Recent studies frequently neglected west of learning the Quran

Abstract

For the Muslims, the Qur'an has been handed down from generation to generation from the time of the Prophet. Thus, the most important evidence for the genuineness of the Qur'an as the one introduced by of the holy Prophet, is its broad authentication (tawator). However, this argument is absent in the western studies of the history of the Qur'an. On the contrary, some western scholars such as Wansbrough and Hawting claim that due to the lack of information in the Qur'an concerning its development, all the information on this issue is confined to the hadiths which have been produced in the ninth and tenth century CE. Therefore, there is no data available from the contemporary sources which can be trusted on the issue concerning the two formative centuries of Islam. They consider the Qur'an as the product of two century discourse between the Muslims and the believers of other religions whose text has been finally canonized in the third century AH. Quite contrary to Wansbrough’s opinion and that of his advocates, a quick look at the history of Islam reveals that Muslims had travelled to different regions, including Europe in the first decades of its emergence. Hence the Christians and Jews had observed their religious rival with open eyes. It is not possible that such a significant event as canonization of Qur'an may have occurred in the second or third century AH, and none of the non-Muslim historians made reference to it. Moreover, western scholars studying the history of Islam in the recent century, have all accepted the Muslim’s reports, no one having narrated it otherwise.

Keywords

• broad authentication (tawator) of qur'an
• orientalists
• historians
• quranic studies in the west
• the history of the qur'an
• wansbrough