Allahu Akbar.
Runyam.
Makin banyak saja kedunguan Islam itu yang dibongkar
oleh orientalis...
----
Qantara.de - Dialogue with the Islamic World
The Emergence of Islam
No Prophet Named Muhammad?
"To shed light on the dark beginnings of Islam" is the
call of Karl-Heinz Ohlig, editor of the volume "Early
Islam". Its authors claim to be able to trace the
actual emergence of Islam through recourse to
"contemporary sources". Daniel Birnstiel has read the
book
Following Luxenberg's "Die Syro-aramäische Lesart"
("The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Qur'an A
Contribution to the Decoding of the Qur'an") and the
anthology "Die dunklen Anfänge" ("The Dark
Beginnings"), likewise edited by Karl-Heinz Ohlig,
"Der frühe Islam" ("Early Islam") is the third book in
a short period of time which seeks to revise the
prevalent views on the emergence of Islam.
Its authors advance the view that Islam began as a
Christian heresy, having developed in Eastern Iran
among Christians who had originally been deported from
Mesopotamia (mainly Hatra).
After the downfall of the Sassanian Empire in 622 CE,
these Christians are supposed to have assumed power
and transplanted their Christology to Damascus and
Jerusalem, where, towards the end of the 7th century,
texts that had been brought from Iran by the ruler Abd
al-Malik were translated from Syrian into a
Syro-Aramaic-Arabic hybrid language.
Muhammad, "title of the Messiah Jesus"?
This "proto-Qur'an" was then supposedly enlarged
during the course of the 8th, and perhaps also the
earlier 9th century. Ohlig et al. allege that
"Muhammad" was not a name, but rather a "title of the
Messiah Jesus". Thus the development towards an
independent religion (reportedly) only took place
during the 8th/9th century, during the course of which
development this title was reinterpreted as the name
of the Arabian Prophet.
Likewise, early Islamic history as found in the
traditional Islamic literature of the 9th century is,
in the eyes of the authors, only a reinterpretation,
while many of the early caliphs are said to be a late
invention, since they are not attested in
inscriptions.
This "historical-critical reconstruction" appears in
some respects like a repetition of John Wansbrough's
late dating of the Qur'an to the early 9th century,
and it recalls the theses of Patricia Crone and
Michael Cook, according to which Islam did not
originate in the Arabian Peninsula, but in Palestine.
The consensus of Islamic Studies, however, views
things differently: the traditional Islamic report is
considered largely historically authentic, while the
historical existence of Muhammad, who is reported to
have been born around 570 CE and to have appeared as
prophet after receiving the call from God, is
accepted.
Following rejection and persecution by his tribe, the
Quraish, Muhammad is then reported to have emigrated
to Medina in 622 CE, where he founded the first
Islamic polity.
The first redaction of the Qur'an
The fact that Muhammad, from there and within 10
years, conquered not only Mecca, but most of the
Arabian Peninsula, is as much beyond dispute in
Islamic Studies as the existence of the first caliphs,
under whose leadership the Fertile Crescent, North
Africa and Iran were conquered. It is similarly
undisputed that the final redaction of the Qur'an as
collection of the revelations received by Muhammad was
undertaken during the reign of the 3rd Caliph, Uthman.
Some of the main theses brought forward in "Der frühe
Islam" are presented below.
Both Volker Popp and Karl-Heinz Ohlig hypothesize that
Arabia was located originally in Mesopotamia, while
the terms "Arabs" and "Arabic/Arabian" originally
referred to Arameans. It was only later that these
terms were adopted by tribes originating from the
Arabian Peninsula and reassigned to denote Arabs and
Arabia in the present day sense.
However, this thesis omits important facts. The names
of individuals and deities in Arabic, as we define it
today, clearly document not only the existence of an
Arabic speaking population in Hatra in the 2nd/3rd
century CE, but also the presence of Arab tribes in
the present-day sense from the 9th century BCE
onwards among the nomads of the Syrian desert labelled
as Aribi, Arabaya, and the like by the Assyrians.
This term was also used for nomads living in Iran, who
were most probably not even Semites. Thus one must
assume that this term denoted nomads without any
identification of the ethnic or linguistic origin.
First and foremost, however, the same Semitic root was
already used in Old South Arabian in the 2nd century
BCE for the designation of nomadic tribes from the
Peninsula. Thus, the term "Arabs" cannot have been
transferred in the course of the 7th or 8th century CE
to the Arabs (as understood today).
Arguments on shaky ground
Another argument in support of Popp's notion of a
Christian, chiliastic movement in Merv stands on
similarly shaky ground: The Pahlavi legend
"APD'LMLIK-i-MRWânân" (Popp's rendering) which appears
on coins minted there and which has been read as Abd
al-Malik Bin Marwân (Abd al-Malik, the son of Marwân),
is taken to mean "Abd al-Malik from the people of
Merv".
Popp takes this as proof that Merv was a centre of a
type of a "traditional" Christianity that had been
moved from Mesopotamia.
However, the reading of "i-MRWânân" as "from the
people of Merv" is impossible, since the Middle
Persian suffix -ân is not used for the derivation of
words denoting origin. On the other hand, the reading
"Son of Marân" is not only possible, but, moreover,
actually represents the only way to render this
meaning in Pahlavi.
Furthermore, one needs to ask why someone would wish
to stress his origin in his home town of all places,
and how a Christian "heresy" should have been able to
exist there undetected, given the fact that Merv was
already a bishop's see in the 4th century CE and later
became an archbishopric of the Apostolic Church of the
East (commonly and mistakenly referred to as the
Nestorians).
Zoroastrian concepts in Qur'an and Islam?
Also dubious is the means by which Popp arrives at his
conviction that the title "amîr al-mûminîn" does not
mean "commander of the faithful", but rather
"commander of the security officers", which he regards
as some kind of reeve.
The corresponding Middle Persian on the
Arabo-Sassanian coins is "AMÎR-i-Wurroyishnikân"
(Popp's rendering). However, "wurroyishnikân" can only
mean "the faithful" and derives from "wurroyishn",
i.e. "faith".
This is a term that appears in Zoroastrian religious
texts. Elsewhere, however, Popp claims, particularly
in his contribution "Der Einfluss persischer
religiöser Raster auf Vorstellungen im Qur'an" ("The
Influence of Persian religious patterns on concepts in
the Qur'an"), to detect a number of Zoroastrian
concepts in Qur'an and Islam.
"The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Qur'an"
The author of the book "Die Syro-aramäische Lesart"
("The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Qur'an A
Contribution to the Decoding of the Qur'an"),
Christoph Luxenberg, attempts in his article to
demonstrate that the diverging orthographies of early
Qur'anic manuscripts presuppose an original in Syriac
script.
However, the reasons brought forth are hardly
convincing. It is highly questionable whether his
reading of ay' "thing, something" as a'n "matter,
issue", due to the use of a retroflexively written
letter y, which he regards as representing a Syriac n,
does in fact make more sense.
It is incomprehensible that "issue" should be
semantically more all-encompassing than "thing,
something", when the sentence "God has power over
every issue" is far less encompassing than the
statement "God has power over every thing". It is not
for nothing that ay' has developed in many Arabic
dialects into an indefinite and interrogative pronoun
meaning "something, what, whatever".
Adventurous statements, such as that the intensifying
particle la- as well, apparently, as the negation
lā were borrowed from Aramaic despite being
attested in all branches of the Semitic languages
raise serious doubts about Luxenberg's Semitistic and
linguistic abilities.
Science as a self-fulfilling prophecy
More than once, one gets the impression that
Luxenberg's discoveries are not the result of a
re-reading of the Qur'an, but rather that, on the
contrary, the text is interpreted in such a way that
it will deliver the desired result.
It is especially striking that he makes recourse to
Aramaic orthographic traditions of any kind, as if the
different Aramaic dialects can simply be interchanged
arbitrarily. A "proto-Qur'an" in Syriac script,
therefore, cannot in any way be considered a proven
fact.
The reading of Markus Gross's contribution gives a
similar sense of a selective use of linguistic facts
to support a preconceived opinion.
Gross argues that orally transmitted texts in general
cannot be reduced to a single urtext; the textual
variants of the Qur'an, however, supposedly go back to
alternative (mis-) readings of a single, underlying,
authoritative text skeleton (rasm).
Although the number of variants going back to
alternative vocalisations or consonant readings of the
same skeleton is indeed large, there are nevertheless
and he does not mention this many variants that
presuppose a different rasm.
Furthermore, Gross claims that it is objectively
impossible to derive a true, aesthetic pleasure from
the Qur'anic text; yet more recent works of literary
criticism that have exposed the compositional
strategies and the different stylistic devices in the
Qur'an (such as Neal Robinson's "Discovering the
Qur'an") were not consulted.
Strange reasoning
His thesis that early Qur'anic orthography constitutes
some kind of cryptographic script, due to its lack of
precision, appears rather strange, considering the
fact that pre-Islamic inscriptions are equally
imprecise despite their rather profane content.
Also the main thesis, repeatedly argued in this
volume, that muhammad is not a name, but a
Christologial title, is ultimately baseless.
Popp regards it as a loan word from Ugaritic with the
meaning "the chosen one, the elected one". As evidence
for this he uses a textbook translation of Ugaritic
m.h.m.d as "the best, choicest", which, of course, has
nothing at all to do with "being chosen, being
elected".
Ohlig, on the other hand, suggests that a Syriac word
mahmed "the praised one" which came to be read and
pronounced as mehmad in Arabic is as alternative
source for the word muhammad. As a matter of fact,
however, there is no evidence at all for the root hmd
in Syriac. Ohlig's Syriac word turns out to be
non-existant.
Although the correct meaning of this root in Northwest
Semitic, namely "to desire", is mentioned by Gross, he
nevertheless wrongly declares the root to be extant in
Syriac, to which he adds a misconstructed participle
form. His argument that Hebrew mahmād, "object of
desire", is borrowed from Ugaritic has no basis.
It is only in South Semitic, namely in Arabic and
South Arabic, that we find the root hmd with the
meaning "to praise, to laud". In these languages, this
root is also used for the derivation of proper names;
a name m.h.m.d is attested in Safaitic and Sabaic
inscriptions in pre-Islamic times.
A less than proof positive reading
Muhammad also appears unambiguously as a proper name
on Arabo-Sassanian coins minted in 686 and 701 CE, in
other words contemporaneously with the inscription
from the Dome of the Rock, in the re-reading of which
Luxenberg claims elsewhere to have found the proof for
the Christological title.
However, neither here nor anywhere else is Jesus
identified by name with muhammad or even mentioned in
the same sentence. Luxenberg's reading is anything but
proof positive.
On the other hand, the Muslim credo appears in
bilingual papyri in Greek. In these papyri a person
named mamet is referred to as apostolos theou, i.e.
Messenger of God. It is therefore rather difficult to
interpret it as something other than a proper name.
The reviewed work does therefore not comply with the
call "to shed light on the dark beginnings of Islam".
The authors' fully justified criticism that the
sources, especially contemporary Christian ones, have
hitherto been (mis-) read in accordance with the
Islamic tradition proves to be a farce in the face of
their equally biased use of these sources to accord
with their own theories.
In the meantime, the "chosen" or "praised"
muhammad-Jesus remains a far-fetched object of
revisionist "desire".
Daniel Birnstiel
© Qantara.de 2007
Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Hg.): Der frühe Islam. Verlag Hans
Schiler, Berlin 2007. (only available in German)
Islamic Science
On Christian Strophes in the Koran
In his lifes work, German theologian Günter Lüling
challenges Islam to a Reformation. Wolfgang Günter
Lerch read his book "A Challenge to Islam for
Reformation".
Koran Studies
"What is the Koran?"
Christoph Luxenberg's book on the history of the
origins of the Koran has found wide resonance
internationally. But scholars of Islam are skeptical
about the work. Michael Marx summarizes the results of
a Berlin conference on the subject.
Interview with Angelika Neuwirth
"The Koran A Book in Many Languages"
Angelika Neuwirth is one of Germany's most renowned
Koran experts. In this interview with Kurt Scharf, she
talks about the aesthetic dimension of the Koran, the
trouble with translating sacred texts, and the notion
of "inlibration"
URL on this Site:
http://qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php?wc_c=478&wc_id=656
---------------
Jusfiq Hadjar gelar Sutan Maradjo Lelo
Allah yang disembah orang Islam tipikal dan yang digambarkan oleh al-Mushaf itu
dungu, buas, kejam, keji, ganas, zalim lagi biadab hanyalah Allah fiktif.
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