Origins of Islam

The place that the Qurʾan variously refers to as:

- the ‘masjid al-ḥarām’ [the ‘forbidden’ or ‘sacred’ ‘place of
prostration’],
- the ‘sacred/ancient House’ or (in the Divine Voice) ‘My’ House,
- the ‘maqāmi Ibrāhīm’ [‘the station of Abraham’] and
- the ‘Kaʿbah’,

is, depending upon the context, the past or longed-for Jerusalem temple or else the land upon which the temple once stood.

This view (‘the Jerusalem thesis’)  accords with the overall structure, biblical subtext and allusions, and theological /paraenetic message of the Qurʾan, and with the role afforded to this place in the Qurʾan’s statements of ritual laws, and by its expectation that the main events of the eschaton would take place within the Jerusalem landscape. 
In the course of presenting the arguments for the Jerusalem thesis the following propositions are also advanced.
Adopting Daniel A. Beck’s identification of a strand of anti-Sasanian polemic in the Qurʾan’s early surahs, Surahs 83 and 105-106 were composed to offer encouragement to the defenders of the Temple Mount during a Jewish-led attempt to restore worship there in 614.
Q.17.1, which is traditionally interpreted as referring to a fantastic ‘night journey’ to Jerusalem, in fact seeks to put a positive interpretation upon the Qurʾan’s principal author having been forced to flee Jerusalem when the 614 temple-restoration project failed.
Reconciling diverse seventh century sources that refer to a contemporary Arab political and/or religious leader called ‘Mḥmṭ’, the Qurʾan’s principal author, adopting the name of ‘Maḥamad’, assumed leadership, of an Arab confederacy in northern Mesopotamia in 621, to be succeeded by Abu Bakr in 628.
The title of ‘Maḥamad’ recalls both ‘ḥamudot', the form by which a celestial messenger addresses the anonymous author-prophet of the Book of Daniel (a text with which the Qurʾan has much in common) and also ‘maḥamad’ and ‘maḥamadim’, words that are used in the Book of Ezekiel and the Song of Songs respectively to allude to the destroyed, but longed-for, Jerusalem temple.
The Qurʾan necessarily implies a substantially amendment to the biblical account of the testing of Abraham and the genealogy of the patriarchs in such a way that in the revised version:
Abraham carried out the lethal sacrifice of his son Isaac,
Ishmael was present at the scene and a party in his own right to the covenant that Abraham made with God for  the benefit of their descendants (i.e. Abraham’s bloodline through Ishmael), and
Jacob, from whom the rebellious children of Israel were descended, was a third son of Abraham, rather than Abraham’s grandson though Isaac (per Genesis).
Adopting Stephen J. Shoemaker’s thesis that the principal author of the Qurʾan led an invasion of Palestine in the 630s, the verses in Surahs 2 and 22 in which the Qurʾan’s audience is exhorted to expel its enemies from whence the audience has itself previously been expelled were composed to support this campaign; which campaign was presented as an imitation of the Israelites entering Canaan in biblical times and the fulfilment of Ishmael’s oath to God to purify God’s House. 
Quranic references to its audience inheriting the homes of the ‘people of scripture’, relate not to the besieging of certain specific Jewish compounds as recounted in the traditional Islamic narrative, but more generally to the Quranic community seizing control of the Holy Land. 
The Qur’an’s late inclusion of Jesus into its scheme of sacred history was motivated by a pragmatic need to accommodate the continuing existence of Christian communities in the land that the Quranic community was capturing. 
Adopting Shoemaker’s conclusions that the Qurʾan’s principal author was in occupation of the Church of the Kathisma, just three miles from Jerusalem, which influenced the Qurʾan’s Jesus nativity account, but he died before the city fell, Surah 9 was composed/compiled by his supporters after the death oftheir prophet, explaining why this surah alone lacks an introductory basmala asserting that what follows is announced ‘in the name of God.’ 
The early Qur’an-reading community’s focus upon Jerusalem rather than any shrine in the Hijaz is preserved in post-Qur’an accounts of building activity upon Temple Mount, early conquest coinage, reverential epithets for Jerusalem and superlative statements in the early Islamic tradition of Jerusalem’s spiritual importance to mankind.

Qui est le Prophète Muhammad ? On l’a décrit de bien des manières : fondateur d’une communauté, législateur et juge, chef de guerre et conquérant. Il est tout cela, mais il a d’abord été un homme en attente de Dieu, puis un prophète recevant la Révélation et la transmettant à ses adeptes. Il partage aussi sa vie entre ses femmes, sa famille et ses compagnons, prêchant par son exemple et ses enseignements, se retirant la nuit avec son Seigneur. Pour ses proches et ses compagnons qui l’entourent de leur amour et de leur vénération, toute sa personne, ses paroles et ses gestes sont sacralisés par la Révélation et la visite de l’Ange.

C’est de cette vision du Prophète, telle qu’elle a été transmise par sa communauté et vécue par elle à travers les siècles, que Denis Gril a voulu rendre compte à partir des sources musulmanes traditionnelles : le Coran, les hadiths, la Sîra ou Vie du Prophète. Les études réunies dans ce volume montrent ainsi comment les spirituels de l’islam ont trouvé dans le Prophète Muhammad leur modèle en se fondant sur leurs sources scripturaires. Ce livre est une invitation à porter un autre regard sur l’islam et ses prolongements dans la tradition spirituelle du soufisme, notamment à travers l’oeuvre du grand maître andalou, Ibn al-‘Arabî, très attaché à l’étude et la transmission de la tradition prophétique et inspirateur d’une doctrine pour laquelle la réalité spirituelle du Prophète est la cause et l’accomplissement de l’humanité.


Islamologue, Denis Gril est professeur émérite à Aix-Marseille Université et membre de l’Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman. Ses recherches portent sur l’oeuvre d’Ibn al-‘Arabî, sur l’histoire du soufisme et de la sainteté en islam.


Textes recueillis et introduits par Francesco Chiabotti

The metaphor of the camel passing through the eye of the needle is found in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25) and the Qur'an (7:40). The Gospels seem to suggest that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Qur'an, on the other hand, puts the metaphor in the context of disbelievers who are arrogant (istakbarū) toward God's signs. At the outset, it would seem that the passage's contexts in the Gospels and the Qur'an are different; however, through a closer analysis of the keywords, there are textual parallels that can be extracted from both texts and go beyond simply the use of this analogy in common, as previous scholars have thought. For instance, the rich man in the Gospels is asking about inheriting eternal life, while the Qur'an also discusses eternal life and inheritance in the same context. These and several other textual parallels suggest that the Qur'an is alluding to the same context for the metaphor as the Gospels do.

This article examines the origins of the story of the Prophet Muḥammad’s controversial marriage with Zaynab bt Ǧaḥš as well as its transformation and reinterpretation through the centuries. The fact that the story features in different genres of Islamic literature as well as in non-Muslim sources allows for a reconstruction of how and where the story emerged, how it spread and to what extent it was transformed over time.
In the course of this reconstruction, the article critically assesses different approaches to the historicity of reports on the life of Muḥammad. With its analysis of later Muslim sources, it also illustrates different strategies of reinterpreting and recasting traditions and shows how societal change and different ideologies influenced the interpretation of the story.

+ another paper of Jan VAN REETH, Les études actuelles sur le Coran dans une perspective chrétienne
+ three reviews by Christian CANNUYER:
    - François Jourdan, Dieu des chrétiens. Dieu des musulmans. Des repères pour comprendre,Paris, 2007
    - Paolo Dall'Oglio, Amoureux de l'Islam,  croyant en Jésus, Paris, 2009
  -Samir Khalil Samir, Islam en Occident. Les enjeux de la cohabitation, Saint-Maurice, 2009

Orientalist Islamic studies lived its golden age in the 19th century. In this period when the works still used as the main reference sources were written, German-Jewish orientalists have an exceptional position. The involvement of German-Jewish orientalists in Islamic research has been more of a theological concern rather than a number of colonial and imperialist motives such as British and French orientalists. The “other” discourse applied to Islam was also applied to Judaism by the Christian-West at that time. German-Jewish scholars who wanted to save themselves and their religion from this situation were included in Islamic research. Thus, Islam was used as a tool; It is aimed to present a different Judaism to the European reader by positioning it against Christianity with the claim that it derives from Judaism. The works started under the leadership of Abraham Geiger created a rich literatüre and directed orientalist works for a long time.

Determining whether stoning for adultery and hand-amputation for theft were practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia represents the first phase in exploring the origins and evolution of these penalties in Islamic law. Should both punishments prove to predate Islam, then it would appear the Qur'an broke with stoning and confirmed amputation of the hand. An extensive survey of pre-Islamic, Near Eastern legal materials in search of parallel penalties has thus been attempted in this thesis. Remarkably, not only stoning and hand-amputation, but nearly the entire range of Islamic adultery and theft legislation have pre-Islamic parallels. The nature of these parallels, however, does not conform to the paradigm of 'borrowing' from 'foreign' sources. Rather, Arab customary law---a major contributor to Islamic law in general---appears to have diverged from an ancient Semitic 'common source' once shared with other Near Eastern cultural entities. Most major elements of Islamic criminal law, including stoning and hand-amputation, therefore represent the culmination of an ancient Semitic common law.

The Qur’an (2:67–74) mentions the story of ‘the Cow’ beginning with Moses’ conveying God’s commandment ‘to slaughter a cow.’ Then, after he was asked by the Israelites to provide details about the cow, restrictions were given in terms of its age, colour, and status. On the one hand, early Muslim exegetes created a more or less coherent exegetical narration concerning the Red Cow, so that the whole story could be understood simply as a reflection of Deut. 21, and later Muslim exegetes, like Burhān ad-Dīn al-Biqāʿī (d. 885/1480), included the relevant Biblical text (i.e. Deut. 21) alongside the Islamic traditions. Even modern Muslim scholars, such as Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d. 1905), Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1940), ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Najjār (d. 1941), Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1981) and Muḥammad ʿizzat Darwazah (d. 1984) — who either ignore or deny the legitimacy of Islamic narratives because of their campaign against the isrāʾīliyyāt — adduced Deut. 21 as an elucidation for this Qur’anic periscope, arguably under the influence of the Islamic narration. On the other hand, when comparing the cow pericope in the Qur’an to parallel texts in the Bible, some western scholars have suggested that these verses are a mixture of two Biblical prescriptions, i.e. Num. 19:1-19 (the Red Cow) and Deut. 21:1-9 (the broken neck Calf). This short paper attempts to reconsider the Biblical and post-Biblical context of this typically cryptic and ambiguous Qur’anic passage and suggests a third possibility for reading the Qur’anic passage through a symbolic rather than literal interpretation of some Qur’anic expressions. According to this reading, the Qur’anic pericope on ‘the Cow’ can be understood as a reflection on the complicated and somehow paradoxical issue of the Red Cow (Num. 19) on which there are lengthy discussions in Rabbinic literature.