The Qur'an

The issue raised by this mono­graph thus can only exist, as a his­tor­i­cal issue, if there is a marked dif­fer­ence between the Qur’an and what the author par­en­thet­i­cal­ly calls ​“Mus­lim tra­di­tion­al lit­er­a­ture.” This is pre­cise­ly the author’s posi­tion, and he posits that a his­tor­i­cal gap exist­ed between the for­ma­tion of the Qur’an and the appear­ance of this Mus­lim tra­di­tion­al lit­er­a­ture (pp. 17 – 18). The Qur’an, accord­ing to the author, pre­dates all the oth­er lit­er­a­ture. More­over, the knowl­edge hith­er­to accept­ed as his­tor­i­cal that we have about the rise of ear­ly Islam is not, accord­ing to the author, a prod­uct of the Qur’an but of this lit­er­a­ture (which he defines as com­pris­ing every­thing but the Qur’an). The whole of the mono­graph is ded­i­cat­ed to prov­ing that the Qur’an is not argu­ing against ​“real” pagans when it argues with the group it calls mushrikun, those who prac­tice shirk or asso­ci­a­tion­ism, that is, wor­ship­ing oth­er deities in addi­tion to Allah. Rather, the author claims, the Qur’an is adopt­ing a rhetor­i­cal strat­a­gem that is very com­mon to monothe­is­tic tra­di­tions. To call some­one a ​“pagan” or ​“idol­ater” was to label them as less Chris­t­ian or less Jew­ish than the accus­ing fac­tion. The same should be held true for the argu­ments in the Qur’an.