In a recent debate on the morality of the Quran, the Christian Apologist, GodLogic (Avery), built his case on one verse: 9:29. His argument ran as follows. Sura 9 begins with declaring war on the pagan Arabs, then at verse 29 turns on the Jews and Christians. They are fought for disbelief alone, with no … Continue reading Does Quran 9:29 Command Muslims to Impose Jizya on Jews and Christians?
The Unspecified Challenge: How the Quran’s Taunt Becomes a Mirror
The Quran issues a dare, and it issues it more than once. Produce a chapter like this. Produce ten. Produce a discourse. Bring whatever help you can find. What is striking, on a close reading, is what the dare leaves out: it never tells us how the entry will be judged. There is no rubric, … Continue reading The Unspecified Challenge: How the Quran’s Taunt Becomes a Mirror
The Primordial Religion
A Civilization That Forgot Its Reasons The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre opens his book After Virtue with a thought experiment. Imagine a society that suffers a catastrophic break with science and technology—laboratories destroyed, scientists killed, textbooks burned, and the accumulated knowledge behind an advanced civilization largely wiped away. Generations later, people begin stumbling across fragments of … Continue reading The Primordial Religion
No Compulsion, No Invitation: How Islam Spread When the Caliphate Had Every Reason to Slow It
The oldest and most durable charge against Islam is that it spread by the sword: convert or die, a religion carried on the points of Arab lances into the throats of the conquered. It is a clean story, and almost everything about it is wrong for the period when it should be most true. For … Continue reading No Compulsion, No Invitation: How Islam Spread When the Caliphate Had Every Reason to Slow It
From Forgery to Formation: An Intellectual History of Western Scholarship on the Hadith
Introduction: The Problem That Would Not Go Away Every serious attempt to write the history of early Islam runs into the same obstacle. The Quran tells us remarkably little about the concrete circumstances of its own origin. It names almost no contemporaries, dates almost no events, and describes the Prophet's community in allusive rather than … Continue reading From Forgery to Formation: An Intellectual History of Western Scholarship on the Hadith
The Romans, the Christians, and a Death They Could Not Understand
In the baking August of 111 CE, a middle-aged Roman bureaucrat named Pliny the Younger (c. 61–c. 113 CE) rounded the foot of the Peloponnese in suffocating heat, running late for the most important posting of his career. The emperor Trajan (r. 98–117 CE) had sent him east to govern Bithynia-Pontus, a wealthy, mismanaged province … Continue reading The Romans, the Christians, and a Death They Could Not Understand
Are the Arabs the Descendants of Ishmael?
Two roads to one question: what the texts say, and what the ground can show Few genealogical claims are repeated as confidently as this one: the Arabs are the children of Ishmael, and Ishmael is the son of Abraham. It is stated in Sunday-school lessons, Friday sermons, popular histories, and the opening pages of countless … Continue reading Are the Arabs the Descendants of Ishmael?
Daniel 11 and “Prophecy After the Event”
Biblical scholars have a Latin term for a certain kind of writing: vaticinium ex eventu, which simply means "prophecy after the event." The idea is straightforward. Instead of predicting the future, a writer describes things that have already happened but frames them as if a figure from long ago were foreseeing them. Done well, it … Continue reading Daniel 11 and “Prophecy After the Event”
The Thirteenth Apostle
Constantine murdered his son, his wife, and his rivals; he was baptized only as he lay dying; and he reshaped Christianity more deeply than anyone since its founders—for reasons of state. The church made him a saint and, in the same breath, taught itself to forget how much of the faith he built. Ask a … Continue reading The Thirteenth Apostle
The Tower and the Gallows: Haman, Pharaoh, and the Archetype Behind a Name
Two men are given the same kind of assignment: build something tall. The first is told by his master to fire bricks of clay and raise a tower so high that its owner can climb up and look at the God of Moses. The second is told by his wife and his friends to put … Continue reading The Tower and the Gallows: Haman, Pharaoh, and the Archetype Behind a Name
