Revisionist School of Islamic Studies

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Influence on the state of research & reactions to corresponding works as well as representations that are diametrically opposed to revisionist hypotheses and a. with Fuat Sezgin , Gregor Schoeler , Tilman Nagel etc.
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The Revisionist school of Islamic studies , briefly also: revisionism called, is an especially since the 1970s increasingly important current within the Koran, Hadith and Sira-research by applying the critical historical method , the standard scientific method for the analysis of historical Texts, also introduced a paradigm shift within Islamic studies .

The application of these scientific methods led in many cases to a revision of the representations, dogmas and interpretations previously presented by Islamic scholars and Islamic scholars, which led the latter to criticize the representatives and work results of the historical-critical method. Conversely, parts of traditional Islamic studies were accused of not working scientifically and, in particular, of attaching far too great importance to traditional Islamic literature.

Concept and starting point of revisionism

The term revisionism was first coined by the opponents of the new scientific movement and is used by them e.g. Sometimes still used today with a disparaging undertone. Then he was picked up by the media in order to be able to name the new movement with a concise catchphrase. Today, supporters of the new movement also use the term revisionism to denote their movement, but mostly in quotation marks and with a slightly self-deprecating undertone.

The main concern of the revisionist school is to take seriously the knowledge that has existed since Ignaz Goldziher , that the traditional Islamic traditions about the early days of Islam , which were only written 150 to 200 years after Muhammad's death, are highly questionable as historical sources. Affected are the life story of Mohammed , the genesis of the Koran and the historical development under the first Islamic dynasty of the Umayyads . The true historical processes of the early Islamic period must be re-researched and reconstructed using the historical-critical method .

The main representatives

The new movement began at the School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS in London through two publications by John Wansbrough : Quranic Studies (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu (1978). Wansbrough's students included a. Andrew Rippin , Norman Calder , GR Hawting , Patricia Crone and Michael Cook . The book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977) by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook attracted attention in the scientific community with provocative theses, but later the two authors distanced themselves from overly far-reaching theses. The fundamentally new research approach was retained, however. Even Martin Hinds studied at SOAS in London. Robert G. Hoyland is a student of Patricia Crone.

The new movement has a second local focus at Saarland University in Saarbrücken (“ Saarbrücker Schule ”). A focus in Saarbrücken since the 1970s has been the historical-critical research into the development of the Koran text, namely by Günter Lüling and Gerd-Rüdiger Puin . Also in Saarbrücken at the beginning of the 2000s , Karl-Heinz Ohlig , together with Volker Popp , Christoph Luxenberg and Markus Groß, developed a theory on the early days of Islam that denied the existence of a historical person Mohammed.

Further representatives are: the Dutch Arabist and Islamologist Hans Jansen , who in 2005/7 showed in detail in a well-known work why the well-known stories about the life of Mohammed were legends. Yehuda D. Nevo published his work Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State in 2003 , in which he denied the historicity of Mohammed. James A. Bellamy is known for his textual criticism of the Koran and for his emendation proposals, i. H. Suggestions for corrections to the traditional Koran text. In 2010, Fred Donner was the first to present a well-founded hypothesis of the early days of Islam, which avoids hasty conclusions and rash speculations and which met with a great response.

Tom Holland studied history and has become a well-known author of popular science non-fiction books on ancient history. With his work In the Shadow of the Sword (2012; German: Im Schatten des Schwertes 2012), or in the documentary film Islam: The Untold Story based on it , Tom Holland made a significant contribution to the popularization of the new hypotheses. Tom Holland presents a possible synthesis of the various approaches of the revisionists and, like Fred Donner, has presented a well-founded hypothesis from the early days of Islam that avoids excessive exaggerations. - Dan Gibson is actually not a representative of revisionism, since as a biblically motivated private researcher he tends to take religious texts literally. However, with his work Quranic Geography (2011) he re-posed the question of the true place of the origin of Islam and presented arguments for the thesis that Islam did not originate in Mecca but in Petra in Jordan. - Sven Kalisch is a German Islamic theologian and apostate who refused to pursue Islamic theology without taking into account the new findings of historical-critical research. As a result, German Islamic associations withdrew his recognition as a university lecturer for prospective Islamic religion teachers. Kalisch later left Islam. Today he teaches intellectual history in the Middle East in post-antique times in Münster.

The thesis of the untrustworthiness of Islamic tradition

The arguments against the credibility of the traditional Islamic traditions about the beginnings of Islam were e.g. B. by Hans Jansen in his main work Der Historische Mohammed summarized. Jansen discusses the descriptions of the biography of the prophets by Ibn Ishāq or Ibn Hishām , a text that is authoritative for traditional Islam, section by section. Jansen reveals internal contradictions, contradictions to other non-Koranic historical sources, embellishments and exaggerations by later authors, politically or theologically motivated distortions of the presentation, symbolic meanings of supposedly historical names, literary designs of the presentation e.g. B. according to biblical models, but also chronological and calendar unreliability.

Some examples:

  • Although there were leap months at the time of Mohammed , which had to be included in the lunar calendar in large numbers and which were only later abolished (allegedly by Mohammed), not a single one of the countless events reported by Ibn Ishaq and precisely dated occurs in such a leap month.
  • The most accurate dating of countless events by an author who wrote only 150 years later is unbelievable per se .
  • The portrayal of a particularly close bond between Mohammed and his wife Aisha is politically or theologically motivated: Aisha was the daughter of the caliph Abu Bakr , who became Mohammed's successor against Ali's will . In order to secure this succession against claims by the Shiites , who favored Ali, the connection between Abu Bakr's daughter and Mohammed is emphasized: Aisha was supposedly the Prophet's favorite wife, and the Prophet supposedly married Aisha at an unusually early age.
  • The depiction of the massacre of the Jewish tribe of the Banu Quraiza is politically or theologically motivated: As the “ Treaty of Medina ” shows, the Jews were initially part of the Ummah and were also addressed as “believers”; see. also the research of Fred Donner . When Islam broke away from Judaism later, after the death of Mohammed, anti- Judaistic interpretations of the past emerged. The triple betrayal of Mohammed by three Jewish tribes works as a literary design based on the biblical model, e.g. B. Peter's threefold betrayal of Jesus, historically questionable. There are other narrations about the same event that only the leaders of the tribe were punished, not every single male member of the tribe. The names of the three allegedly treacherous Jewish tribes do not appear in the "Treaty of Medina" either. After all, such a massacre would not have gone unnoticed, not even in the time of Muhammad, and especially not when you consider that the victims were Jews: Jews usually lived on international trading networks, and Jews are known to record their histories in writing. The massacre most likely never took place.
  • The representations of Ibn Ishaq are generally known for overdrawing the achievements of the Prophet in a striking way. In Ibn Ishaq, Mohammed always kills more enemies than in other traditions. The portrayal of the prophet's sexual potency, who allegedly was able to satisfy all his wives in one night, is also questionably exaggerated. The portrayal of Mohammed as illiterate falls into the same category . The revelation of the Koran text becomes all the more miraculous and the achievement of the Prophet all the more astonishing if Mohammed was illiterate.
  • The story of Muhammad's message to the emperor of Byzantium that he should convert, justifies the Arab expansion in retrospect as a religious, Islamic expansion.

Jansen points out that the historically questionable Islamic traditions are of great importance for the interpretation of the Koran. Because the Koran usually leaves the occasion for a revelation open. The historical context is only hinted at in the Koran. Many Islamic traditions arose long after Muhammad's death from mere conjectures about the situation for which a verse of the Koran was revealed. The interpretation of the Koran has since been narrowed down by the historically questionable Islamic traditions.

In her work Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Patricia Crone also formulated and substantiated a fundamental criticism of the credibility of Islamic tradition. This criticism is quoted a lot in the literature, but only discusses a few aspects from the life of Muhammad, which are intended to represent the essence of the entire tradition material. In connection with encounters between the young Mohammed and Jews who recognize him as a prophet and other stories, Patricia Crone writes:

“These stories are no different from those about Muhammad's encounters with Jews and others. Since they do not tell miracles, they do not violate the laws of nature and could be true in this sense. In fact, they obviously aren't. […] We cannot even say whether there was an original event at all : in the case of Muhammad's encounters with Jews and others, there was none. Either a fictional theme became reality through the work of the storytellers, or a historical event almost drowned under their influence. "

Theses about the beginnings of Islam

The starting point for the revisionist approach is that the traditional Islamic traditions about the early days of Islam, which only emerged 150 to 200 years after Muhammad's death, are highly questionable as historical sources. The true historical processes in the early days of Islam are to be re-researched and reconstructed using the historical-critical method. The theses of the revisionists are:

  • The text of the Koran available today shows numerous deviations from the earliest surviving manuscripts. A core part of the Koran may go back to a preaching by Muhammad, but some parts of the Koran were definitely added or editorially revised later. In addition, many short text variants have emerged over time, as is usual with old texts that have been copied over and over again.
  • The existence and significance of the person of the Prophet Mohammed as a historical person stands and falls above all with the question of whether and how many parts of the Koran are assigned to its time, or whether one assumes that the Koran only or in large parts only after time of Mohammed arose. The opinions of the researchers differ here. Fred Donner z. B. advocates an early date for the Koran.
  • The Koran text is not passed down in "pure" Arabic, but the Syro-Aramaic language seems to have had a certain influence on the language in which the Koran was written, which was later forgotten. This could be a possible explanation for why about a fifth of the Koran text is difficult to understand.
  • Islam did not arise among polytheistic pagans in the desert, but must have arisen in a milieu that was familiar with Jewish and Christian texts. The “infidels” were not pagan polytheists, but monotheists who were believed to have deviated from monotheism.
  • The geographical information in the Koran and later traditions do not match Mecca. They point to a place in northwestern Arabia, e.g. B. on Petra in Jordan.
  • The bond with the Jews was particularly strong in the early phase of Islam. Jews were considered "believers" and belonged to the ummah. Anti-Judaist texts such as B. those about the massacre of the Jewish tribe of the Banu Quraiza emerged long after Muhammad's death, when Islam separated from Judaism.
  • In the beginning, secular and religious power were united in the hands of the caliph. The college of religious scholars came into being later and usurped the spiritual power of the caliphs.
  • In the beginning, the Islamic expansion was perhaps not even an Islamic, religiously motivated expansion, but a secular, imperially motivated, Arab expansion. Nor did this expansion result in the suppression of the non-Muslim population.
  • After Mohammed there were at least two phases that were of the greatest importance for the formation of Islam in its later form:
    • The Dome of the Rock was built in Jerusalem under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik . This is where the word “Islam” appears for the first time. Until then, Muslims simply called themselves “believers” and coins with Christian symbols were used in the Islamic empire. Abd al-Malik also plays an important role in editing the text of the Koran.
    • The Abbasid period. Practically all Islamic traditions about the beginnings of Islam date from the Abbasid period. The Abbasids, as victorious in the dispute with the Umayyads, had a great interest in legitimizing their rule. This motivation has obviously flowed into the traditional texts.

Criticism of the historical-critical view

This consideration of the beginnings of Islam initially met with fierce opposition in Islamic studies because provocative theses of far-reaching significance were published at the time without sufficient evidence. The work Hagarism (1977) by Crone and Cook should be mentioned here in particular . Important exponents of revisionism such as Patricia Crone and Michael Cook have long distanced themselves from such radical theses and careless publications.

Criticism is u. a. practiced by researchers like Tilman Nagel , who questions speculative research approaches and accuses some revisionist researchers of technical errors. However, Tilman Nagel accepts the basic impulse of the revisionists that more emphasis must be placed on the consistent application of the historical-critical method. One recognizes a tendency towards acceptance of the revisionist approach. a. also because the opponents now often no longer direct their criticism to the address of “revisionism”, but only polemicize against “extreme revisionism” or “ultra-revisionism”.

Gregor Schoeler goes into the revisionist school in more detail and presents the early controversies that triggered its initially provocative theses. Schoeler considers the revisionist approach to be too radical, but welcomes the food for thought: "To have given us all this and much more noteworthy considerations for the first time - or again - is undoubtedly the merit of the new generation of 'skeptics'."

Ongoing resistance to the new paradigm comes from researchers who fundamentally reject the application of the historical-critical method to the texts of Islam . They argue that this method was developed for Christian texts and therefore no reason can be seen why this method should now also be applied to Islamic texts. Revisionism proponents doubt that this is still a scientific point of view.

Tension relationship with Islam

According to the degree of irritation that the research results mean for Islam, the revisionist school can be roughly divided into two camps:

  • Insofar as the research results allow the historicity of the person of Mohammed to exist and also assume that the Koran was mainly created for the time of Mohammed, the essence of the Islamic religion remains untouched. This applies to the following representatives of revisionism, among others: Patricia Crone , Michael Cook , Fred Donner , Tom Holland , Günter Lüling .
  • Insofar as Mohammed is not seen as a historical person or the origin of the Koran is mainly not dated to the time of Mohammed, the essence of Islam is called into question. This applies to the following representatives of revisionism, among others: John Wansbrough , Hans Jansen , Karl-Heinz Ohlig , Yehuda D. Nevo .

In addition to a discussion about the historicity of the person of Muhammad and the Koranic revelation ascribed to him, Islam has to face the following discussions, among others:

  • Traditions that have shaped Islam for many centuries - but not from the beginning - are not true.
  • The Koran text has not been passed on intact.
  • In the Koran, too, God's word is clothed in human word in many ways.
  • Mohammed did not live in Mecca.
  • The relationship between Mohammed and Jews and Christians was different than expected.

Abuse of revisionism by opponents of Islam

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

In the meantime, a number of Islamophobes have discovered the research results of revisionism and are misusing them for their own purposes. Above all, they are enthusiastic about the point of view of those researchers who question the historicity of Mohammed and who date the emergence of the Koran to a later time. They use this knowledge to delegitimize and discredit Islam as a religion and to call on Muslims to turn away from Islam. The research work of revisionists who come to results that leave the essence of Islam untouched is deliberately ignored by Islamophobes.

The Islamophobes ignore the fact that Islam does have intellectual resources to deal with the new situation: The discussion about the authenticity of traditions is not fundamentally alien to Islam, cf. the so-called " hadith science". The rationalist movement of the Mutazilites openly expressed doubts about the traditions of Islamic history. Islamophobes also overlook the fact that, by questioning the traditions, a large part of those texts that make Muhammad appear as a misanthropist are no longer used as historical evidence. They also overlook the fact that a humanistic interpretation of the Koran is possible if the Koran is taken out of the context of the false traditions. Islamophobes also do not want to see that the new research shows that Islam is a product of late antiquity, which suggests a closer relationship between Islam and Western culture than previously thought possible.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Bangert: Muhammad: A historical-critical study on the emergence of Islam and its prophet in the Google book search, Verlag Springer 2016; P. 265.
  2. ↑ See e.g. B. François de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, p. 615 in the Google Book Search, in: The Qur'an in Context, ed. by Angelika Neuwirth u. a., 2010
  3. ↑ Markus Groß: The Koran - not a European text. More than one review of Angelika Neuwirth: "The Koran as a text of late antiquity - a European approach" In: Markus Groß , Karl-Heinz Ohlig (ed.): The emergence of a world religion III. The holy city of Mecca - a literary fiction. Schiler, Berlin 2014
  4. ↑ See e.g. B. François de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, p. 615 in the Google Book Search, in: The Qur'an in Context, ed. by Angelika Neuwirth u. a., 2010. Judith Herrin, Patricia Crone: memoir of a superb Islamic Scholar , openDemocracy 12 July 2015
  5. ↑ See e.g. B. Toby Lester: What is the Koran? , in: The Atlantic, issue January 1999
  6. ↑ See e.g. B. Patricia Crone: Among the Believers , Tablet Magazine August 10, 2010
  7. ↑ See Jansen, De Historische Mohammed , 2 volumes, 2005/7
  8. ↑ Patricia Crone: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, 1987, p. 222; English: “These stories are no different from those on Muhammad's encounter with Jews and others. Being non-miraculous, they do not violate any laws of nature, of course, and in that sense they could be true. In fact, they are clearly not. [...] We cannot even tell whether there was an original event: in the case of Muhammad's encounter with the Jews and others there was not. Either a fictitious theme has acquired reality thanks to the activities of storytellers or else a historical event has been swamped by these activities ".
  9. ↑ See e.g. B. John Wansbrough: Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (1977) pp. 43 ff .; Gerd-Rüdiger Puin: Observations on Early Qur'an Manuscripts in San'a ' , in: Stefan Wild (Ed.): The Qur'an as Text. Brill, Leiden 1996 pp. 107-111
  10. ↑ See e.g. B. Yehuda D. Nevo: Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (2003); Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Ed.): The early Islam. A historical-critical reconstruction based on contemporary sources (2007)
  11. ↑ Fred Donner: Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (1998), p. 60
  12. ↑ See e.g. B. Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Ed.): The early Islam. A historical-critical reconstruction based on contemporary sources (2007) p. 377 ff .; Christoph Luxenberg: The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran - A Contribution to the Decoding of the Koran (2007).
  13. ↑ See e.g. BGR Hawting: The Idea of ​​Idolatry and the Rise of Islam: From Polemic to History (1999); Fred Donner: Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (2010) p. 59
  14. ↑ See e.g. B. Patricia Crone / Michael Cook: Hagarism (1977) pp. 22-24; Patricia Crone: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987); and the private researcher Dan Gibson: Quranic Geography (2011)
  15. ↑ See e.g. B. Fred Donner: Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (2010) p. 68 ff .; cf. also Hans Jansen: Mohammed (2005/7) pp. 311–317 (German edition 2008)
  16. ↑ See e.g. B. Patricia Crone / Martin Hinds: God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (1986)
  17. ↑ See e.g. B. Robert G. Hoyland: In God's Path. The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (2015)
  18. ↑ See e.g. B. Patricia Crone / Michael Cook: Hagarism (1977) p. 29; Yehuda D. Nevo: Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (2003) pp 410-413; Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Ed.): The early Islam. A historical-critical reconstruction based on contemporary sources (2007) p. 336 ff.
  19. ↑ See e.g. B. Patricia Crone: Slaves on Horses. The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (1980) pp. 7, 12, 15; also Hans Jansen: Mohammed (2005/7)
  20. ↑ See e.g. B. Toby Lester: What is the Koran? , in: The Atlantic, issue January 1999
  21. ↑ See e.g. B. Tilman Nagel: Free the Prophet from his religious grip! in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 21, 2009
  22. ↑ See e.g. B. Marion Holmes Katz: Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunni Law of Ritual Purity in the Google Book Search (2012), p. 27
  23. ↑ Gregor Schoeler, Character and Authenticity of the Muslim Tradition of the Life of Mohammed , de Gruyter 1996. pp. 18 f., 23 f. 142 f .; Quote p. 24
  24. ↑ See e.g. B. François de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, p. 615 in the Google Book Search, in: The Qur'an in Context, ed. by Angelika Neuwirth u. a., 2010
  25. ↑ See e.g. B. Ibn Warraq: Quest for the Historical Muhammed (2000); Norbert G. Pressburg: Good Bye Mohammed (2009); Robert Spencer: Did Muhammad Exist ?: An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins (2012); Jay Smith, a Christian fundamentalist missionary from Great Britain, believes that the core of the essence of Islam can be delegitimized through the new historical-critical knowledge. At the same time, he believes that the biblical narratives would be fully confirmed by historical-critical research.