![]() ![]() ![]() It is no longer possible for any Christian to ignore the claims of Islam. Muslims attempt to contrast the “many errors of the Bible” with the “perfect Qur’an.” The assertion that the Bible has been corrupted over time, and that it is self-contradictory, will be contrasted with the ubiquitous claim that the Qur’an is not only perfect in its inspiration but in its preservation as well. But Muslims reject the revealed truths about Christ, and when challenged, the accuracy of the biblical texts upon which those truths are based will become the central aspect of their position. Obviously, the character of Christ is central to a proper presentation of the gospel. This encounter illustrates with striking clarity the foundational nature of the Christian belief in the inspiration and divine preservation of the Bible to all forms of apologetic and evangelistic effort. Malik informed the audience that he could not name any, “but they are there.” When challenged to provide any documentation of this assertion in the form of New Testament manuscripts, Mr. Malik’s thesis was not that the New Testament, as it exists today, did not teach the deity of Christ, but that all passages that could be presented in support of the divinity of Christ were later interpolations, corruptions of the “original” New Testament writings. Just as Biblical faith is made sounder, stronger, and more thoughtful by critical Biblical scholarship, so too with critical study of the Qur’an.The Muslim debater was Hamza Abdul Malik of the Islamic Propagation Center. Our hosts suggest that, although there are some tensions between critical study of the Qur’an and traditional Muslim views of the Qur’an, critical study is fully compatible with the Qur’an’s own strong encouragement of critical thought. These approaches have met with dismissive, as well as appreciative, reactions from Muslim scholars, who have increasingly (especially from the second half of the twentieth century) begun to respond to and participate in the critical endeavor. A continuing difference is critical scholarship’s treating Muhammad as an author of the Qur’an, with his own sources and psychology, whereas the traditional view sees God as the word-for-word author. ![]() Modern critical scholarship has often asked what the sources of the Qur’an might be, from the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and apocryphal Christian texts, to Arabian sources and other informants. One point of convergence between critical scholarship and traditional Muslim understandings is the view that the Qur’an can be divided into a Meccan and Medinan period–though critical scholars and traditional views often differ on which passages belong to which period. On some understandings, the Qur’an is something like Christianity’s view of Jesus–a (linguistic) embodiment of the divine word.Īlthough Western scholars have studied the Qur’an since the twelfth century (in Latin translations), critical scholarship has a modern stamp. Muslim scholars have understood Muhammad’s role in the transmission of the Qur’an sometimes more passively, and sometimes more actively. That’s why non-Arabic translations of the Qur’an often say, “an interpretation of the Holy Qur’an” or “a rendering of the words of the Holy Qur’an,” but not “a translation ” for Muslims, once the Qur’an moves out of Arabic, it’s no longer the Qur’an. The Qur’an is inscribed on tablets preserved in heaven. Muslims believe that the Qur’an is the divine word of God, sent down in its linguistic form, word for word in Arabic, to the prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. What importance do developments in critical scholarship on the Qur’an have for the life of faith? How have Muslims traditionally understood the Qur’an? What were the nineteenth- and twentieth-century beginnings of Western critical scholarship on the Qur’an, and what are its motivating questions today? Where do Western critical scholarship and traditional reading of the Qur’an converge? Do the findings of Western critical scholarship fundamentally challenge traditional Muslim understandings of the Qur’an, and how, more generally, does critical study of the Qur’an affect Muslims’ lives of faith? ![]()
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