THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 105, May 16, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
UNCOVERING EARLY ISLAM
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
THE TRUE ORIGINS OF ISLAM -- THE REVISIONIST ACCOUNT: AT THE END OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY, THE ARAB IMPERIAL RULERS' NEED FOR A UNIFYING
POLITICAL THEOLOGY & IDEOLOGY TO HOLD THE ARAB WORLD TOGETHER -- THEIR COBBLING TOGETHER OF THE ISLAMIC RELIGION -- WHY ISLAM IS SUCH A
PROFOUNDLY POLITICAL RELIGION, WITH UNIQUELY PROMINENT MARTIAL & IMPERIAL QUALITIES -- WHY ISLAM CONFLICTS WITH MODERN MORES
FULL STORY:
The year 1880 saw the publication of a book that ranks as the single most important study of Islam ever. Written in German by a young Jewish Hungarian scholar,
Ignaz Goldziher, and bearing the nondescript title Muslim Studies (Muhammedanische Studien), it argued that the Hadith, the vast body of
sayings and actions attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, lacked historical validity. Rather than provide reliable details about Muhammad's life, Goldziher
established, the Hadith emerged from debates two or three centuries later about the nature of Islam.
(That is like today's Americans debating the Constitution's much-disputed Second Amendment, concerning the right to bear arms, by claiming newly discovered
oral transmissions going back to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Obviously, their quotations would inform us not what was said 225 years ago but
about current views.)
Since Goldziher's day, scholars have been actively pursuing his approach, deepening and developing it into an full-scale account of early Islamic history, one
which disputes nearly every detail of Muhammad's life, as conventionally understood -- born in 570 A.D., first revelation in 610, flight to Medina in 622, death in
632. But this revisionist history has remained a virtual secret among specialists. For example, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, authors of the synoptic
Hagarism (Cambridge University Press, 1977), deliberately wrote obliquely, thereby hiding their message.
Now, however, two scholars have separately ended this secrecy: Tom Holland, with In the Shadow of the Sword (Doubleday), and Robert Spencer, with
Did Muhammad Exist? (ISI). As their titles suggest, Spencer is the bolder author and so my focus here.
In a well-written, sober, and clear account, he begins by demonstrating the inconsistencies and mysteries in the conventional account concerning Muhammad's
life, the Koran, and early Islam. For example, whereas the Koran insists that Muhammad did not perform miracles, the Hadith ascribe him
thaumaturgic powers -- multiplying food, healing the injured, drawing water from the ground and sky, and even sending lightening from his pickax. Which is it?
Hadith claim Mecca was a great trading city, but, strangely, the historical record reveals it as no such thing.
The Christian quality of early Islam is no less strange, specifically "traces of a Christian text underlying the Qur'an." Properly understood, these traces
elucidate otherwise incomprehensible passages. Conventionally read, verse 19:24 has Mary nonsensically hearing, as she gives birth to Jesus, "Do not be sad,
your Lord has placed a rivulet beneath you." Revisionists transform this into the sensible (and piously Christian), "Do not be sad, your Lord has made your
delivery legitimate." Puzzling verses about the "Night of Power" commemorating Muhammad's first revelation make sense when understood as describing
Christmas. Chapter 96 of the Koran, astonishingly, invites readers to a Eucharist.
Building on this Christian base, revisionists postulate a radically new account of early Islam. Noting that coins and inscriptions from the Seventh Century
mention neither Muhammad, the Koran, nor Islam; they conclude that the new religion did not appear until about 70 years after Muhammad's supposed
death. Spencer finds that "the first decades of the Arab conquest show the conquerors holding not to Islam, as we know it, but to a vague creed [Hagarism,
focused on Abraham and Ishmael] with ties to some form of Christianity and Judaism." In very brief: "the Muhammad of Islamic tradition did not exist, or if he
did, he was substantially different from how that tradition portrays him" – namely an Anti-Trinitarian Christian rebel leader in Arabia.
Only about 700 A.D., when the rulers of a now vast Arabian empire felt the need for a unifying political theology, did they cobble together the Islamic religion.
The key figure in this enterprise appears to have been the brutal governor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. No wonder, writes Spencer, that Islam is "such a profoundly
political religion," with uniquely prominent martial and imperial qualities. No wonder it conflicts with modern mores.
The revisionist account is no idle academic exercise, but, as when Judaism and Christianity encountered the Higher Criticism 150 years ago, a deep, unsettling
challenge to faith. It will likely leave Islam a less literal and doctrinaire religion, with particularly beneficial implications in the case of Islam, still mired in
doctrines of supremacism and misogyny. Applause, then for plans to translate Did Muhammad Exist? into major Muslim languages and to make it
available gratis on the Internet. May the revolution begin.
© Daniel Pipes 2012 All Rights Reserved
Originally Published in National Review Online, May 16, 2012
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from DanielPipes.org, May 16, 2012
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/11280/uncovering-early-islam
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and President of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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