This is one hell of a courageous piece written by Dr. Farzana Hassan. More of these voices are needed to shake up numerous outdated aspects of the Traditionalist and dominantly accepted interpretations of the Quran today.
Interpretations that keep the Muslim mind locked in shackles and enslaved to dogmatism.
Boohoo, sucks. 
Faith need not be like that.
And Dr. Farzana seems to largely agree with me in her piece, except for some small details like the one I discuss below. 
RELEVANCE OF QURAN IN THE 21ST CENTURY
by Dr. Farzana HassanLadies and Gentlemen,
I begin by quoting a few verses of the Quran:
“Those who disbelieve from among the people of the book and the idolaters will not desist from disbelief, until there came to them the clear evidence—A messenger from Allah reciting to them the pure Scriptures. Therein are lasting commandments.” (Quran 98: 2—4).
The reference here is to the eternal character of the Quran. It is a claim made by the Quran fourteen centuries ago– a claim which in my opinion is quite extraordinary in the light of more or less established truths. The bulk of humanity has witnessed and attested to these truths over time: that societies perpetually evolve and social norms change, therefore all societies need to reconsider the laws regulating altered ethics. It is also a claim that has not as yet been tested, as undoubtedly scripture is often treated as sacrosanct, demanding abject loyalty from the faithful.
Today I speak as a sceptic. And as a sceptic, I want to examine the validity of such claims, both in the light of modern circumstances, and in the light of the many theological constructs that have thus far attempted to confer some legitimacy to such claims.
Islam discourages critical inquiry of the Quran.
I disagree with that last sentence.
It is the dominant understanding of the Islam today which discourages critical inquiry of the Quran. Not Islam as a whole since its birth, and throughout its history of evolution until today.
Nope. Not Islam as a complete whole.
I can tell you from personal experience that making such a claim is unhelpful.
This is because it puts faithful Muslims in a difficult position, wherein they struggle between remaining fully loyal to their faith and valid skeptical doubt.
Such claims make it seem as if critical inquiry of the Quran has no room in Islam, and that if a Muslim does want to engage in such an activity, then it amounts to disloyalty, sinfulness and erosion of faith.
This maybe – and in fact is – the case in the eyes of most Islamic scholars today, and the majority of current Muslims who have been influenced and indoctrinated by them.
However, the bulk of today’s breed of Islamic scholars aren’t representative of all the generations of Islamic scholars that lived before them.
The bulk of today’s breed are a product of the Ash’ariyya’s victory over the Mu’tazila.
A victory that I believe me was one of the main – probably the main #1 reason – why the Islamic Civilization and Golden Age of Islam, fell to its knees.
Seriously, I’ve talked to many like-minded heretical Muslims who value reason, and often, I hear them say “if only the Mu’tazila had won. Islam today would be so different.”
How true.
Heck, you know what, watch the video below just so you can understand the immense contributions made by the Muslim scholars and scientists of yesterday. Contributions made by people who valued reason.
Algebra. Algorithm. And ironically, even alcohol. 
LOL, I know, awesome.
But it doesn’t stop there. Like I said, just watch this video now from Neil Tyson, one of my most favorite scientists, to get a good idea.
It’s absolutely pathetic how so many Islamic scholars today love to brag endlessly about the great scientific achievements of the Islamic Civilization, but at the same time despise the philosophical foundations and high emphasis on empiricism that built its very Golden Age.
If you have no idea who the Mu’tazila are, I highly encourage you to learn more about them, starting with this.
And while, you’re at it, continue reading Dr. Farzana’s awesome piece.
By contrast, Christianity and Judaism, the other two great monotheistic faiths, permit a liberal theology to scrutinize scripture without penalty. Islam rejects the idea entirely. But I wonder. Why must any document, old or new, religious or secular, be exempt from the scrutiny of intellectual processes that could enable an understanding of its true essence?
Such thoughts have inspired me to delve into today’s topic, which seeks to either establish or dismantle the notion that the Quran relates well to modern times.
… For example, does the Quranic injunction enjoining women to wait four months before ramarrying after the passing of their husbands have relevance for modern times? This provision was put in place for seventh century Bedouins to be able to make determinations of paternity and lineage in the absence of medical tests. But now, with all the medical advances that enable such determinations through a simple test, I question the relevance of such a provision to our modern circumstances.
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Thoughtful post, Drima, thanks.
I agree that one of the most common mistakes that secular thinkers tend to make, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is to depict the dominant Sunni version of Islam as the true version Islam. This tendency often leads ordinary Muslims to taking dogmatic positions against what they rightly perceive as an attempt to undermine what they have been taught to believe as the established truths of their faith.
The best approach, in my view, is to try and convince Sunni Muslims that what they know as the “true Islam” is not really the actual faith but it’s rather the Sunni version of that faith.
In reality, there is no such thing as the pristine Islam. It’s over ever since the source of revelation, Muhammad, died. Now there is the dominant Sunni interpretation of Islam, the less dominant Sh’i version and the extinct version of Mu’tazilah.
Would Muslims be better off today had it not been for the victory of dogmatic currents over the Mu’tazila? I am pretty sure they would.
It really makes me laugh whenever I see a Muslim scholars boasting about how Quran embodies all scientific facts. Crap! If that was the case, we must ask “hey, then why do you wait until “the infidels” discover it first? Why don’t you delve into Quran and come up with a cure for AIDS?
Peace,
MO
I hate to tell you this Drima, but Islam got pwned centuries ago. It’s Golden Days didn’t cease to exit overnight. If you look in the history books you’ll see that it’s the Crusades that put an end to Islam’s glorious days of knowledge, progress and peaceful existence. The history books will also tell you that the Crusades only lasted for about 200, when in reality they continue till this day in various forms, while fused into several political, religious and ethnic factions. It is the Crusades that shaped Islam to be the way that it is today…left consumed with militancy, tyranny, greed, ignorance and impotent..in short, Islam was lost in the 12th century and will never recover from that loss unless leaders of the Muslim world miraculously wake up one day and decide to change their ways…clean up their acts, seek knowledge, progress, and empowerment for the people and abandon warfare altogether. As it is right now, they’re fighting a battle they could never win.
I won’t be able to extensively elaborate on arguments here, so I’ll just make statements and brief elaborations. Excuse me for my lack of time, please do not erroneously take it for dogma, ignorance, unwillingness to debate or anything of that sort.
Bismillah,
Myrtus, what you say could very possibly be true. But not in any rationalist argument could that hold true, basically there’s too many things to prove. What you are saying could possibly be true in the allegorical sense, comparing those crusades of that time to the global factors that affect Islam and its image in the modern globalist world. So in fact this crusade could exist, but only in the metaphysical and metaphorical sense of it. It has no real rationalist connection to the crusades of the 2nd century, mostly because politics are relative, evolving, never absolute, and fluctuating.
Second of all, and my most minor point, the history you seem cite tends to be quite biased and to a certain angle of perception, untrue. The crusades, which DID last for 200 years, at least the ones generally perceived by any audience when one states ‘t the crusades, were mostly a bigger victory for Muslims than for Christians. Speaking in a strictly militaristic sense, Christian crusaders only won one of the crusades. How many crusaded were there? Countless. How many real victories were there? One. Therefore, the crusades had no long-lasting effect on Islam or its followers, or its culture, and other components of society.
Thirdly, Darwin’s theory of natural selection stated that species will gradually evolve over time to adapt to the environment. This theory suggested that any change will have to occur over a gradual period. However, a more celebrated scientific study of the matter concludes differently. Dutch botanist Hugo De Vries introduced his variation of ‘mutation’, that changes in evolution could very easily occur by mutations, instead of gradual adaptation. This theory, and i quote, ‘made it possible to conceive of evolution as proceeding by sudden leaps.’ Now, studying history, this theory does hold true. From Battle of Zama to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from Bubonic Plague to Great Tsunami of 2004, the murder of Julius Caesar to Hitler’s one-vote win in election, etc. Seemingly random events of immense magnitude that did not necessarily accumulate over a gradual period of time, definitely not in the relative sense, have been changing the world ever since the dawn of civilization. Therefore, Islam was not gradually eliminated, developing Islam was killed pretty much with the Mu’tazilla vs. Ashariya thing(good point, thx for bringing it up never heard about it before), the reign of the Mamluks, and the destruction of Beit Il Hikma in Baghdad. Those events, and others to a lesser extents, lessened the force of Islam till it became what it is today. Is there hope? Let Alexander Pope reply to that:
“Hope lies eternal in man’s breast;
Man never is, but is always to be blest”
Good night, Assalam 3alaikum.
DE Vries studied a certain type of mutation – polyploidy in plants – which has a strikingly visible effect. However, most mutations are changes between one variant of a gene and another only slightly different, or back again. The average person has mutations in about 150 genes, and all these will have occurred millions of times before in other individuals.
As for the Crusades, the Arabs naturally view them as invasion of their God-given lands, while the Europeans saw them as an attempt to roll back an Arab Empire which had conquered the heartland of Christianity. Remember that not only Palestine but the whole of North Africa was Christian territory before the Arab conquest.
Anyway, the Arabs won and are still ruling their empire (unfortunately for the Berbers).
I suspect that the famous Arab science etc of the Middle Ages was mainly the last dying breaths of the civilisation known as “Late Antiquity”, and was suppressed by Sunni orthodoxy.
Actually, the Arabs lost. The last non-European rulers of “Palestine” (i.e. the province of Jerusalem and the southern part of the province of Beirut) and North-Africa were the Turks.
The Europeans took the land from the Turks and then for some unfathomable reason gave it to the Arabs. The only part that was split up and given to anybody else was the land the British called “Palestine”.
What the Europeans should have done was de-colonise, not re-colonise.
Anyway, back to the Quran. It certainly is time for some serious research on the origins of this document. It appears to be a compilation of things that various people recalled Mohammed saying. Who exactly were these listeners? How long after the event did they record what they heard? Who compiled the various early versions?
What are the sources of the ideas expressed in these quotations?
And so on.
Salam Drima,
This post of yours has reminded me of Al-Imran ayah 7. Which means, according to Yusuf Ali’s translation:
“He it is Who has sent down to thee the Book: In it are verses basic or fundamental (of established meaning); they are the foundation of the Book: others are allegorical. But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part thereof that is allegorical, seeking discord, and searching for its hidden meanings, but no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah. And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge say: “We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord:” and none will grasp the Message except men of understanding.”
It is very relevant to your discussion here and I would like your input.
I found this book quite interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syro-Aramaic_Reading_of_the_Koran
Having read about half of it (I spend a lot of time confirming the author’s quotes and examples in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic), I can say that the critics seem to have either ignored the book or read another one and then confused the two.
The central thesis, that Muhammed, a Yishmaelite and trader living in cities, was likely to have used lots of Aramaic loan words, is quite probable (especially when one considers what the Qur’an says about the desert-dwelling Arabs, which Muhammed didn’t consider himself one of). And if Muhammed indeed received messages from G-d via angels, it is very likely that he got those messages in Aramaic anyway, because that’s the language traditionally used for those things.
What a great discussion.
I think the bottom line is that life is complicated and nuanced. History, though full of facts, is utterly subject to interpretation and what I can “punctuation”…i.e. what started when, who really started it, what REALLY were the motivations…etc.
You strive to be decent…or you don’t. And even with that…you can be utterly trapped by the circumstances of your birth and never really have a real chance to be decent.
I have ponder these things all my adult life…that is now a LOT of years…and basically feel I am far more filled with information and certainly more confounded and less clear.
Aldous Huxley, the rumor goes, was asked on this death bed what he had learned from all is studies, travels, writings, ponderings, LSD trips or whatever…supposedly, he said:
“I think we need to be a little nicer to each other”.
Don’t know if that is true…but it is correct.
Don Cox,
You are confusing between the Hadiths and the Qur’an. The Qur’an, accordingly with the faith, is a revelation. Hadiths are those that are conversations of the Prophet(pbuh)
“If you look in the history books you’ll see that it’s the Crusades that put an end to Islam’s glorious days of knowledge, progress and peaceful existence.”
Myrtus, I beg to differ. The victory of the Ash’ariyya happened several centuries before the Crusades and was a symptom of a much deeper-rooted problem that began festering within Islamic civilisation. It was this type of thinking which ultimately led to the decline of free and independent reasoning (something Ziauddin Sardar delightfully describes as “the ossification of Islamic thought”). It eventually led, for example, to a narrowing of the definition of ijma’ from ‘consensus’ to ‘consensus of the scholars’.
Islamic civilisation had started to nosedive. The decay began centuries ago, but the decline was so severe that by the time the Crusaders came around, Islamic civilisation was already ripe for the picking.
No, I am not confusing the Quran with the Hadiths. The prophet is not supposed, even by the faithful, to have written down the Quran text as we have it with his own hand. Nor, as I understand it, did he have an official secretary to transcribe his sermons.
What we have is the same as we have for Jesus – reports of what he said. Contrast Paul, where we have several documents written by him personally, with only a little corruption of the text.
I see that many people refer to it as “Arab” science, If i remember my history correctly weren’t most of the scientist and engineers of non Arab origin, mainly Persians and Afghan’s
Myrtus,
See Sheema’s reply. I agree with her. The Crusades came later on and aren’t the real cause.
Dooda,
good point and great verse. Problem is, that verse itself can be interpreted as influential Islamic scholars see fit and gets distorted when they bring their whole lovely game of Naskh. From what I’ve read, the part that debate focuses on is defining “men of understanding” and how one qualifies to be recognized as one.
Do you grow a beard, memorize the Quran, learn everything in sacred texts, and tarraaa, you’re now a man (or woman) of understanding? Or do you take the approach of a scientist, present evidence, show you have the capacity to provide reasonable arguments, and only then you’re a man of understanding? Not so straight forward you see.
And hence, we again come to whether we should be accepting things on faith and the authority of claimers claiming certain claims Vs evidence and free empirical inquiry. I say the latter is what will get us somewhere rosy.
Digital,
Good point and I too think about it sometimes. But I guess an analogy that explains the situation is America’s melting pot. All kinds of scientists, from different background and religions operating in an “American” science culture that supports free inquiry and empiricism.
Same with Baghdad back in those days, and people in it operating in a culture and environment that fostered scientific thinking.
Quran is an amazing book.
@Don Cox
Ahh, I see which way you’ve meant that. I stand corrected. In that sense, yes, the Qur’an was written from what Muhammad recited to the believers. That is fact.
@Don Cox,
Actually Don that history is well know and documented.
Here is a slight preview …
The prophet had a few official scribes who wrote the “revelations” as they were received. They would write the revelations on whatever was available at the time, leather, bones, paper, stones, and so on and so forth. After Mohammed passed away those revelations were scattered and spread across the region and were treasured by the families and tribes that owns them.
At the time of caliphate othman started collecting all those copies in order to compile a single quran – he finished by 650AD and mohammed died by 632 so there is a period of 18 years between the two occurances. So the quran that we have today is othman’s quran.
There are a fewof interesting points to add to this story.
Some verses were only available through an oral tradition and so they devised a process to authenticate them. Arabic as a language did not have the definitions for pronunciations such as points on letter or the vowel marks those were developed latter on .
The third and most interesting point is that after collecting the quran to get it into a single copy othman, he got seven (from what i recall) and he selected one version and destroyed the others.
There are up to 7 acceptable recitations of the quran, 3 acceptable ones and many uncanonical ones to boost …
Hope that helps you get an idea about the history of Quran.
Now to the topic of discussion, like dreema i believe that the failure of the mu’tazila to win was a major contributing factor to the fizzling of the islamic golden age. Actually i also believe that the crusades help to make the fizzling last a good while longer since the threat of a theological and foreign entity did unite an albeit fracturing and splintering islamic union.
The other thing that i believe is that in our current enviroment its not honest scholarship that gets heard, its whose money jingles louder and given the premise that a “mu’tazilla” like pattern of thinking will be at odds with that of the wahabis. The neo-mu’tazilla’s will need to find a method to circumvent the financing power of the biggest oil reserve in the world. Best of luck !
Bambam…
Interesting last comment. Truth and action tend to follow the dollar in many settings…
But to me…these small voices are music to the ears of many of us. Look…if the wahabi or Baptist, Jain or freaking Amish take on God is the ultimate truth…then so be it I guess.
But the repression of an honest inquiry into truth is a terrible terrible thing…and again, this happens in politics, at the university, in individual professional fields…it is ugly stuff…trying to just shut people up.
Conversations like this lift me and give me hope. Especially Islam…until I discovered the blog world a few years back…looked like such a monolith to me. I have learned otherwise.
Hi Drima,
You are so smart. God bless you my son. We need more ARABS that think like you, and certainly more Muslims.
Pax,
3alawiya
“The prophet had a few official scribes who wrote the “revelations” as they were received. They would write the revelations on whatever was available at the time, leather, bones, paper, stones, and so on and so forth.”
I had the impression that Mohammed discouraged this, but no doubt I am wrong.
Clearly the Quran is much closer to being an accurate record of what Mohammed said than the reports in the Christian gospels of what Jesus said. (And some people doubt that Jesus ever existed as a real person.)
On the other hand, Paul’s letters are direct first hand documents actually written by a founder of the religion.
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