The Argument to End All Arguments The debate over child marriage and the Quran often begins with 65:4, a verse concerning divorce. But that is the wrong place to start. Before asking what happens when a marriage ends, we must first establish who is eligible to enter one. Consider a simple analogy. Suppose one law … Continue reading Child Marriage and the Quran: Why 4:6 Must Come Before 65:4
Can the Quran Explain Itself Without Hadith? The Pregnant Widow Dilemma (2:234 & 65:4)
When a woman's marriage ends, the Quran requires her to observe a waiting period, which it calls an interim, before she may marry again. The length depends on her situation. For a widow, the rule appears in the second sura: [2:234] Those who die and leave wives, their widows shall wait four months and ten … Continue reading Can the Quran Explain Itself Without Hadith? The Pregnant Widow Dilemma (2:234 & 65:4)
Does Quran 9:29 Command Muslims to Impose Jizya on Jews and Christians?
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”
