The Koran Faces Modern Critical Analysis

Both Judaism and Christianity have had to deal with modern critical analysis of their most holy books.

Of the 3 major religions, Islam's holy book has faced very little literary criticism--in part because of the threat of violence.

Still, here and there you can find analysis of the Koran. A German professor of ancient Semitic and Arabic languages under the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg came out with a controversial book that reinterprets the Koran about which he gave an interview in 2004.

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Here is one example that is particularly controversial, as it overturns what is a major tenet in Islam. At least to some: it could be that the reference in the Koran to virgins is not referring to virgins at all.

Q. - Let´s come to the misunderstandings. One of the most glaring errors you cite is that of the virgins promised, in the Islamic paradise, to the suicide bombers.

A. - "We begin from the term ´huri,´ for which the Arabic commentators could not find any meaning other than those heavenly virgins. But if one keeps in mind the derivations from Syro-Aramaic, that expression indicated ´white grapes,´ which is one of the symbolic elements of the Christian paradise, recalled in the Last Supper of Jesus. There´s another Koranic expression, falsely interpreted as ´the children´ or ´the youths´ of paradise: in Aramaic: it designates the fruit of the vine, which in the Koran is compared to pearls. As for the symbols of paradise, these interpretive errors are probably connected to the male monopoly in Koranic commentary and interpretation."

That is nothing compared to a much more recent threat to Islam--a theory about Mohammed espoused by a Muslim teacher that goes to the heart of Islam:

Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn't like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.

So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed.

..."We had no idea he would have ideas like this," says Thomas Bauer, a fellow academic at Münster University who sat on a committee that appointed Prof. Kalisch. "I'm a more orthodox Muslim than he is, and I'm not a Muslim."

I'm not interested in this piece of news in terms of the accuracy of the theory or whether Mohammed existed or not.

I thought it interesting in that it could be that slowly but surely Islam--and the Quran--are facing the same kind of critical approach that Judaism and Christianity have had to deal with for over 100 years.

Welcome to the 21st century!

Hat tip: Just One Minute

Technorati Tag: Islam and Quran.