UK Historian: Only Solution to Islamic Beheading is End to Koranic Literalism

From Will at THE OTHER NEWS:

(FPM).

Tom Holland, a British writer and historian, author of In the Shadow of the Sword, makes the case that denying the Islamic State’s links to Islamic violence is impossible.

How best to establish, for instance, that the actions of jihadis in beheading their foes are indeed contrary to Islam? Fighters for the Islamic State might well point out that the Qur’an describes angels decapitating unbelievers with the aim of spreading terror; that the first Muslims are described as harvesting heads on the battlefield of Badr; that Muhammad himself is said to have owned a sword that can be translated as ‘Cleaver of Vertebrae’. It is not enough, within such a context, merely to insist that Islam is a religion of peace, and leave it at that.

Holland ventures into some of the same territory as Robert Spencer.

“Qur’anic studies, as a field of academic research, appears today to be in a state of disarray.” Such is the frank admission of Fred Donner, Professor of Near Eastern History at Chicago. “Those of us who study Islam’s origins,” he has confessed, “have to admit collectively that we simply do not know some very basic things about the Qur’an – things so basic that the knowledge of them is usually taken for granted by scholars dealing with other texts.” Its place of origin, its original form, its initial audience – all are mysteries. That being so, it is certainly no longer possible to presume that there is anything remotely self-evident about the birth of Islam. Indeed, it is hard to think of any other field of history so currently riven by disagreement.

In time, this inexorable process of historicisation is bound to have an impact upon the literalism with which many Muslims today are tempted to interpret their scriptures. When the evidence for what the historical Muhammad said and did is so patchy, and when the traditional explanations of how the Qur’an emerged are so contested, it becomes increasingly difficult to insist that the inheritance of Islamic scripture is not thoroughly contingent. At the moment, the notion that Muslim beliefs are as historically conditioned as any other ideology inherited from the past is seen by most Muslims as highly threatening; but in the long run this will surely change.

Recognising that the stories told about Muhammad are fictions bred of a particular context and period, and that the potential interpretations of the Qur’an need not necessarily be circumscribed by traditional exegesis, should facilitate the emergence, over the course of the next century, of a clearly Western form of Islam. It is one, I suspect and very much hope, in which there will no longer be a place for ritual beheading.

Holland hopes. He also says that “this will surely change”. That’s rather optimistic considering that there isn’t much in the way of Islam without the Koran and the stories based around it and the laws based around that.

More here.