Anyone minimally familiar with Islam can recite the accepted version of its origins as a distinct religion and of its prophet, Muhammad: He was born in the late 6th Century, received the Qur'an by revelation, created a movement of his followers that swept across what is now Saudi Arabia and into the rest of the world as the religion Islam.
This is what scholars now call the Muslim narrative of Islam's origins. And it is not just well entrenched, it's also accepted by many academics who have studied those beginnings. Many, but not all.
Indeed, a recent review of two books in The New York Review of Books raises the profile of scholars who now are suggesting that there is a great deal in that Muslim narrative's history that is untrustworthy. (The link I've given you in this paragraph will show you only the first few paragraphs of the long article. If you want the whole thing you must subscribe or buy a copy.)
As the author of the review writes, ". . .the seeds of doubt about the version adopted by nearly all Muslim and most Western scholars have been firmly planted. The green shoots of skepticism concerning Islam’s account of its own origins are unlikely to disappear."
I am no scholar of Islam, so my opinion about the reliability of the traditional Muslim narrative is both uninformed and irrelevant. But I do think it's healthy for adherents of any particular faith that makes historical claims about its origins or its beliefs to be open to having those claims tested. Thus, it's good for Mormonism to confront contradictory evidence about its story of ancient Middle Easterners migrating to what now is America and it's good for Judaism to look at the evidence offered by scholars who doubt that King David even existed.
I don't know where this discussion about Islam's origins is going or how it will be resolved, if at all. But faithful Muslims need not fear it, knowing that however it comes out it should not affect the spiritual truths that the religion proclaims.
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IT'S CALLED THE LAW FOR A REASON
Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is thinking of running for president. Since I read this announcement I've been trying to think of even one reason to vote for a man who got tossed off the court for refusing to obey a federal court order. So far I'm blank, but give me another few years.
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