of Islam who do accept the traditional origin story,[1] though adherence to the two approaches is "usually implicit" rather than "stated openly".
[16] Revisionists suggest that the events in early Islamic times have to be newly researched and reconstructed with the help of the historical-critical/source critical method (the process of evaluating the validity, reliability, relevance, etc., of a source, to the subject under investigation).
From the study of alternate primary sources from the surrounding milieus, they argue that Islam started as a monotheistic movement that included Arabs and Jews alike.
[11] They believe these methodologies provide "hard facts" and an ability to crosscheck, whereas traditional Islamic accounts—written 150 to 200 years after Muhammad—are/were subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters.
[12] From World War II to sometime around the mid-1970s, there was what scholar Charles Adams describes as "a distinctive movement in the West, represented in both religious circles and the universities, whose purpose" was to show both a "greater appreciation of Islamic religiousness" and to foster "a new attitude toward it"[Note 2] and in doing so make "restitution for the sins of unsympathetic, hostile, or interested approaches that have plagued the [pre-World War II] tradition of Western Orientalism".
Humphreys), "that a vast number of hadith accepted even in the most rigorously critical Muslim collections were outright forgeries from the late 8th and 9th centuries—and as a consequence, that the meticulous isnads which supported them were utterly fictitious".
[57] In Germany at the Saarland University, Günter Lüling (1928–2014) and Gerd-Rüdiger Puin focused on the historical-critical research of the development of the Quran starting in the 1970s, and in the 2000s, Karl-Heinz Ohlig, Volker Popp, Christoph Luxenberg and Markus Groß argued that Muhammad was a legendary, not historical figure.
Instead of being inspired to conquest by a new prophet, holy book and religion, the Arabs are described as being in alliance with the Jews, following a Jewish messianism to reclaim the Promised Land from the Byzantine Empire.
The Qur'an came later (according to the authors) as a product of 8th-century edits of various materials drawn from a variety of Judeo-Christian and Middle-Eastern sources while Muhammad was the herald of Umar "the redeemer", a Judaic messiah.
[63] Meccan trade, except for Yemeni perfume, was mainly in cheap leather goods and clothing, and occasionally, in basic foodstuffs,[64] which were not exported north to Syria (which already had plenty of them), but to nearby regions.
The consequent historical-critical analysis of early Islam met severe resistance in the beginning, since theses with far-reaching meaning were published.
[69] Criticism is expressed by researchers like Tilman Nagel, who aims at the speculative nature of some theses and shows that some revisionists lack some scholarly standards.
Schoeler considers revisionism to be too radical yet welcomes the general impulse: "To have made us thinking about this all and much more remarkable things for the first time—or again, is without any doubt a merit of the new generation of the 'skeptics'.
"[72] François de Blois, who is Teaching Fellow at the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS, London, rejects the application of the historical-critical method to Islamic texts.
