Two interesting lectures by US scholar Fred Donner about the origins of Islam. Donner has a "revisionist" theory on the matter. The first lecture ends around the 50 minute mark. The latter is a better summary, but unfortunately the sound quality is rather lousy for the first half of the lecture or so.
Donner believes that Islam´s early history is very different from the standard Muslim version, but also the standard scholarly version, since they are both based on (Islamic) sources written down centuries after the death of Muhammad. No strictly contemporary sources for Muhammad and early Islam exist, unless the Quran is considered such a source, but the normative scripture of Islam is usually interpreted in the light of the later sources (really later interpretations). On its own, the Quran is extremely difficult to understand. It may also contain later interpolations.
Donner believes that early Islam was a monotheist revival movement that attracted both Jews and Christians, rather than a "new religion" in the strict sense. This explains a number of puzzling anomalies, for instance that Christians (both "orthodox" and "heretics") according to early Christian sources fought in the Arab Muslim armies, that the Umayyad rulers continued using Christian and Zoroastrian coinage, or that very few towns in the Middle East were destroyed during the "Muslim conquest", suggesting that the "Muslims" enjoyed widespread support in the region - yet, most people under Umayyad rule remained Christian, Jewish or Zoroastrian! When the Arabs conquered Jerusalem, they may have appointed a Jew as governor of the city. Nor did the Muslims call themselves Muslim. Instead, they referred to themselves as "Believers" and their leader as "the Commander of the Believers". The term "Believers" is more common in the Quran than "Muslims" and "Islam". Did the category of Believers also include pious (strictly monotheist) Christians, Jews and others? The early Umayyads didn´t date their coins and documents from the time of Muhammad´s hijra, but according to "the jurisdiction of the Believers", apparently a different concept. A more sensational claim is that Christian churches weren´t turned into mosques, but rather into dual places of worship, with an altar in one end of the building, and a Muslim minbar in the other! Some hadiths seem to confirm this curious practice.
In traditional scholarship, the idea is that Muhammad originally did form a kind of Judaizing monotheistic sect, which became hardened into a new religion after the hijra to Yathrib (Medina). In the revisionist scenario, the hardening didn´t happen until the late 7th century. Donner believes that the Constitution of Medina (which isn´t included in the Quran) is a very early document (although only known from later sources), since nobody in later centuries would have forged a scripture of its kind. The Constitution seem to suggest that Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in peaceful co-existence in Medina, while later sources claim that Muhammad had a rather nasty fallout with the local Jews (of course, more traditional scholars might claim that the Constitution simply failed).
As often, we are dealing with a conflict between historians in the strict sense, who study ancient documents, and archeologists. The digs of the latter don´t always confirm the conclusions of the former. Of course, that´s not the *real* reason why the issue is so contentious. Muslims don´t like historical-critical scholarship (just read the amateurish comments below the YouTube clips), and in today´s political climate, it can be considered "Islamophobic" or "racist" to suggest that Islamic traditions are unreliable (although they are - all religions have unreliable or unconfirmed origin stories). That being said, even Donner´s revisionist story can be spinned in a pro-Muslim direction, and used to "prove" that Islam can be reformed in a more tolerant direction, since it originally was a movement to unite Arab hanifs, Christians and Jews. This will then schizophrenically be turned into an argument in favor of Muslim fundamentalism, and off you go. While a reformation of Islam isn´t intrinsically impossible, it doesn´t seem particularly likely either at the present time.
And no, I don´t know why the professor has dyed one side of his hair blue...
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