Studying the Quran in 1976: The Quran Versus many Non-Muslim
Writers
You should keep in mind that this took place in 1976. This
was before the Iranian Revolution and Islam being plastered all over the media.
I didn’t know any Muslims at the time. (I was living in a relatively small
college town and I incorrectly assumed that there were no Muslims there.) Thus,
there was no one trying to convince me of the truth of Islam. In fact, I
eventually converted to Islam before ever meeting a Muslim, doing my best to
learn the prayers from a book written by a missionary, T. P. Hughes’ The
Dictionary of Islam.
Therefore, the information I was receiving about Islam
came mostly from non-Muslims writing about Islam. There were very few books
available to me at that time written by Muslims. In fact, I only recall coming
across one work written by a Muslim, a relatively small work by Maudoodi. However, I was
able to find a couple of copies of the Quran translated by Muslims. In
particular, I was reading the translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
In essence, it was truly the Quran versus a number of
works written by non-Muslims. In general, these non-Muslims were forced to
praise Islam every now and then but always tried to find some fault with the
very basis of the faith. Thus, they came up with many theories about the
Prophet Muhammad and the Quran. I would be reading their critique side-by-side
with the Quran.
Most of the authors I was reading were clearly saying
that the Quran was not a revelation from God but simply written by the Prophet
Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him. Such was the view
expressed by Richard Bell in The Qur'an: Translated With a Critical
Re-arrangement of the Surahs, Arberry in his introduction to
his translation of the Quran, Kenneth Cragg in The Call of the Minaret, ad
nauseum.
However, as Montgomery Watt noted, this in itself presented
a host of questions. If Muhammad were a phony, did he do what he did
maliciously? He was not known to be an insincere or malicious person
beforehand, what then led to his change? Furthermore, if he did it
maliciously, how did he come up with all of the information contained in the
Quran, especially while living in a place like Mecca? Did he have teachers; if
so, who were they and where is it documented that he had teachers?
To be frank, I was not very impressed with those who
claimed that the Prophet had some teacher who gave him all of the information
that later made up the Quran. In general, those authors would refer to chance
or one-time meetings between the Prophet and specific individuals. Thus, for
example, Muir and Margoliouth attributed the information found in the Quran to Baheerah,
a monk that the Prophet may have met in Syria during his youth while part of a
trading caravan, long before he claimed to be a Prophet. Such arguments are
flatly illogical and extremely far-fetched. I did not spend much time with
them.
Some critics were forced to admit that the Prophet
Muhammad was known to be an extremely honest and sincere person. They also
noted how he did not really materially benefit from his actions, as he continued
to live a very sincere and humble life. Therefore, they concluded that he was
honest and sincere but terribly deluded. But still, if he were deluded, where
did this information come from? Some made it seem like it was from his
subconscious. Anderson even called it “wishful thinking.” Others actually
said that he was suffering from epileptic seizures and that the revelations
were the result of such seizures. These theories may have been convincing to
anyone who simply read what these authors wrote without taking the time to read
and study the Quran itself. As shall be noted later in this lecture, there is
simply too much information in the Quran that could not have possibly have come
from one’s own subconscious.
Another common claim that I had read was that the
Prophet Muhammad was some kind of “nationalist” leader whose main goal was to
unite the Arabs. Typical of this way of thinking is what was stated in The
New Catholic Encyclopedia: “About the age of 40 he received his ‘prophetic
call’ to unite Arabs under a monotheism.”
This approach can be considered more complementary, as it does not seek to
ridicule the Prophet in any way. Yet, at the same time, it made no sense to me
just on the basis of one reading of the Quran. It is sufficient to note that
there is not one passage in the Quran that is addressed to the Arabs. In the
Quran, God speaks to humankind or the people, believers and disbelievers. If
this book were meant for the Arabs only, why are they never addressed directly
and, instead, these general terms that cross all of humanity are used?
In any case, the plethora of their different views
concerning the Prophet was a sign to me that something unfathomable to those
authors had occurred. This was all evidence to me that there was really
something to the Quran, as otherwise just could have just discounted it as a
trivial work, not worth the effort of refuting or discussing. It actually got
me even more interested in the Quran. This is something that you will see
again later: The works that should have dissuaded me from further pursuing the
Quran made me more convinced that I need to pursue it further.
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