Memorizing at Mount Hira

A kufi-tip to Godblogger.org, which is a nice looking blog which I just came across this morning, since they let me know about MountHira.com—a site for memorizing the Qur'an and various du'a (supplications) that many Muslims will, insha'llah, find very useful.

Hifz on...

An Unvowelled Qur'an...With Vowels!

Well sometimes you just have to laugh at the incompetence of these Islamophobic clowns—especially the ones who author books while remaining not only painfully ignorant of their subject matter, but horribly bigoted. Well lucky for me (and my readers), I've found an example of this that's easy enough to demonstrate. The other day, I was in a local bookstore flipping through a copy of Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief, by Rodney Stark, when this claim on page 361 caught my eye:

"A page from the Qur'an. For all that it is beautiful, this traditional Arabic script lacks short vowels, which often causes confusion as to which of several possible words actually is intended."

Unfortunately for this obviously ignorant author, the Qur'anic text pictured in the book is clearly vowelled! Yes, indeed, the image shows a portion of Surah As-Saffat (Qur'an 37) which includes most of ayah 35, all of ayah 36, and most of ayah 37, and there are many a fatha, damma and kisra (i.e. Arabic "short vowels") clearly visible in the text—as well as many occurrences of other diacritical marks (i.e. sukun and shadda) as well.

Admittedly, the Qur'anic manuscript in question is written in Maghribi script, which is mostly used in North and West Africa, thus the vowels are written as horizontal slashes rather than the more common slanted ones...but any Arabic reader can see that they are very plainly there. The fact that other idiosyncrasies of the Maghribi script can also be seen in this image (i.e. no dot over a terminal nun, one dot instead of two over a qaf, and no dots over a terminal qaf), does not take away from the fact that it is very much a vowelled text.

And let me make it clear: I am not disputing Stark's claim (page 362) that "there are no short vowels and no diacritics in the earliest surviving texts" but only demonstrating that the author was so inept that he chose for his example a text which has both short vowels and diacritics. For a brief discussion of the vowelling of the earliest Qur'anic manuscripts, please see The Qur'anic Manuscripts page at Islamic-Awareness.org—which clearly demonstrates that Qur'anic manuscripts from the first century of Islam exist in much more abundance (and are much more accurate!) than New Testament manuscripts from the first century of Christianity. Needless to say, Mr. Stark's attempts to defend the integrity and reliability of the New Testament text in the book in question are both vacuous and laughable. Reading such material makes it ominously clear that Rodney Stark is not a disinterested scholar, but rather a religions propagandist. One wonders where the commandment "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" fits into all of this...

A glaring mistake as described above is much easier to understand once one actually reads what the author writes about Islam in the main text of the book. Suffice it to say, in spite of the fact that the Wikipedia entry on Rodney Stark says that one of his "hallmarks is writing with respect about the religions he studies", it becomes quickly apparent that he is more than willing to twist historical material to fit his pre-conceived and bigoted notions. I will let two examples suffice: 1) On the same page of Discovering God that shows the Qur'anic image we've just discussed, he writes: "When Muhammad died unexpectedly in 632, apparently there was no written Qur'an"; and 2) he has a book entitled The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success—which seems to indicate that Mr. Stark could very well be reading history with one eye closed and a crack pipe in hand.

If you want to see the copyrighted Qur'anic image from the book in question, just do the following: 1) Login to Amazon.com; 2) go to the main page for Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief, by Rodney Stark; 3) click on Search inside this book; 4) enter "vowels" in the blank search field; 5) click on the Go button; and 6) once the results appear, click "on Page 361".

Maybe I can be faulted for picking on an easy target—and Islamophobic troglodytes like Stark seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but such activist authors just bring it upon themselves. When I get time, I might post more examples of the egregious errors and blatant distortions in the writings of Rodney Stark. For now, however, this will have to suffice as an exposé of his sheer buffoonery...

Isaiah Prophecy...About the Revelation of the Qur'an?

I've always found verses 11 and 12 from the 29th chapter of the Old Testament Book of Isaiah to be rather amazing:

11 And the vision of the whole is to you, As words of the sealed book, That they give unto one knowing books, Saying, `Read this, we pray thee,' And he hath said, `I am not able, for it [is] sealed;' 12 And the book is given to him who hath not known books, Saying, `Read this, we pray thee,' And he hath said, `I have not known books.' [Young's Literal Translation]

Compare this to the first revelation of the Qur'an found in Sahih al-Bukhari. Interestingly, the Hebrew word that is here translated as "Read" is Qara', which means to call out, recite, read, proclaim or invite—and in the Arabic Bible it translated as Iqra'. Additionally, the phrase "I have not known books" is often translated as "I am not learned" (KJV), "I don't know how to read" (NIV), "I cannot read" (NASB). Various translations of these two verses, including Arabic and Hebrew, can be found here: 11 and 12.

Most importantly, if you read the entire context, it's about the hardheartedness of the people of Israel and how they're overly concerned with the "commandment of men"—which is both a Muslim and Christian criticism of the Rabbinic Judaism of the time. Due to this, God will "do a marvelous work Among this people, A marvelous work and a wonder"—meaning a book (i.e. revelation) will be given to the unlettered people who cannot read.

Food for thought...for those who reflect.

Grammatical Errors in the Qur'an?

It was always patently obvious to me, even before I became a Muslim, that those who alleged that there are grammatical errors in the Qur'an not only had an ax to grind, but were making a rather objective claim regarding a subject that was at least somewhat subjective. Likewise, not only were they essentially guilty of "putting the cart before the horse", since the agreed upon grammatical rules which they relied upon to uncover alleged errors were largely formulated from Classical Arabic sources (including the Qur'an itself) years after the Qur'an was revealed, but they all seem to have conveniently forgotten that linguistic experts and authorities largely recognize that there is such a thing as "poetic license"—especially in books that claim to be unique and original (as the Qur'an indeed does). Those who are interested in reading a much more detailed discussion of this subject, one that clearly exposes the flawed approach that Orientalists have historically had with the Qur'an, please take a look at:

Orienting the Orientalists

And if you wan to learn even more about the biased and unfair treatment the Qur'an has suffered at the hands of Orientalists over the centuries, please read Method Against Truth: Orientalism and Qur'anic Studies and Orientalism, Misinformation and Islam.

Enjoy...

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...

The Shi'a and the Qur'an: Between Myth and Reality

Over the past several months, I've obtained several books on Shi'a Islam since I wanted to increase my knowledge about their beliefs and practices. This was mainly due to the fact that there's been considerable coverage of the Shi'a and their scholars due to the ongoing troubles in Iraq, but also because I have some Shi'a acquaintances, thus I wanted to avoid a future case of foot-in-mouth disease — which is generally contracted by opening one's mouth when not knowing what the heck one is talking about (a rather common malady when it comes to speaking about religion, since self-appointed Grand Muftis seem to be a dime a dozen these days). So just as I continuously read on the subjects of Judaism, Christianity, Biblical studies and other related topics in order to stay up to snuff on the subject of comparative religion, I decided it was about the time that I did the same in regards to Shi'a beliefs and practices.

Prior to this endeavor, about the only books that I had read on Shi'ism were short booklets, mostly published in Saudi Arabia, that had a very rabid, and thus seemingly exaggerated and distorted, anti-Shi'a outlook. Due to this, I decided to purchase An Introduction to Shi`i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi`ism, by Moojan Momen, which I happened to see in a local bookstore one day, and Doctrines of Shi'i Islam: A Compendium of Imami Beliefs and Practices, by Ayatollah Ja'far Sobhani. As I've always said, if you want to learn something about a particular religion, read books on it by people who believe in it and adhere to it. This methodology, which should obviously be the one employed by any sincere truth seeker, seems to be lost on a lot of Islamophobes out there who seemingly have only tried to learn about Islam, whether Sunni or Shi'a, from those who are openly hostile to it. I always try to keep in mind that if I had adopted this rather moronic approach, I'd probably still be warming up some church pew somewhere. Anyway, even though Moojan Momen's work is an academic work written by a seemingly rather secular Shi'a, I think both of these books still clearly fall into the category of not being hostile to their subject matter.

Even though I still haven't read either of the above-mentioned books cover-to-cover, I did happen to come across something quite interesting in them the other day. This had to do with the Shi'a view of the preservation and status of the Glorious Qur'an. Unfortunately, there have been some Sunni Muslims, mostly of the so-called "Salafi" and Wahhabi variety, that in their zeal to lambaste the Shi'a and scrounge up any piece of evidence that will put them further out of the fold of Islam, have actually managed to damage Islam as a whole — or at least provide some ammunition to its enemies. This is because some Christian missionaries and Orientalists have gathered these arguments together and attempted (and that's a key word) to use them to bring the veracity of the Qur'an into question. Such arguments have already been dealt with in detail in such articles has M. S. M. Saifullah's excellent Surah al-Walayah & Surah al-Nurayn: Their Authenticity & Literary Style. However, I wanted to take this opportunity to provide even more evidence that these missionary and Orientalist claims against the Qur'an are tenuous at best:

"Says the Shaykh Abu Ja'far: Our belief is that the Qur'an, which Allah revealed to his Prophet Muhammad is (the same as) the one between the two boards (daffatayn). And it is that which is in the hands of the people, and is not greater extent than that. The number of suras as generally accepted is one hundred and fourteen."[1]

And later, the same source says:

"And he who asserts that we say it is greater in extent than this (the present text) is a liar."[2]

As M. S. M. Saifullah rightly says, this "would have been a proof good enough to stop here and dismiss what the missionaries are claiming about the 'Qur'an' which Shi'ites have." However, An Introduction to Shi`i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi`ism, which is one of the books that I purchased recently and one of the references used in M. S. M. Saifullah's article as well, has some even more valuable quotes from Shi'a sources:

"With regards to the question of the text of the Qur'an, it has already been noted that the early Shi'is believed that the Qur'an has been altered and parts of it has been suppressed. The Nawbakhtis are said to have adhered to this view although it went against their usual position of agreeing with Mu'tazili thought. The compiler of the earliest, authoritative collection of Twelver Traditions, al-Kulyanî, seems to have given some substance to this view in several of the Traditions that he relates. Ibn Babuya, however, takes the position that the text of the Qur'an is complete and unaltered. Al-Mufid appears to have wavered somewhat on this point during his lifetime. He seems to have accepted the fact that parts of the Qur'an had been excised by the enemies of the Imams in some of his early writings, although he refused even then to state that anything had been added. In his later writings, however, al-Mufid had reinterpreted the concept of omissions from the text of the Qur'an to mean that the text of the Qur'an is complete (although he does allow that the order needs to be changed) but that what has been omitted is the authoritative interpretation of the text by 'Alî. In this manner, al-Mufid and most subsequent Shi'i writers were able to fall into line with the rest of the Islamic world in accepting the text of the Qur'an as contained in the recension of 'Uthmân."[3]

Similar to this, I found the following passage on page 93 of Doctrines of Shi'i Islam: A Compendium of Imami Beliefs and Practices:

"But we observe that this great soul [Imam 'Ali ibn Abu Talib], to the end of his life, never said anything about even a single word of the Qur'an having been altered. If, God forbid, such an alteration had in fact taken place, a person such as he would never have remained silent. Rather, we see the contrary: that he continuously called upon people to meditate upon the Qur'an…For these, and other reasons, the great scholars of the ahl al-bayt, from the beginning of Islam to the present day, have stressed the immunity of the Qur'an against any alteration (tahrif). It must be stressed that this is has been the position of all Shi'i authorities in all periods; and to this day, all the Shi'i leaders without exception uphold this position."[4]

Later, this same source says on page 95:

"If some Shi'i scholars have written books in which the alteration of the Qur'an is mentioned, we observe that, after the publication of such books, Shi'i scholars have written many refutations of the errors contained in them. In the like manner, when an Egyptian scholar published the book al-Furqan in 1345/1926, in which he tried to prove that the Qur'an had been altered — basing himself upon certain narrations found in the books of the Sunnis, concerning the abrogation or writing of certain Qur'anic verses — the Shaykhs of al-Azhar repudiated the opinion and banned the book."

In conclusion, page 95 of Doctrines of Shi'i Islam: A Compendium of Imami Beliefs and Practices also says: "The revealed Book for all the Muslims of the world is the Glorious Qur'an, consisting of 114 Suras, of which the first is the Sura al-Fatiha, and the last is the Sura al-Nas." This final statement, taken in context with all of the others, makes it abundantly clear that the Shi'a certainly do not believe that the Qur'an has been altered in any way.

In order to clarify a point made above, in which I touched on the fact that so-called "Salafis" and their cohorts, especially in Saudi Arabia, seemingly enjoy trying to put the Shi'a "further out of the fold of Islam", I want to say that the general belief amongst Sunni Muslim scholars is that the Shi'a are Muslims — albeit mistaken ones in some regards — who are within the fold of Islam. Indeed, in spite of the fact that the schism of Shi'ism has been strongly condemned over the centuries by many of the seminal figures of Sunni Islam, the moderate mainstream position is that the Shi'a are indeed Muslims. This is generally because they not only share our testification of faith of "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His Messenger", but adhere to the five pillars of Islam and pray to the same Qiblah as well. Ultimately, the mainstream of the Ahl al-Sunnah believe the same thing about the Shi'a as the Shi'a believe about them: that they are within the fold of Islam in spite of their innovations and mistaken beliefs. I say this last part somewhat hesitantly, because there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that the Shi'a hold that Sunni Muslims are outside the fold of Islam for failure to recognize their foundational belief of the Imamate. However, I certainly don't intend to dig through the all of the relevant Shi'a sources in order to sort out their scholars' various views on this question.

One final note, because I feel that I should mention that a good way to get more of an authentic feel for a religion, and the mentality and operative world view that it produces in its adherents, is to put aside the sometimes dry works of non-fiction and pick up a less academically inclined book that is meant for popular consumption — or sometimes a work of contemporary literature or even a DVD. In this regard, even though I'm certainly no big fan of the corrupting waste of time known as television, I have to say that I a few years ago I thoroughly enjoined both of the critically acclaimed Iranian films Secret Ballot and The Children of Heaven. Likewise, I've read substantial portions of In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran, a recent insider's view of Iran by Christopher de Bellaigue, who has lived there for years and covers it for The Economist. I really felt this book provided me with a very authoritative and believable glimpse at what makes Iran and Iranians tick — and in saying this I don't mean to imply that Iranians are strictly synonymous with Shi'a (since they're not), but rather offer it up simply as advice on how to learn about a cultural-religious milieu that one isn't familiar with. On that note I'll mention another book, since I've read a lot of good things about it: The Mantle of the Prophet, by Roy Mottahedeh. Supposedly this book provides one of the best inside looks at late twentieth century Iran and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and thus has been described as being "essential for understanding Iran and Iranians". Having mentioned these two works, and keeping in mind the current tensions between Iran and the United States, I can't help but endorse a must read that came out last year entitled All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer. This book clearly exposes some of the dastardly deeds that the U.S. has carried out in Iran over the past few decades and how, in spite of their rhetoric, they've never really promoted democracy over there. Indeed, after reading this book you'll understand that Americans have less cause to be angry with Iran than vice versa, since the taking and holding of the hostages from the U.S. Embassy was almost nothing compared to the much larger, heinous and long-lived crimes that the U.S. helped facilitate in Iran...and those who know and those who don't know certainly are not equal.

---

NOTES:

[1] Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn 'Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Babwayh al-Qummi, I'tiqadatu'l Imamiyyah (The Beliefs of Imamiyyah), English translation: A Shi'ite Creed, 1982 (Revised) Asaf A. A. Fyzee, World Organization of Islamic Services, Tehran, Iran, p. 77.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Moojan Momen, An Introduction To Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ism, 1985, George Ronald, Oxford, page 81.
[4] An interesting and valuable footnote (#65) is included after this statement, and it can be found on pages 210-11 of Doctrines of Shi'I Islam: A Compendium of Imami Beliefs and Practices, by Ayatollah Sobhani. Since this footnote provides a list of valuable references for verifying the above stated Shi'a beliefs, I'm including it here in its totality:

65. The following authorities can be referred to regarding this matter: 1) Fadl b. Shadhan, (d. 260 / 873 AH; he lived in the time of the Imams), Kitab al-Idah, p. 217; 2) Shaykh Saduq (d. 381 / 991), Kitab al-i'tiqadat, p. 93; 3) Shaykh Mufid (d. 413/1022), Majmu`at al-rasa'il, p. 266; 4) Shaykh Murtada (d. 436/1044), Jawab al-masa'il al-tarabilsiyyat; 5) Shaykh Tusi (d. 460/1067), Kitab al-tibyan, vol. 1, p. 3; 6) Shaykh al-Tabarsi (d. 548/ 1153), Majma' al-bayan (see his introduction where he clearly stresses the absence of any possibility of alteration with regard to the Qur'an); 7) Sayyid b. Tawus (d. 664/1265), Sa'd al-su`ud, p. 144 (where he says: `The non-existence of alteration — such is the position of the Imamiyya); 8) `Allama Hilli (d. 726/1325), Ujubat al-masa'il al-mihna'iyya, p. 121 (where he says: `This is the truth: that no addition or diminution has been effected in regard to the Qur'an, and I seek protection from God against speaking the word "alteration" (tahrif); for such an idea causes doubt to be cast on the miracle that was authentically transmitted to us by the Holy Prophet.').

BOOK: Etiquette With the Quran

After the scandals last month regarding the mistreatment of the Qur'an, I thought that trying to help ensure that Muslims themselves that they're treating the Qur'an with proper adab would be in order. Due to that, I've selected Etiquette With the Quran, translated by Musa Furber and with a Foreward by Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, to be this month's Book of the Month.

This fine work is a translation of Imam an-Nawawi's al-Tibyân Âdâb Hamalat al-Qur'ân, which is an enduring classic work on the etiquette that a Muslim should have with regard to handling and reciting the Qur'an. The topics this volume raises include: ritual cleanliness, opportune times for recitation, the etiquette that students have with their teachers and that teachers must have with their students, and variety of other issues that every Muslim should know, put into practice and inquire about.

Deen On...

Update: The book Etiquette With the Quran is also available from CaravanSaray.com and IslamicBookstore.com.

Mosaics on the Dome of the Rock from 72 A.H.

The Islamic-Awareness.org website has an interesting new update entitled The Arabic Islamic Inscriptions On The Dome Of The Rock In Jerusalem. This article graphically documents the Arabic mosaics that were completed in 72 A.H. — a time in which some Sahabah were still alive — and which still survive to this day on the Dome of the Rock (Arabic: Qubat as-Sakhirah). In the not too distant future, insha'llah, there should be an update showing a verse-by-verse, or phrase-by-phrase, breakdown of these inscriptions and their corresponding texts in the Qur'ân and hadîth.

This is the most recent of several Islamic-Awareness.org articles on The Dome of the Rock, so those who are interested in knowing more about this holy site and some of the polemics surrounding it should certainly read all of them. Likewise, there's an invaluable book entitled The Dome of the Rock, by Said Nuseibah (photographer) and Oleg Grabar (author), that not only gives a detailed history of the site, but provides complete photographic documentation of the entire building — including the mosaics which date back to the first Hijri century.

Using the Koran to Fight Terrorism

I was quite happy to come across the following article which proves not only what many of us have been saying all along, but confirms the traditional Islamic position as well: that the best way to fight militant and extremist Islam is to educate Muslims about what Islam really teaches. Even though we can't fully comprehend what's going on in these dialogues without knowing all of the details, even a cursory look shows that they seem to be a step in the right direction. As usual amongst journalists, however, the author offers a rather simplistic view of Islam, since he seems to assume that the Koran is the only source of Islamic Law. The problem with this is that without tying the Koran to the Sunnah and anchoring both of these sources to the consensus ('ijma) of qualified Sunni scholars, it's open to the far-fetched and one-sided interpretations that the militants often use. The ironic thing is that many "Western antiterrorism experts" have been duped by these unqualified Koranic interpretations as well. This is why, based on their erstwhile assumption that the Koran is the problem and Islam is inherently violent, they thought that trying to refute the militant ideology would "end in disaster". Insha'llah, this dialogue program will make more people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, realize that if they want to defeat extremist Muslim militants, then the best way to do it is through a proper classical Islamic education—not by droppings bombs. Not only would this be beneficial to the Muslim World as a whole, but it would probably save a lot of lives on both sides as well. As someone once said, "Jihad, properly understood, is really a war against terrorism".

Koranic Duels Ease Terror
By James Brandon
The Christian Science Monitor - February 04, 2005

When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.

"If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle," Hitar told the militants.

Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen.

"Since December 2002, when the first round of the dialogues ended, there have been no terrorist attacks here, even though many people thought that Yemen would become terror's capital," says Hitar, eyes glinting shrewdly from beneath his emerald-green turban. "Three hundred and sixty-four young men have been released after going through the dialogues and none of these have left Yemen to fight anywhere else."

He says that most militants are ordinary people who have been led astray.

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...