The Qur'an and Higher Criticism

Here's an excellent piece from the late Dr. Isma'il R. Al Faruqi in regards to so-called "higher criticism" of the Qur'an. This long quotation is taken from note 142 on pages 244-245 of his now out-of-print and hard-to-find Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant Ideas (McGill University Press, 1967):

Some orientalists have criticized Islam for asserting the divine origin of the Qur'an alleging that such assertion precludes any literacy of higher criticism which is essential. But Islam has never prohibited literary of higher criticism of the Qur'an. On the contrary, the Qur'an openly challenged the Muslims and non-Muslims to criticize, or even imitate, any of its verses. The discipline itself of Arabic literary criticism derives its principles from the literary forms of the Qur'an. Instead of being the object of criticism, the Qur'an is the highest ideal of literary Arabic. Nonetheless, the sciences of the Qur'an have always included disciplines which seek to analyze its language into Arabic and dakhil or gharib (borrowed non-Arabic words and phrases), the Qurayshi and non-Qurayshi Arabic, and its verses into equivocal and unequivocal, abrogating and abrogated, literally real and metaphorical, problematic and apparently-contradictory, etc., etc. The science of tafsir (exegesis) includes such disciplines as the analysis of the situational contexts in which the Qur'anic verses were revealed (time, place, and cause of revelation, sha'n al nuzul), of distinguishing the new revelations from those which were known to previous Prophets, etc. etc. Any look at the table of contents of an al Itqan fi 'Ulum al Qur'an by Jalal al Din al Suyuti, for example, would satisfy the most fastidious historian of criticism. When the Christian orientalist is not impressed with all this scholarship, it means that he has been looking for a different kind of criticism altogether, perhaps for the kind which the Bible underwent during the last one hundred years. But even here, all the criticism which has been built around the New Testament, for instance, is far surpassed on the Islamic side by Muslim criticism of the Hadith. The science of the Hadith stands absolutely without parallel in the whole history of criticism, and has given rise to disciplines such as 'Ilm al Rijal (the science of biography), 'Ilm al Isnad (the science of reportative narration) which are utterly unique in the history of thought. The Hadith of the Prophet, having been subject to edition, change, and outright forgery, is comparable from the standpoint of literary criticism to the traditions of Jesus reported in the Gospels. But whereas New Testament criticism did not come about until the nineteenth century, Hadith criticism had produced a magnificent bloom in the eighth and ninth centuries. The Old Testament has also been subject to the same criticism and this has led to startling conclusions, not the least of which are those which shattered the old view of revelation, and prophethood, the Biblical construction of early Jewish history, and forced an allegorical interpretation of morally unacceptable narratives. Now Muslims and others have for fourteen centuries looked in vain for any passages in the Qur'an, whether in its reportative news or akhbar or in its narratives, that suggest the slightest need for such revision. And the challenge still stands. The orientalists' persistent question of where the Qur'an got its ideas of past history and of other religions is not precluded by the divinity of its status. For the Qur'anic revelation has for the most part been situational, and the investigation of which problems of spirit and or history did revelation come down to refute, to add to, to solve, or to judge, is an old question with all exegetes. From the beginning, the divinity of the Qur'an has rested, and has been understood as resting, on the sublime, numinous quality of its religious and moral message, the divine sublimity of its language and words being merely additional accompaniments of divine speech. But this is precisely the position which Christian criticism has been and still is struggling to achieve in favour of the Bible whose Vergegewartigung or re-presentation baffles every thinking Christian every morning and evening.

In a similar vein, please read Who's Afraid Of Textual Criticism?

Deen On...