RE: Where can I get an unbiased view on the bible, Jesus and Abrahamic Religions?
August 23, 2012 at 6:37 pm
(August 23, 2012 at 5:43 am)Rayaan Wrote: See, the problem is that different people will have different opinions on whether a particular material is biased or not, especially depending on the background and/or the religion of the authors. For example, if I tell you that a certain book is an unbiased work on the history of Islam, in my opinion, and that it was written by a Muslim, then you might automatically think that the book is going to be biased just because it was written by a Muslim. Similarly, if a Christian was reading a book on Christianity that was written by an atheist, then he might think that the book is biased just because the author is an atheist. The point is, people will tend to believe the evidence that supports their own pre-conceived ideas and reject any that opposes them. An author may go about writing a book in an intellectually honest manner as much as possible, spend a lot of time to do research on his topic, corroborate with many other scholars who are specialized in the field, re-evaluate his facts and arguments, and so on, but one can easily say that the material is "biased" just because he doesn't agree with those particular views.
So, the question is, what should be the criteria in which to determine how much "unbiased" a material is?
My answer to is that we have to look at many different things. The author's intellectual background does matter (partially) - things such as his cultural influences, the level of his academic achievements, his scholarship, what other books he has written, what kind of criticisms he received, his honesty, etc. - but it's not necessarily true that a certain book definitely has bias in it just based on the reasoning that it was written by a Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist, or whatever faith he belongs to. The important thing is to examine the work itself and see if it has stood the test of time, not just the person who wrote it.
If I were to post a few materials which I consider to be the most unbiased view on the history of Islam (though you may disagree), the following would be the ones:
Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (by Martin Lings)
Vision of Islam (by Sachiko Murata and William Chittick)
The Jews of Islam (by Bernard Lewis)
The History of the Quranic Text from Revelation to Compilation (by Muhammad Mustafa Al-Azami)
Yes Rayaan, this is exactly the dilemma - whose work to trust.
Anyway, those books you recommended should definitely make on my wishlist on Amazon. Thanks.
