But we come to know these bad things from the Catholics only.
Actually conservative Protestants are if anything more virulent in their attacks on Islam. This just happens to be a conservative Catholic forum. Bear in mind that the Catholic Church officially recognizes that you and we worship the same God, something that causes much anguish to the good folks on this forum. Conservative Protestants have no such restraint to limit their fanaticism.
But we Muslims have the real original revealed book i.e. the Quran.
So you believe. But I see no reason to accept this claim. If you want a fair discussion, you can’t demand that we accept the premises of *your *religion at the outset.
The christians go all out to deny our book as reliable revealed book. That closes all fair doors of any further discussion.
Quite the reverse. What prevents further discussion is your demand that we accept your premises, not our refusal to do so. Interreligious discussion requires both of us to accept the simple fact that the other side doesn’t share our premises. Otherwise we just wind up shouting at each other.
Whereas we Muslims know that the christians do not have any book, no original. There is translation from another translation from anothe rtranslation while the original is not to be found.
Neither of us have the original autographs of our sacred texts. But I’m not sure what you mean by “translations.” We have Hebrew and Greek texts of the Old and New Testaments respectively. Are you suggesting that some part of the Old Testament was translated from some older Ancient Near Eastern language? That’s possible, but not the scholarly consensus as far as I know. Similarly, early Christians claimed that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek, but I don’t think this is a common view among scholars today.
You seem to be confusing (as many people do) textual transmission with translation.
A problem with this discussion is that Muslims are not as open to scholarly discussion of their sacred texts as Christians are. Then you confuse your own closed-mindedness with a more solid position. It has been several centuries now since scholars of the Bible were likely to be in danger of life or limb because of their scholarship. At least one scholar of the Qur’an (“Christoph Luxenburg”) publishes under a pseudonym because his life would be in danger if his identity were known. (Even a Newsweek article about his scholarship was
banned in Pakistan.) I know that you oppose this kind of violence and intolerance by your fellow Muslims. I’m simply pointing out that certain kinds of questions can be freely asked about the Bible and not about the Qur’an. That being the case, you are in no position to claim that your sacred texts are somehow more authentic than ours. It’s just that ours have been open to free inquiry for centuries, while yours still are not.
When it comes to Qur’anic versions of Biblical stories, it is clear that *if *the Biblical stories are “corrupted” (i.e., if their current versions are somewhat distanced from the historical reality), then the Qur’anic versions are far more corrupted (i.e., far less likely to reflect historical reality). The only reason to question this would be a dogmatic faith commitment to the inerrancy of the Qur’an, and as I’ve already said it’s unfair to expect Christians to accept this commitment as a condition for dialogue.
It is possible, though by no means certain, that the Qur’an is a more reliable guide to the sayings and doings of Muhammad than the NT is to the sayings and doings of Jesus, and it is certain (again, absent dogmatic commitments on the part of Christians and Jews this time) that it is more reliable a guide in that regard than the Torah is to the sayings and doings of Moses, given the centuries that appear to have elapsed between the time of Moses and the Torah. Again, all of this remains in more doubt than it needs to be because of the lack of freedom that shadows scholarly inquiry into the Qur’an. Luxenburg thinks that much of the Qur’an was originally written in Syriac. Some scholars think that it was composed in Iraq after Muhammad’s time. These may be crazy theories–there have certainly been some very crazy theories proposed about the Bible. But in the case of the Bible, when a radical skeptic publishes a crazy theory, it can be openly debated and its craziness shown. This is hard to do when the scholars publishing the theories can’t come forward and debate their views without their lives being in danger.
We are still paying (in the form of an exaggerated skepticism on the part of many scholars) for the centuries in which free inquiry into Christian Scripture was not possible, and for the large segments of the Christian world that still resist such inquiry (though nonviolently). I’m afraid that Muslims will have to pay the same price. The sooner Muslims start paying it honestly, the sooner we can come to some reasonable conclusions about the historical evidence with regard to the Qur’an.
Edwin
