Few things provoke controversy in the modern world like the religion brought by Prophet Muhammad. Modern media are replete with alarm over jihad, underage marriage and the threat of amputation or stoning under Shariah law. Sometimes rumor, sometimes based on fact and often misunderstood, the tenets of Islamic law and dogma were not set in the religion’s founding moments. They were developed, like in other world religions, over centuries by the clerical class of Muslim scholars.
Misquoting Muhammad takes the reader back in time through Islamic civilization and traces how and why such controversies developed, offering an inside view into how key and controversial aspects of Islam took shape. From the protests of the Arab Spring to Istanbul at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and from the ochre red walls of Delhi’s great mosques to the trade routes of the Indian Ocean world, Misquoting Muhammad lays out how Muslim intellectuals have sought to balance reason and revelation, weigh science and religion, and negotiate the eternal truths of scripture amid shifting values.
Jonathan A.C. Brown is Professor and Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of Slavery & Islam, Misquoting Muhammad and Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World. Jonathan A.C. Brown is Professor and Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of Slavery & Islam, Misquoting Muhammad and Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, all of which are published by Oneworld. He lives in Virginia.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Notes on dates, transliteration, abbreviations and citations
1 The Problem(s) with Islam
A world full of God
Taking Islamic scripture and its interpreters seriously
2 A Map of the Islamic Interpretive Tradition
The word of God, the teachings of His Prophet and the mind of man
Obey God and obey His Messenger
The beginnings of the Islamic interpretive tradition
Abu Hanifa and the Partisans of Reason
Malik and the authority of custom
The power of reason: the Greek legacy and Islamic theology
Shafi‘i and the beginnings of Sunni Islam
The collection and criticism of Hadiths
Putting reason in its place in Sunni theology and law
The great convergence of Sunni Islam
Legal theory and its discontents
Sufism and inspiration from God
The iconoclasts and Islamic revival
Twilight of an era
3 The Fragile Truth of Scripture
A crisis of confidence
Canons and reading scripture with charity
The turning over of an era
Reading scripture so it’s true
The Islamic science of epistemology and interpretation (Usul al-Fiqh)
The language of God and the rhetoric of His Prophet
The Qur’an: valid for all times and places
Hadiths and interpreting the life of the Prophet
Changing times and the reasons behind scriptural law
The interaction of the Qur’an and Hadiths in time
Into the weeds: the case of raising one’s hands in prayer
The summer of the liberal age
4 Clinging to the Canon in a Ruptured World
Upstarts at the end of time
The treason of interpretation
Heresy acceptable: ruptures in canonical communities
Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them: jihad and (re)interpreting scripture
Women cannot lead: historicizing scripture versus God’s inscrutable law
Sex with little girls: interpreting scripture amid changing norms
The ulama, the state and Shariah authenticity without scripture
The court must not be political – morality and truth in a ruptured world
5 Muslim Martin Luthers and the Paradox of Tradition
The paradox of interpretive control
The rule of interpretation in the conflict between Sunni and Shiite Islam
