RE: Robert Spencer's Non-Scholarly Tricks Revealed
January 15, 2015 at 5:46 am
(This post was last modified: January 15, 2015 at 5:55 am by Rayaan.)
(January 14, 2015 at 10:06 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Ignores the fact that Spencer is citing other scholars, primarily German and it was the Germans who first used historical criticism to dismantle xtianity for the pile of crap it is, Rayaan.
That's a non-sequitur because the fact that the Germans were the first to dismantle Christianity doesn't automatically mean that they were able to do the same for Islam. In order to support that position you have to be more specific than that by mentioning who those Germans were and what they put forth as their arguments. But I think I already know which German scholars you have in mind. You're probably referring to scholars like Gerd Puin, Christoph Luxenberg, and Gunter Luling, and ultra-revisionist scholars of their ilk, though sad to say most of their work on the Quran and Islamic history have been utterly discredited even by the academic community. As Gerhard Bowering, a professor of Islamic Studies at Yale University, writes: "Reviewing these recent studies on the Qur'an mainly published during the last decade, it is clear that, despite the clamor in the press, no major breakthrough in constructing the Qur'an has been achieved. The ambitious projects of Lüling and Luxenberg lack decisive evidence and can reach no further than the realm of possibility and plausibility" (Recent Research on the Construction of the Quran p 81, in The Quran in its Historical Context). Their ideas are rejected precisely because they "lack decisive evidence."
It's the same with Spencer. Everything he wrote about Muhammad boils down to "It's possible that Muhammad never existed" ... "maybe" ... "could be.' There isn't any evidence nor any convincing argument behind his theory and all he is good at is selectively suppressing all the facts that contradict his own biased point of view.
(January 14, 2015 at 10:06 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I get that muslims prefer to be comfortable with their fairy tales just as xtians prefer their own fairy tales. So I will ask you, where is the evidence that it happened the way the koran claims?
The evidence is a massive oral tradition of Muhammad that is perfectly consistent with the Quran, the hadiths, and the earliest references to him as documented by both Muslims and non-Muslims dated from 634 CE. Furthermore, how is it even reasonably possible that different authors, in several different languages, hundreds of miles apart, could have all coincidentally concocted the same Muhammad? You might say that all of this "could be" an astonishing coincidence, huh? And if it was a forgery, how did it manage to be accepted as true by countless scholars and believers for more than 1,400 years without a shadow of doubt and then all of a sudden, by the outrageous knowledge of a single man, the whole history is ready to rooted out from its place entirely? Sorry to say this but I'm thinking that 'wishful thinking' comes pretty close to home for you, Min.
Also, the proper name "Muhammad" and especially the honorary titles "Rasul" (meaning "Messenger") and "Nabi" (meaning "Prophet") appear in many places in the Quran. There also several verses in it which say "Obey Allah and obey His Messenger." It is always about one and the same person. So if such a character was a later invention of Arab conquerors, as Spencer unavailingly hypothesizes, then surely, when the Quran was initially being preached in Arabia, people present at that time would have had many different and even conflicting ideas about who this mysterious "Muhammad" and "Prophet" was, which the Quran kept referring to. But apparently no one had any questions about this. Not even the Christians. The opinion was unanimous.
And yet Mr. Spencer tries to argue that the word "Muhammad" found in early inscriptions may have been originally referring to Jesus ...
(January 14, 2015 at 10:06 pm)Minimalist Wrote: P.S. - the koran cannot be used to prove itself....in case you were thinking of wandering down that road.
What if I did?
