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Apologia Report 13:7
February 21, 2008
Subject: Explosive new evidence on the Koran's evolution
In this issue:
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE - historical analysis identifies insatiable drive for existential understanding and hope for control
ISLAM - recent news about variant ancient Koranic manuscripts
RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE - bibliographic summary of books since 9/11
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ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, by Anne Harrington [3] -- reviewer Jerome Groopman reports that "Some 60 million Americans use these therapies in the effort to combat serious diseases like cancer and AIDS, as well as the normal physiology of aging. In the United States, office visits to providers of complementary and alternative medicine now outnumber visits to primary care physicians."
It is a given that too frequently "standard treatments don't work or simply don't exist. And sometimes tests fail to uncover any physical cause for a patient's suffering at all. But such failures, Harrington argues, explain only part of the widespread dissatisfaction with mainstream medicine. Of equal or greater import, she writes, is medicine's failure to address the 'existential' aspect of illness....
"There is no meaning in randomness, and for the patient no sense of control," writes Groopman. And that anguish is what drives Harrington. "Throughout history, Harrington rightly argues, people have strained to make 'personal sense' of illness and suffering." This book chronicles the quest for answers outside those of traditional medicine.
Yet, despite the great hunger for clinical proof supporting alternative medicine, there remains no certainty. Ultimately, Harrington "admits longing for scientific support for what is, in essence, an 'Orientalist' conception, that the 'Other' holds wisdom and therapeutic treasures beyond those imaginable to us in the West. Some of Harrington's wish is fulfilled in the biology of the placebo response. ...
"Harrington shows us that, whatever science reveals about the cause and course of disease, we will continue to tell ourselves stories, and try to use our own metaphors to find meaning in randomness." New York Times Book Review, Jan 27 '08, pp14, 15. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/books/review/Groopman-t.html>
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ISLAM
"The Lost Archive: Missing for a half century, a cache of photos spurs sensitive research on Islam's holy text" by Andrew Higgins -- this bombshell of a story in the Wall Street Journal (Jan 12 '08, pA1) is well worth reading in its entirety [1]. This news story has received an even more helpful analysis, "Indiana Jones meets the Da Vinci Code" by a correspondent known only as Spengler in the Asia Times [2].
According to the Times, the "photographic record of Koranic manuscripts, supposedly destroyed during World War II but occulted by a scholar of alleged Nazi sympathies" is now "ensconced in a Berlin vault" at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
"It has long been known that variant copies of the Koran exist, including some found in 1972 in a paper grave at Sa'na in Yemen, the subject of a cover story in the January 1999 Atlantic Monthly. Before the Yemeni authorities shut the door to Western scholars, two German academics, Gerhard R. Puin and H.C. Graf von Bothmer, made 35,000 microfilm copies, which remain at the University of the Saarland. Many scholars believe that the German archive, which includes photocopies of manuscripts as old as 700 AD, will provide more evidence of variation in the Koran. ...
"It may be a very long time before the contents of the Bavarian archive are known. Some Koranic critics, notably the pseudonymous scholar 'Ibn Warraq', claim that Professor Angelika Neuwirth, the archive's custodian, has denied access to scholars who stray from the traditional interpretation."
Puin explains that many Muslims "like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Koran has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Koran has a history too. The Sana'a fragments will help us to do this.
"In 2005, Puin published a collection of articles [which] drew on the work of the pseudonymous German philologist 'Christoph Luxenburg', who sought to prove that incomprehensible passages in the Koran were written in Syriac-Aramaic [see Postscript below] rather than Arabic. Luxenburg's thesis became notorious for explaining that the 'virgins' provided to Islamic jihadis in paradise were only raisins. The Koran, according to the research of Puin and his associates, copied a great deal of extant Christian material.
"Apart from the little group at the University of the Saarland and a handful of others, though, the Western Academy is loathe to go near the issue. In the United States, where Arab and Islamic Studies rely on funding from the Gulf States, an interest in Koranic criticism is a failsafe way to commit career suicide. ...
"The Muslim world will continue to treat Koranic criticism as an existential risk, and apply whatever pressure is required to discourage it - albino monks presumably included.
"But that is not the end of the matter. The Islamic world is forced to adopt an openly irrational stance, employing its power to intimidate scholars and frustrate the search for truth. ...
"Throughout the Internet, Islamist sites denounce the work of a handful of marginalized scholars as evidence of a plot by Christian missionaries to sabotage Islam. What the Muslim world cannot conceal is its vulnerability and fear in the face of Koranic criticism. In the great battle for converts through the Global South, this may turn out to be a paralyzing disadvantage."
Anticipating your curiosity, here is what we had to say almost a decade ago in Apologia Report about the above-mentioned Atlantic Monthly article:
"What Is the Koran?" by Toby Lester -- describes how "researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests are proposing controversial theories about the Koran and Islamic history, and are striving to reinterpret Islam for the modern world." Lengthy. Atlantic Monthly, Jan '99, p43.
In "Koran Defended" the Religion News Service reported that: "American Muslim groups Thursday strongly criticized an article in the January Atlantic Monthly about scholarly research into the origins of the Koran [which] recounts admittedly controversial theories by scholars who maintain that the Koran is of human origins." Salt Lake Tribune, Jan 9 '99, n.p.
POSTSCRIPT, May 1 '23:
"The Syriac language is an Aramaic dialect that emerged during the first century AD from a local Aramaic dialect that was spoken in the ancient region of Osroene, centered in the city of Edessa. During the Early Christian period, it became the main literary language of various Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in the historical region of Ancient Syria and throughout the Near East from the first century until the Middle Ages." from https://www2.cbn.com/news/world/researcher-discovers-fragment-1750-year-old-translation-gospel-matthew
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RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE
"Christianity, Judaism, Islam: The History of Violence" by Henry L. Carrigan, Jr. -- in his brief bibliographic survey, Carrigan reports that "In the six years since 9/11, the number of books about religion and terrorism, or religion and violence, has diminished." Of those that stand out, he mentions that "One of the most far-reaching books was Aref M. Al-Khattar's Religion and Terrorism: An Interfaith Perspective [4]. The author acknowledges that terrorists are often treated as criminals, so he uses criminological theories, interviews with religious leaders, and analyses of religious traditions to offer suggestions about how the monotheisms can deal more effectively with questions of faith-based terrorism.
"Mark A. Gabriel's part memoir, part religious history, Islam and Terrorism: What the Quran Really Teaches About Christianity and the Goals of the Islamic Jihad [5], offers an extensive explanation of how some Muslims interpret the Quran as a justification for holy war. A former imam, Gabriel's conversion to Christianity enables him to offer an insider's perspective into the mind of a Muslim extremist, as well as the mind of a Christian fundamentalist attempting to respond to Islam. While Gabriel tries to show how deeply embedded the impulse toward terrorism is in Islam, Harun Yahya's Islam Denounces Terrorism [6] debunks that notion and asserts that Muslims strongly condemn violence of any name."
Carrigan finds that "the most helpful books have explored the ways in which violence is deeply woven into the fabric of religion. Keith Ward asks the simple question Is Religion Dangerous? [7], and argues that religions only become so when their adherents selectively choose scriptures to justify their positions." ForeWord, Jan/Feb '08, pp22-23. <http://foreword.texterity.com/foreword/200801/?pg=24>
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Sources, Digital:
1 - <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120008793352784631.html>
2 - <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA15Ak03.html>
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Sources, Monographs:
3 - The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, by Anne Harrington (W. W. Norton, 2008, hardcover, 354 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393065634/apologiareport>
4 - Religion and Terrorism: An Interfaith Perspective, by Aref M. Al-Khattar (Praeger, 2003, hardcover, 144 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0275969231/apologiareport>
5 - Islam and Terrorism: What the Quran Really Teaches About Christianity and the Goals of the Islamic Jihad, by Mark A. Gabriel (Charisma House, 2002, paperback, 240 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0884198847/apologiareport>
6 - Islam Denounces Terrorism, by Harun Yahya (Tahrike Tarsile, 2002, paperback, 168 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1879402971/apologiareport>
7 - Is Religion Dangerous? by Keith Ward (Eerdmans, 2007, paperback, 206 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802845088/apologiareport>
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