What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text and Commentary [Hardcover]

Ibn Warraq (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2002

Islam has world-wide influence, and even in the United States is experiencing a period of unprecedented growth. Its sacred book, "The Koran", is the subject of voluminous commentary, yet it rarely receives the kind of objective critical scrutiny that has been applied to the texts of the Bible for over a century. To correct this neglect of objective scholarship, Ibn Warraq has assembled this excellent collection of critical commentaries on "The Koran" published by noted scholars from the beginning of the 20th century to recent times. This outstanding volume will be a welcome resource to interested lay readers and scholars alike.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Excellent book on a sensitive and under-explored subject." -- Fortean Times, April 2003

"For anyone interested in the Koran, it will be a boon to understanding Islam. ...robustly critical scholarship..." -- Times Literary Supplement, September 12, 2003

"Scholars, students, and those with a keen interest in Islam...are sure to get a lot out of this collection." -- About.com

From the Inside Flap

Islam has worldwide influence, and even in the United States is experiencing a period of unprecedented growth. Islam and its sacred book, the Koran, have been the subject of voluminous commentary and, recently, great popular interest; yet it has rarely received the kind of ojective critical scrutiny that has been applied to the texts of the Bible for more than a century.

Though some scholars of note have raised crucial questions about the authenticity and reliability of the Koran and Muslim tradition, Koranic studies by and large have failed to take advantage of critical skeptical methodologies. Today the majority of interpreters of Islam's sacred text appear content to lie in the Procrustean bed prepared by Muslim tradition more than a thousand years ago.

To correct this neglect of objective historical scholarship, Ibn Warraq has assembled this excellent collection of critical commentaries on the Koran published by noted scholars from the beginning of the twentieth century to recent times. These important studies, as well as his own lengthy introduction, show that little about the text of the Koran can be taken at face value. Among the fascinating topics discussed is evidence that early Muslims did not understand Muhammad's original revelation, that the ninth-century explosion of literary activity was designed to organize and make sense of an often incoherent text, and that many of the traditions surrounding Muhammad's life were fabricated long after his death in an attempt to give meaning to the Koran. Also of interest are suggestions that Coptic and other Christian sources heavily influenced much of the text and that some passages even reflect an Essenian background reaching back to the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Complete with a glossary of Arabic terms and appendices on Semitic languages and scripts, this outstanding volume is a welcome resource for interested lay readers and scholars alike.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 782 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (October 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157392945X
• ISBN-13: 978-1573929455
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #726,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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450 of 480 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Hot Potato, November 8, 2003

By 

Timothy W. Dunkin "TQCincinnatus" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text and Commentary (Hardcover)

Anyone familiar with Ibn Warraq's books readily knows why he is pretty much universally reviled by Muslim polemicists (he has several death fatwas outstanding against him - hence his use of a pseudonym for publishing). This book is no different. In it, Ibn Warraq presents a large collection of articles from scholars who spent their lives investigating the Qur'an and its history. This, in and of itself, will cause most Muslims and "pro-Islam" people in the West to view this book as a "hostile" source. Any collection of articles that deconstruct the Qur'an and which demonstrate flaws, imperfections, and inconsistencies in the Qur'an will be viewed as such.

Bad point: Much of the information in the book is very dated. We're talking about information first presented by the likes of Noldeke, Wellhausen, and Goldziher in the early 20th century.

Good point: Much of this information is still relevant today, if only because of the relative paucity of scholars who are actually willing to critically examine Islam without slavishly seeking to substantiate the Islamic party line. Many of the linguistic arguments still have not been satisfactorily answered by Muslims or Westerners to this day (i.e. rebuttals based on circular reasoning such as relying upon the traditional Islamic view of the Qur'an to SUBSTANTIATE the traditional Islamic view of the Qur'an don't count).

If Muslims think that the essays in Ibn Warraq's book are "hostile", then they should acquaint themselves with the works of more modern researchers from the last thirty years like Crone, Cook, Nevo, Wansbraugh, etc. These and other investigators are even more "hostile" if only because they have a greater base of archaeological, numismatic, epigraphic, etc. data from which to assess the traditional Islamic historiography.

As we can see from some of the previous reviewers, those who don't like this book are generally a bit biased themselves. One from March 20, 2003 (below) barely addresses the actual content of the book, and spends up who-knows how much bandwidth giving us a screed about the "peaceful" aspects of jihad and how the Qur'an really promotes peace, love, harmony, and all that other good stuff. Another review (Edgar Hopida, Nov. 16, 2002) complains about bias in this book, using such objective terminology as "this book represents the one-sided, misleading, and dishonest evidence about the Qur'an, Islam, and its rich history" and "Orientalism, has for centuries attempted to deconstruct Islam, trying to give biased proof that the Occident is superior over the Orient." Would Mr. Hopida care to explain why "Orientalists" have been inclined towards trying to do the exact same thing with the Bible? Perhaps they were trying to give biased proof that the Occident is superior over the *Occident*, too?

Basically, this is a book which the reader will either appreciate for its factual content, or else will despise for its factual content, depending on whether Islamic presuppositions are brought to the table before reading it.

124 of 132 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Difficult But Informative Book, May 16, 2006

By 

Fred W. Hallberg "A Retired Humanities Prof." (Janesville, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text and Commentary (Hardcover)

This book is the most difficult I have as yet attempted to read on the topic of Islam. The introduction by Warraq suggests it will be an exposition about the history and structure of the Koran, like those available for general readers about the Bible. What we get instead from Warraq is the unvarnished conversation of scholars with one another. Only Warraq himself attempts to address the general reader.

The book is organized as an anthology, with many entries that read like scholarly papers written for The Society of Biblical Literature. Some of the material requires an acquaintance with classical Arabic, and makes references to loan words from Hebrew, Syriac, and other aancient Semetic languages.

I would recommend that the general reader approach the book by reading Warraq's "Introduction," first, and then skip over to the critical concluding essay by Ibn Rawandi (Section 8.3). (Ibn Rawandi is the pseudonym of another Islamic dissenter like Ibn Warraq. Both these names are derived from 8th and 9th Century Islamic dissenters described in Chapter 10 of Warraq's "Why I Am Not A Muslim.")

After reading Rawandi's critical essay, one should then go back and read (or re-read) the materials to which Rawandi refers. Only then should the naive reader attempt to follow the arguments concerning loan-words found in the Koran from Syriac, Ebionite-Christianity, and other ancient sources.

Why is this all so hard to unravel? It appears to me that the state of critical scholarship about the Koran is much less well developed than is scholarship about the Bible. The attempt to explain the redundancies and contradictions in the Koran is about as well developed today as was Biblical scholarship in the last quarter of the 19th Century. Why is scholarship about the Koran so much less well developed? One reason may be that Western scholars have simply been more interested in the sources of their own religious canon. But another salient factor is the resistance within Islam itself toward any such critical examination of the Koran. Warraq tells us the Encyclopedia of Islam says the Koran plays a role within Islam, like that played by Christ in Christianity. So Muslims are even more allergic to critical examinations of their canon than Christian fundamentalists are of theirs. As Barry Rubin explains in his "The Long War For Freedom," merely proposing to examine the Koran with the tools of critical scholarship can get one imprisoned or even executed in an Islamic country today.

I can understand, in retrospect, why this book was so difficult to read. Warraq simply could not present his case for the Koran being a document with a history of construction from multiple sources, without first leading us through such a dense thicket of evidence and analysis.

86 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book for a scholar, but not for a layman, May 13, 2004

By 

J. Adams "History buff" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text and Commentary (Hardcover)

This book is a compendium of many well researched papers written in the last century and before. It is a very scholarly book, and not something for the casual reader, which makes it far too detailed for someone not familiar with the languages of the Middle East. It is easy to see why Islamists hate this book since it points out that over 20% of the Koran is indecipherable to even most Islamic scholars. It also shows the probable origins of the Koran from other material and writings available before Mohammed heard the voices which made him a prophet in the minds of some. While there are some interesting tidbits, such as Christoph Luxemberg's theory that the Islamic promise of sexual bliss with numerous virgins at every believer's disposal in the afterlife is probably a misinterpretation of the Syriac word for "white raisins" instead of doe-eyed virgins, this is a tedious book for the regular reader. While I'm sure Luxemberg's theory will not diminish the supply of jihaadist lunatics, it does point out that a religion which condemns to death scholars who try to examine the basic document of this faith is a very scary threat to civilization all over the globe. The book also tells the stories of outrageous threats against some of those so condemned. Ibn Warraq (a pseudonym for a former Muslim who has been condemned to death by fatwas issued by mullahs of the "religion of peace" has done a great job of compiling these papers. I also got to learn that his pseudonym means "son of a stationer (or bookseller)"