Orientalism and the Qur'an: "Born of Spite, Bred in Frustration"
Below is a link to, as well as some excerpts from, S. Parvez Manzoor's powerful exposé of Orientalism's on-going attempts to undermine the Qur'an. Anyone familiar with the attempts of John Wansbrough et al to cast doubts upon the early sources of Islam should find this lively essay a pleasure to read. It might be a bit late in the game and a tad triumphalist to still be kicking this dead horse, since these revisionist neo-Orientalist attacks on the Qur'an have been all been exposed as mere (and often very dishonest) conjecture that tried to proceed without solid facts (such as a wealth of 1st century Hijra manuscripts) getting in the way. In that regard, I can't help but mention a recently published book by Shaykh Muhammad M. Al-Azami entitled The History of the Qur'anic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments [Amazon.co.uk], which is a detailed, passionate, scholarly and uniquely illustrated refutation of Orientalist attacks on the Qur'an. I very, very highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this important discussion since this certainly is by far the best book on this subject in English—thus I suggest purchasing a copy as soon as possible, insha'llah. In the mean time, getting back to the original article, I also highly recommend pondering the following poignant vindication of the Qur'an:
Method against Truth: Orientalism and Qur'anic Studies
by S. Parvez Manzoor
“The Orientalist enterprise of Qur'anic studies, whatever its other merits and services, was a project born of spite, bred in frustration and nourished by vengeance: the spite of the powerful for the powerless, the frustration of the ‘rational' towards the ‘superstitious' and the vengeance of the ‘orthodox' against the ‘non-conformist'. At the greatest hour of his worldly-triumph, the Western man, coordinating the powers of the State, Church and Academia, launched his most determined assault on the citadel of Muslim faith.”
“That Orientalism was a naked discourse of power and that its epistemology was a crude charade of legitimizing ethnocentric arrogance, is no longer a point of contention with any knowledgeable student of Islam or of modern history.”
“Undoubtedly, within the matrix of linguistic, textual and chronological studies, the most ambitious project of Orientalist scholarship was to produce a ‘critical' text of the Qur'an. To a Muslim, uncompromisingly conditioned by the authority of the mutawatir tradition, such scholarly hubris strikes as suicidal, if not downright blasphemous. Such, however, is the lure of the ‘critical' approach for the Orientalist that everything that is normative and axiomatic for the Muslim tradition has to be rejected with impunity, even if it tolls the death of impartiality or of ‘scholarship'.”
“With Wansbrough, the triumph of method over truth is complete. Along with the bath water of Orientalist chronology, one now throws the baby of Islamic history as well. The Qur'an, thus unanchored from its historic moorings, now becomes amenable to any kind of methodological torture and the Orientalist scholar absolved of any chronological responsibility.”
“The divorce of history and method that is the seed of Wansbrough's literary analysis, however, is bringing mixed harvest to the, now largely abandoned, manor-house of Orientalism. If, on the one hand, there is a vanguard assault to pulverise the mansion of Islamic history into the rubble of ‘salvation history', most notably in the works of Patricia Croone and Michael Cooke, there is also, on the other hand, the growing evidence of reliability of the Muslim tradition.”
“Because of its foreign origin, its missionary trappings and its colonial designs, we have, rightly, dismissed Orientalism as the pathological fallacy of the Western religious, political and cultural megalomania. Nonetheless, we cannot remain immune forever against the claims of its method that are being proffered in the name of ‘universal' reason itself.”
Click here to read this entire article...
Labels: Orientalism, Qur'an
posted by @ 11:22 AM
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6 Comments:
Good article, somewhat over my head... Wish I had the bibliography he refers to...
Thanks for the comments. The fact that you mentioned the bibliography prompted me to dig out the issue of Muslim World Book Review in which this article orginally appeared—which is Volume 7, Number 4 (Summer 1987). I actually considered posting this entire article with clickable numbers that jump to the bibliography. However, up until now, I just haven't had the time. It'd be nice if I could scan and OCR the article, but the font size is a little small and I don't have any OCR software. Maybe someday, insha'llah.
as-salamu 'alaykum,
Even though it's mostly full of Orientalist rubbish, I've posted the bibliography, in the form of an Adobe Acrobat file (1.6MB), here.
Enjoy...
Jazakallahu Khairan, May Allah bless you...
Assalam Alaikum.
I bought M.M. Azami' "The History Of The Qur’anic Text From Revelation To Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments" last year. Dr Saifullah informed me about this book while it was still getting published. It is without doubt an excellent book refuting a wide variety of Orientalist polemics and attacks upon the Quran. Furthermore, the author then puts the Old and the New Testaments to the same test and shows what Biblical scholars have to say about the reliability and integrity of these writings.
I will also strongly advise you to get hold of the following book: Muhammad Mohar Ali, The Qur'an And The Orientalists: An Examination Of Their Main Theories And Assumptions, 2004, Jam'iyat 'Ihyaa Minhaaj Al-Sunnah. This book is more recent than M.M. Azami', more importantly, the author covers topics and Orientalists not covered in M.M. Azami' book. For example, Prof. Mohar Ali discusses the views of Richard Bell, Watt, Noldeke, John Burton and Chirstoph Luxenberg among others. He covers revisionist Orientalism in detial together with traditional Orientalism. Besides refuting charges against the authenticity and integrity of the Quran, he also addresses polemics aimed at the language and style of the Quran, its vocabulary, discusses Orientalist claims about wahy, the allegations of borrowing from the "Bible" and covers the topic of translation. Thus this is a very comprehensive book of 374 pages.
Mohar Ali is also the author of a booklet addressing the Atlantic Monthly article by a certain Toby Lester. His booklet is available here: http://web.archive.org/web/20030702012151/www.afi.org.uk/Orient/1+Contents.html
Finally, though off topic, I hope you might be able to offer a few words of analysis regarding the following two stories, the second one in particular, perhaps in a seperate blog entry:
1. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0208/p08s03-comv.html
2. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0202/p09s01-coop.html
Wassalam
usman.
Mr. Parvez Manzoor appears to be an articulate and intelligent man. Unfortunately, his lack of knowledge about Islamic sciences combined with his lack of balance with regard to Western scholars has resulted in a deeply flawed article. While it is true that he distorts Western scholarship, I find it even more grievous and alarming that he does such an injustice to the tradition of Islamic scholarship on the Qur’an.
Let me begin with a quotation. Take this paragraph from his article:
“At its most obvious, the theme of chronology which itself is a category of history, provides a chain of temporal, and hence causal, ‘explanations' for the ‘phenomenon' of the Qur'an. Not only does such a ‘natural' order of events obviate the need of any supernatural and transcendental agency, which is the claim of the Muslim perception, but with the introduction of the category of ‘sequential time' in the workings of the Sacred, the notions of historical relativity or relative truth are also reinstated at the heart of our cognition. If the Qur'an itself may be understood as a chronological sequence of events, then whatever truth that it proclaims cannot be but temporal, and hence fallible.”
In the above paragraph, Mr. Manzoor goes against 1400 years of the Muslim understanding of the Qur’an, which sees revelation as having taken place in a temporal sequence. It also goes against the Qur’an itself, where God states, “a Koran We have divided, for thee to recite it to mankind at intervals, and We have sent it down successively” (17:106).
The crime that Mr. Manzoor accuses Western scholars of, i.e. the attempt to determine a temporal sequence has been a major preoccupation of traditional Islamic scholarship. There are many hadiths about the dates and circumstances of some verses. In addition, Muslim scholars have used considerations of style (verse length and rhyme), meaning, and context to investigate questions of chronology. In addition, Muslim legal scholars have speculated on chronology in works of jurisprudence, as well as in the genre devoted to questions of abrogation (naskh). Until today, Muslim scholars are intensely investigating questions of chronology.
Second, the works of Noeldeke, Blachere, and others are fundamentally based on Muslim sources. To reject their efforts entirely is also reject the Islamic scholarship on they rest. (The blogger who uses the word "rubbish" to refer to their works is also trashing Islamic scholarship.)
Third, it is true that Wansbrough had empirically irresponsible and generally whacky views, as does his disciple Andrew Rippin. But we cannot put them in the same category as most Western scholars.
As for Bell’s view that the Qur’an was revised over time, this is not necessarily in contradiction with Islamic belief. For a thoughtful treatment of this point, see Montgomery Watt, “Muhammad’s Mecca.”
True, there have been cases of prejudice among many Orientalists (just as Muslims, like Mr. Manzoor, are capable of prejudice). But all that is beside the point. You cannot dismiss a scholar's claim merely on the basis of who says it. (You CAN dismiss the claim of an alleged eyewitness on the basis of who says it, but not that of a historian.) That's the ad hominem mode of argumentation, which is basically what Mr. Manzoor’s article relies on. When it comes to evaluating, say, Noeldeke's historical theories on chronology, it is irrelevant if he was a child molestor, or if for rest and relaxation he tortured Muslims in his basement; instead, we accept or reject his claims on the basis of historical evidence. We have access to the same evidence that he did, and we can evaluate for ourselves whether his arguments are convincing or not.
Throughout Mr. Manzoor’s article, one senses that he thinks that Blachere and other Orientalists could have said nothing of value. Mr. Manzoor’s approach is not balanced, and it suffers from the kind of prejudice he accuses the Orientalists of. Moreover, all the name-calling in his article makes it a displeasure to read, and it makes him look less smart than he actually is. And, finally, Mr. Manzoor’s injustice to the tradition of Islamic scholarship is the most serious flaw of his article.
Allah bless.
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