Did Muhammad Ever Really Live? DISPUTE AMONG ISLAM SCHOLARS, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Did Muhammad Ever Really Live? DISPUTE AMONG ISLAM SCHOLARS

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Your scholarship focuses on the early period of Islam and the Koran. What is the evidentiary situation? How could we prove that the Prophet lived?

Marx: You have to be a bit delicate about it. In general, when it comes to history, you can't point to any scientific proof. How would we, for example, prove the existence of Charlemagne? We can't conduct any experiments; we have to work with evidence. And, for this issue, the evidentiary thread is the Koran. In this case, the evidentiary situation is better than it is for any other religion. We know of manuscripts of the Koran and Islamic inscriptions already 40-50 years after the Prophet died. It would be hard to explain the Koran, if you took the prophet out of the equation. Ohlig claims that Islam was actually a Christian sect up until the Umayyad Caliphate, that is, the eighth century. In this case, I run into this massive issue: It doesn't match up with the text of the Koran. Why isn't Christ a more central figure in the Koran, then? You hear about Abraham, Moses and Noah much more frequently.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And what about with the format of the Koran?

Marx: That's the second evidentiary thread. As can be shown in even linguistic terms, the Koran is a kind of speech. It isn't a narration like the New Testament, a piece of correspondence like the epistles of Paul, an account of the Apocalypse or a Psalm. The genre only makes sense when I have a person that I can attach it to -- a charismatic orator, a prophet. Why would a community that doesn't have a prophet invent one after the fact and make up a text, which is then also Christian, as Ohlig sees it? Ohlig's thesis is uneconomical; it raises more issues than it solves.

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The Qur'an: A New Translation - The eternal present tense,

Books and Documents

The Qur'an: A New Translation - The eternal present tense

The Qur'an: A New Translation

by Tarif Khalidi

530pp, Penguin Classics, £25

We look for two things in any new translation of the Qur'an. How close does it get to communicating the meaning of the original, that inimitable oral text, the very sounds of which move men and women to tears and ecstasy? And does it offer something more: a new perspective, perhaps; or an innovative rendering?

Tarif Khalidi, a professor of Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut, scores high on both these criteria. He manages to capture the allusiveness of the text, as well as something of its tone and texture. While being faithful to the original, he succeeds in conveying linguistic shifts, from narrative to mnemonic, sermons to parables. And there is an innovative component: it is the first translation that tries to capture both the rhythms and the structure of the Qur'an.

The best way to demonstrate its newness, and how close it is to the original text, is to compare it with an old translation. The translation I have in mind is Khalidi's predecessor in the Penguin Classics: The Koran, translated with notes by NJ Dawood. First published in 1956, Dawood's translation has been republished in numerous editions. It has been a great source of discomfort for Muslims, who see in it deliberate distortions that give the Qur'an violent and sexist overtones. It is the one most non-Muslims cite when they tell me with great conviction what the Qur'an says.

http://newageislam.com/the-qur-an--a-new-translation---the-eternal-present-tense/books-and-documents/d/195