Suliman Bashear PhD (Arabic: سليمان بشير, Sulaymān Bashīr, Hebrew: סולימאן בשיר; 1947–October 1991) was a leading Druze Arab scholar, writer, and professor, who taught at Birzeit University, An-Najah National University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Bashear studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for his BA (1971) and MA (1973).
[1] Bashear made international headlines when he was injured after allegedly being thrown from a second-story window by his students at the An-Najah National University in Nablus in the West Bank in response to his argument that Islam developed as a religion gradually within the historical context of Judaism and Christianity, rather than being the revelation of a prophet.
[3] Bashear's historiography of early Islam considered not only the development of religious customs and beliefs, but also traced how later generations recast the past in order to meet the needs of their own era.
Like the work of Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, John Wansbrough, Yehuda D. Nevo, Martin Hinds, Gerald Hawting, Christoph Luxenberg, Gerd R. Puin, Andrew Rippin, Günter Lüling, and other historiographers of early Islam, Bashear's research challenged what he considered to be the myth of a unified beginning Islam.