Muhammad and the Believers at the Origins of Islam (original) (raw)

Book Review on Donner's "Muhammad and the Believers At the Origins of Islam"

Professor of Near Eastern History, at the University of Chicago, Fred Donner, in his book Muhammad and the Believers (2010) argues about the Believers movement and formation of Muslim and Islamic identity. Written in a non-technical way, “mainly for non-specialists” (p.xvii), this book contrasts its position with the notion of widespread western scholarship since nineteenth century that has presented rise of Islam as a result of non-religious factors such as political and economic convictions. Donner argues that Islam, or “more apparently” the Believer’s movement was from its beginning an essentially a religious movement which “embodied an intense concern for attaining personal salvation through righteous behavior”

Muhammad and the Umayyad Conversion to Islam

A.J. Deus’s paper investigates the historicity of Prophet Muhammad and the Koran as well as the Prophet’s possible relationship with the Umayyads. By limiting the evidence to pre-692 documents and artifacts, Deus brings forth a hypothesis that Prophet Muhammad did not appear in the primary evidence until after 631 AD. He is connected to a sermon based on Mosaic Law that cannot be identified in the Koran. His first and isolated sign of having passed away appears in 691 AD in Egypt. He may indeed have still been alive in the 650s, if not in the 680s, and no evidence exists of a prophet Muhammad that died in 632 AD. In that timeframe, a shift from a MHMT institution to an individual MHMD can be observed, and the two could be distinct. There seems to have been a progression from Elijah bar Kabsha, the chief of the Tayyi’ MHMT, to Muhammad being the spiritual leader of the Mhaggraye, and later to the Tayyi’ Mhaggraye, through the MHMD Mahdi, and finally to Islam. Nevertheless, in the 680s, the ‘adversaries’ of the Byzantine Orthodox Church were viewed as a like-Arian form of Judaic thought that reintroduced Jewish Messiahnism from an expanding territory of the Tayyi’. The Byzantines neither recognized Muhammad nor Islam. The earlier Saracen and Ishmaelite incursions must have been unaware of Islam and the Koran. It appears that the Jews from Edessa carried the seed (Sebeos), and the Tayyi’ represent the sprout of what eventually evolved into Muhammadeans. Their goal seems to have been to occupy Jerusalem, as was of other groups, certainly also in the first wave of attacks. However, the temple building activities in Jerusalem were attributed first to Saracens from the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus region, or in Sebeos to Jews who were driven away by the Ishmaelites. The next temple that went up was in Fusted under Amr, but from Mecca there was no sign of activity. The traditional narratives might contain several parallel “histories” and perhaps more than one Muhammad or a chain of Muhammads. The primary evidence also suggests, according to Deus, that the Muslim timescale may be connected to Heraclius’s advances and later alliance with three Persian rebel factions, establishing a growing confederation in competition with the Persian Empire. Deus makes a case that primary evidence should not be incorporated into traditions since the latter may have been inserted into real history with an agenda. In order to avoid circular arguments, contemporary primary evidence must take precedence, and tradition can only help to support it or clarify certain aspects.

Christology and Prophetology in the early Umayyad Arab Empire

Published in Markus Groß and Karl-Heinz Ohlig, eds., Die Entstehung einer Weltreligion III. Die heilige Stadt Mekka -eine literarische Fiktion, Inârah, Schriften zur frühen Islamgeschichte und zum Koran, 7 (Berlin: Verlag Hans Schiler, 2014), 255-285. The building of the Umayyad Dome of the Rock in 691/692 as a monument for the declaration of an Arab Christology is increasingly recognized in scholarship as a crucial event in the formation of Islam. As a basilica with its 20-meter high cupola on the Temple Mound in Jerusalem, the Dome can be seen as the counter monument to the two most famous Byzantine basilicas, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Hagia Sophia, with their 35-m and 50-m high domes. The inscriptions inside and outside the Dome proclaim a Christology that was not only different from those of the late Roman Empire 1 but also incompatible with the Christologies of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. The inscriptions can be seen as proclamations of a new Arab imperial state theology within a wider Christian ecumenical context which John Wansbrough pertinently called the "sectarian milieu." 2 Why the builder of the Dome, Caliph `Abd al-Malik (685-705), chose to elevate his administration's Christology into the central doctrine of a fledgling state religion is a question

IslamBetween Message and History

2009

The Preaching of Muhammad 3 Distinctive Characteristics of Muhammad's Message 4 Legislation 5 The Seal of Prophecy Part Two: The Message in History with the exception of the sterling efforts of a few outstanding scholars such as Ahmed Abdessalam, Mohamed Talbi, Farhat Dachraoui and Hichem Djaït. Charfi was a contemporary of this group and followed the development of their thought. It was inevitable that he, on the basis of his learning and research, should propel Arabic studies toward the development of a specialised field of study still known today as "Civilisation Studies". In this area Charfi was a pioneer and a founder in the full sense of the term, establishing a discipline whose premises and results were coherent, and which drew in a critical manner on the approach of the human and social sciences in their various branches. Civilisation Studies was thus able to occupy a distinct position among other established scholarly disciplines. Civilisation Studies drew on religious anthropology, as well as Muslim disciplines, history and human geography, the wide spectrum of human science, sociology, philosophy and linguistics, as well as knowledge of the Arabic language. Abdelmadjid Charfi's varied scholarship has been based on a comparative examination of, on the one hand, the meaning of the message of Muhammad in its original setting of seventh-century Arabia, and the subsequent reception of this message by generations of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Questions that he has studied include, for example, Muslim views of Christianity, as well as the structure of the arguments that Muslims developed following the revelation of the Qur'anic texts, the Bible, Qur'anic exegesis and dogma. This comparison between original meaning and subsequent reception is also evident in his work on the theme of Islam and modernity, whether it be current trends within Islam or Charfi's call for the necessary nurturing of an enlightened conscience, integrating the tenets of religion, universal humanity and the values of modernity. Charfi's approach goes beyond Islam, encompassing the phenomenon of religion from its beginnings, its subsequent development and evolving meaning, giving as examples both adherents and opponents of religion. It is noteworthy that Charfi considers religion as a phenomenon that can be examined and studied, one that has meanings and functions for its adherents, throughout its history. The only way to study these is in the light of laws governing the history of civilisation. Religious scholarship shakes off the grip of repetition and marginal glosses and opens up to renewal based on novel and creative thought. Charfi's enquiry covers the whole of the Islamic tradition, promoting deeper understanding and attitudes conducive to personal lucidity and responsibility, in harmony with contemporary values. Charfi's viewpoint, on the contrary, is closer to that emerging from an article by Amīn al Khūli published in the review Risāla in 1933 with the title of "Renewal in Religion". Khūli embarks on a reexamination of the text of the Qur'an and narrative material associated with the Prophet, seen in the light of recently discovered data and today's needs. Built around sound logical analysis and discernment, renewal entails reconstructing, for today's world, an intellectual framework that is meaningful and functional, insofar as modernity models its basic constituents. Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) understood the term "renewal" as a rebuilding, the development of a new theory. The position which Charfi has chosen is precisely that of the second Reform movement as mentioned by Abdou Filai-Ansari in his book Réformer l'Islam. 1 This reformism is not preoccupied with following the righteous ancestors; nor does it consider its mission as one of purifying religion and belief from "innovation" and plagues that have affected its unblemished spirit. From an intellectual point of view its task is clear: revising in a critical and rigorous way the structures of thought that preceding generations of scholars had put in place. The path that The Message of Islam: Closure of Prophecy "From the Outside" Charfi examines the message of Islam through two phenomena: the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad. Charfi is aware of the intellectual difficulties associated with the historico-critical method in analysing religious texts, which have been assumed by a community, celebrated and revised, assembled and codified after a period of oral transmission. They have become a possession of the community through which God is worshipped. The phenomenon of Muhammad has also been enveloped in a mass of stories, legends and tales of the Prophet's military campaigns. These subsequent ways of imagining the Prophet were honest by the standards of their authors and their ways of expressing themselves. Their accounts of the Prophet's miracles furnish ample proof of this. The Qur'an clearly rejected that any miracle other than the eloquence of the Qur'an be associated with the Prophet. The Qur'an's origins were divine and the Prophet was not its source.