ISLAMIC SUFISM AND AVAIVARTIKA

In Construction

In the nineteenth century, scholars took an in-depth look at the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, which is essentially Judaism's equivalent of the Qur'an. Literary and historical analysis caused these scholars to theorize that the Torah is not a single narrative but a composite of four different source documents cleverly combined in such a way as to appear to be one continuous narrative chronicling the early history of the Hebrew people. The process through which the discovery was made came to be known as Documentary Hypothesis or Higher Criticism, and is credited largely to the nineteenth century historian and Bible scholar, Julius Wellhausen. This theory has since gained greater popularity due to the writings of Richard E. Friedman2 and others.

In recent years, Muslims, when in discussions with their Christian counterparts on the topic of the Bible versus the Qur'an have willingly parroted this theory, not fully understanding how scholars came to these conclusions. To the Muslims, the fact that Western scholars had concluded that the Bible is nothing more than variant traditions woven together into a single text was more than enough to invalidate the Bible, and somehow simultaneously validate the Qur'an. What none of these Muslims ever realized was that the same theories could be applied quite easily to the Qur'an as well.

The claim that the Qur'an is the word of God is, at this point, wholly unsupported. This is a claim that Muslims accept on blind faith. To a Muslim, such statements may seem both blasphemous and outrageous, but we must approach such things rationally. We cannot take a certain group on their word when it comes to the origins of their tribal folklore. To be fair, a Muslim would first have to prove that God, or Allah, actually exists before they can begin attributing books to Him or Her.

The failure to consider authors other than Muhammad, the fallacy of bifurcation11, is a problem that is found in nearly all criticisms of Islam. Everything we know about Muhammad comes not from the Qur'an, but from extracanonical sources such as sira literature, and various ahadith compilations; and, unfortunately, critics are a bit too willing to accept it all on face value. Even with writers such as Ibn Warraq12 and Ibn al-Rawandi13, writers who have set a new tone in secular criticism of Islam, there is a hint of conflict. The writer seems torn between rejecting the traditional claims about the Qur'an's origin, and working with these traditions in order to formulate an understanding of Muhammad's role.

The reality is we have no reliable sources from which we can make any decisions with regard to the role Muhammad played in the creation of the Qur'an. The Qur'an itself tells us nothing, outside of a few ambiguous mentionings of a certain muhammad, or "praised one." All information on Muhammad, who he was, his interaction with Jibreel, his prophethood, etcetera, are derived from a highly questionable source: the ahadith. These are traditions that were, for the most part, written down and compiled more than two hundred years after the events they are allegedly relating. In fact, by the admission of the Muslims themselves, the most respected ahadith are those compiled by Imam Bukhari, who died in the late ninth century (roughly 870 CE), nearly two hundred and forty years after the time that Muhammad allegedly lived.

Furthermore, the dating system of the early Muslims is so weak that the issue of the gap in time between the writing of the ahadith and the events they are reporting becomes even more of a problem. According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad was born during 'am-al-fil, the year of the elephant, which was allegedly 570 CE. This was, according to Islamic folklore, a year that many of the pre-Islamic Arabs remembered, because it is when an army of Ethiopian warriors on elephants was repelled by birds throwing stones. Following that, we get another tradition that tells us that Muhammad was called to prophethood at the age of forty (approximately 610 CE). It is from here that the Islamic calendar starts, based on a shaky tradition, that is itself based on another shaky tradition, and therefore it is totally unreliable14.

Muslims will, no doubt, demand that we accept the highly tendentious ahadith collections as a reliable source of information, but there is no real reason to do so. Many of these traditions contradict one another, or are of a highly absurd nature. Even worse, the Qur'an itself seems to warn the believers against resorting to any hadith-based information. One verse of the Qur'an15 warns against those who spread "frivolous stories" (lahv-al-hadith), and yet another16 says, in a very straight forward way: "tilka aayaatullahi nutloohaa 'alayka bil haqqi fabi-ayyi *HADEETHI* ba'dallaahi wa aayaatihi yoominoon," or "These are the revelations of God which we recite to you correctly; in what hadith[17] other than God and his revelations will they believe?"