Lógos Sokratikós

Just slightly changing the subject...

Are English-language translations of the Quran any good? If so, which?

Roger Pearse

Well, assertions are not data, tho. Not even assertions in secondary literature.

OK, and I suspect this is general. But I think that we do need to know them. People make too many assertions, based on ignorance, for us to regard it as a matter of indifference.

I have no view on what may or may not be proven, actually.

With reference to an idea of later editing of the Koran, as you rightly say, the thing to do is to collate the manuscripts, find out what that says. Once we have the data, we can formulate theories to explain that data. At the moment I don't know what data we have.

Sorry if my interests are not yours. What you consider "the important issues" are not important to me.

Ah, you have supposed me to be discussing the Koran, I think. I'm not. What I'm saying is that whatever someone says about the Koran 13 centuries later means nothing. What I want to see is the raw data.

The wars of Heraclius provide the answer to that. But that is a separate issue.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Solo

Roger, I am not going to go through the travail of finding the a'hadith on which Ruthven "asserts" the function of qaris dates from Uthman. I am satisfied that he is a recognized scholar of Islamic history, and what says correlates with other data that are available on the subject of Qur'an recitation as a historical concern in Islam. You are of course free to challenge my notions but I do not accept that they are baseless as you intimate. Thanks for the exchange though. It's good to clarify one's positions.

best regards,

Jiri

Roger Pearse

Sure. Where we differ is that I don't trust secondary authorities to get these things right (even if I respect them), because I find that they don't. Nor should this surprise us, or cause us to malign them; they are men, like ourselves, and capable of being misled or making mistakes.

For instance, Franz Cumont was a very great scholar on Mithras indeed, familiar with the whole data base. His book Textes et Monuments is the foundation of the whole scientific study of the subject.

But I have found the hard way that his books contain some statements which people have presumed to be factual, but in fact are not. I don't mean that he was deceptive; but his mind was so full of certain preconceptions that he didn't always see when he had left the solid ground and started to walk on thin ice. Thus my determination to find the facts.

I appreciate your efforts to help me -- thanks!

All the best,

Roger Pearse

French Prometheus

As Huon said above, the author is "formerly Professor of the History of Islam, Madina Islamic University, Madina, and Imam Muhammad Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia". You don't get to teach Islamic history in Islam's second most sacred city (forbidden to non-Muslims) if your opinions are at odds with the most conservative interpretation of that religion.

So, I'd like to see a peer-reviewed paper on that. Or, at the very least, the same argument made by a scholar with more cerdibility from a Western perspective.