now now maybe maybe i'll mention this as a as a last point um there there's there's one popular
christian contention that i think i should probably respond to um because christians
christian apologists are always bringing this up um so so christian apologists contend
that the prophet like moses okay um cannot be the prophet muhammad peace be upon him because
the prophet apparently violates deuteronomy 18 20. okay so so just as i said that the christian
jesus the christian jesus violates deuteronomy 18 16 christian apologists will tell me the prophet
muhammad peace be upon him violates deuteronomy 18 20. so what does deuteronomy 18 20 say
it says but the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name which i have not commanded him or
who speaks in the name of other gods that prophet shall die okay so what are they talking about with
this verse they're talking about the story of the satanic verses right of course this was a phrase
that was coined by you know scottish orientalist william muir muslim scholars refer to it as
something like that but but as you know christian christian apologists they love this story
right they think it's the greatest thing since the
oceans right they think it's the greatest thing since sliced sliced bread at holy communion
so as as the story goes and there and there are multiple contradictory versions of this story
yeah you know when when the prophet was in necca he was reciting surah to najam and he recited
have you not seen these three allat and menat
these were considered to be goddesses among the the pagans and then satan apparently whispered
two false verses to the prophet which he thought were divine revelation
eventually the prophet the muslims and all of the idolaters prostrated
word then spread that the prophet had compromised with the idolaters and everything just sort of
got along but then gabriel informed the prophet and those verses were removed from the quran so
that's sort of the basic story now christians they point out that this story of the satanic verses
it must be true because it fulfills the criterion of embarrassment right they say why would a muslim
invent the story why would a muslim invent a story that embarrasses the prophet it must be true
so i personally agree with imam al-razi about this story okay so imam al-razi he said that this story
not only clashes with the quran and the sunnah but also clashes with reason
carl ernst uh who wrote a book called how to read the quran he's professor of islamic studies at
chapel hill he also rejects this story on strictly historical and literary grounds he's not a very
flimsy basis for the history yeah but but here's here's here's my uh here's my response uh first
of all the the criterion of embarrassment is the weakest of the criteria of modern historiography
so we shouldn't really over emphasize it and i know that uh jonathan brown as you pointed out
uh makes that point in one of your videos um uh he makes that point in his in his introductory book
about the prophet peace be upon him now why would a muslim make the muslims fabricated hundreds and
hundreds of hadith okay ibn new jersey he actually collected he has a book called kitabul moduaat
right the book of fabricated hadith who fabricated these hadith jews christians no muslims muslims in
the past foisted lies upon the prophet this is a fact it's a sad fact but it's a fact why did
they do this for various reasons people wanted to justify their own theological or political
positions people wanted to justify their immoral behavior for selfish reasons muslims in positions
of power wanted to keep their power at all costs power corrupts you know people had weak faith or
no faith there have always been hypocrites muslims fabricated hadith that made the prophet look bad
they made him look like a racist at least they tried to do that they did this for their
own selfish reasons they wanted to justify their practice of chattel slavery for instance i mean we
can flip the tables on the christian here or ask a christian who wrote the infancy gospel of thomas
and they'll say heretics well what was their religion they were christian why did the christian
authors of the infancy gospel of thomas write that jesus as a child killed another child
and then murdered one of his teachers according to the criterion of embarrassment this must be
true i mean why would a christian invent the story right so i think they would get the point
but but but secondly in the eyes of the people who actually fabricated this particular story
did it really make the prophet look bad was it really embarrassing in their eyes exactly
maybe not i personally don't have a problem with one or the other but i don't think
it's historical because i understand it's flimsy but what it shows is that god through
through the angel gabriel protected the prophet from satan's satanic attack um
so it actually confirms uh the authenticity of his mission because he was protected
from satan so for me it's not a problem either way only if you did it in a tendentious way to
make a political point yeah is the problem but there's another way of looking at it
and to see it actually as a confirmation of the prophethood because gabriel intervened and
yeah and that's that's iben tamiya's position and it's in it's a respectable position right
so yeah on the contrary maybe for the people who invented the story
the story demonstrated that god rescued the prophet and the believers from the vile of
from the viles of the devil and the story also had an exegetical purpose i mean it explained chapter
22 verse 52 of the quran this idea that you know god cancels out what satan throws in so there were
strong theological motivations for fabricating the story it provided a subabu nuzu for 2252
as well as justified this type of intra-quranic or abrogation so it served a hermeneutical purpose
so but one might ask okay what does 2252 mean then when it says god cancels out what satan throws in
was it what is it referring to if not the satanic versus incident well according to imam arazi
this just means that the prophets are human beings they're not angels they have emotions
and that they're not impervious to temptation yet with god's help they're able to overcome their
temptations so nash in this verse is used in the linguistic sense of removing or wiping something
away not in the technical sense of a verse abrogating another verse but even with this said
the story doesn't make historical sense it clashes with reason and logic for one thing it says that
2252 abrogated the so-called satanic verses this is very strange why is it strange a bit ridiculous
because 2252 was revealed in medina many years later so were the muslims praying to alat and
el uzza and manat for many years these false verses were being recited by the prophet and
the companions for eight years of course not this is nonsense secondly and dr shabir ali
as well as some of the study quran commentators point this out that if the prophet said that it
that it was okay to pray to these goddesses that that would have been the end of his prophetic
career i mean he would have lost all credibility in in the eyes of both his followers and enemies
and we can actually i think demonstrate uh what the fabricator of the story did he took the
historical kernel of this story and he altered it in order to give the appearance of truth
so there is a hadith in bukhari that says the prophet recited surah najam and then he prostrated
and the muslims prostrated and the idolaters prostrated but it says nothing about satan or
satanic verses or you know these are the high flying cranes whose intercession is to be sought
it just says everyone prostrated okay so the obvious subtext is that the idolaters were
overcome with awe at the beauty of the prophet's recitation and so they prostrated when the prophet
did that's it but what about what about textual criticism right so were these verses really part
of the quran so so textual critics look at both external and internal evidence and i'll just give
you a quick example from the new testament luke 22 44 okay it says and being in agony he meaning
jesus prayed more earnestly and his sweat was as if great drops of blood falling down on the ground
when we look at the external evidence that is the manuscript evidence the manuscript witnesses
for this verse we notice that the earliest manuscripts of luke do not contain this verse p69
p75 they don't contain this verse okay internal evidence looks at both the christology of luke as
well as luke's style and choice of words okay the luke in jesus is basically a stoic philosopher i
mean he's always in control of his emotions aaron calls him imperturbable right he can't be bothered
by anything even on on route to the crucifixion he's having this lucid conversation with
with women you know don't weep for me weep for yourselves there's no cry of dereliction in the
gospel of luke there isn't no father my god my god why hast thou forsaken me it's not there right
even though luke had market mark in front of him and luke you know father into your hands i commend
my spirit he's always in control so luke 22 44 conflicts with the luke and jesus's personality
that's one thing secondly this verse interrupts a chiasm in the compositional structure of luke's
narrative which is really interesting thirdly this verse contains multiple hypox leguminoids
like words that do not appear anywhere else in luke's gospel so that's a good indicator
of a second hand writing these verses okay so both external and internal evidence support the
exclusion of this verse and fourthly i'll add this verse served a specific theological purpose
luke's gospel was beloved to the gnostics like marcion many of whom did not believe
that jesus had a an actual physical body so this verse was added by the proto-orthodox to prove
that jesus did have a physical body he's sweating blood right now just just interrupt their second
uh bar ehrman has written uh a scholarly work called the orthodox corruption of scripture
it's an investigation into the uh the inscribable alterations that were made to
the uh the manuscript tradition and the particular example you mentioned is certainly discussed in in
detail and with that very points if readers want to uh explore this further i do recommend bar
it's called the orthodox corruption of scripture it gives many examples of where later christian
scribes have altered the text of the new testament um and we can show this either to further a more
so-called orthodox theology or other agendas or adoptionist or patriotist or whatever so
the text has constantly been fought over by different scribes throughout the century so we're
altering it and changing it again and again and again yeah but but you're right this is this is
a good example that urban also brings up yeah but now if we if we apply yeah and that's an excellent
book the orthodox corruption scripture and if that proves to be too robust then he did like
a simpler sort of dummies version of it called um misquoting jesus sure yeah he's an academic worker
he's i think meant for other scholars but it's readable you're right he did a more popular work
yeah so so what if we applied then uh textual criticism to the satanic verses like i just
did to the gospel of luke and i'll end with this with respect to external evidence there are zero
manuscripts of the quran that contain these verses the satanic verses you can count them on no hands
there are zero pirate of the quran that contain these verses so these verses get an f they fail
miserably when it comes to external evidence bruce metzger would give them an f what what about
internal evidence do these verses agree with the style and context and choice of words and message
of the quran absolutely not there is nothing more antithetical to the message of the quran
than these verses also the there are certain words in these like that's a hypoxalagaminan very
strange world word you know these cranes you have this like form eight passive verb which is very
strange also a hypox lagamnon so this is clearly not the author of the quran so these verses
fail when it comes to internal evidence as well so the final verdict is that the satanic versus story
from a historical and literary perspective does not pass whatsoever the prophet peace be upon him
never spoke in the name of other gods he never said anything that god did not command him to say
and ironically in the very same surah how does the surah begin surah allah
the prophet never speaks from his caprice from his desires
everything that he says is revelation allamahu
he is taught by one mighty in power okay so my final conclusion would be that
uh that the best candidate for for deuteronomy 18 18 is the holy prophet muhammad sallam and
i don't think anyone even comes comes close to him no oh that's a that's absolutely marvelous
i i i agree there's a lot of a lot of detail there some of which i've not heard before i'm
so pleased to have this on tape uh as a resource uh study tool even where as you say initially
people should go away look up the references check them uh and investigate this uh further and as i
said also if you want a good general introduction to the questions of biblical interpretation the um
the documentary hypothesis the deuteronomistic history the history of d the d school as as
as it's known this book will tell you everything it's a good introductory text christine hayes i'll
link to it uh she teaches at yale a colleague of dale martin who are having on again in a week or
two um i i've read bits of it it's very readable accessible uh which is why we published it so um
and also uh next week talking of the satanic verses um uh dr shabir akhtar who's an academic
at the university of oxford um he's a towering theologian and philosopher um he's gonna appear
next tuesday on blogging theology talking about guess what the satanic verses but not the one
not the ones that we're talking about the uh the notorious uh so-called novel by salman rushdie the
bushes writer and uh dr um akhtar will be talking about um secularism freedom of speech um and the
way that muhammad that the man is is uh uh seen as a you know you can insult him and degrade him
in the name of free speech and the implications of this satanic verse is novel uh in uk
um literary history and i know this perhaps not had a big impact in the states but for uh
the british audience uh i i know shaba akhtar and he's an outstanding intellect and um i'm sure be
very interesting so that's a short advert for next time um but coming back to today thank you so much
uh professor ali uh attay and uh for your outstanding um introduction to these issues
such a um a polygon yeah certainly who is a person who can uh operate on so many different registers
linguistically and through various ancient texts the bible the quran and so on and there's
it's a real tree to have this kind of holistic synthesized um exposition of the issues rather
than someone is narrowly focused on just one field you you're clearly an expert on many fields
and it's that kind of multidisciplinary approach we really need when we're talking with christians
and jews and muslims together about all these texts so um outstanding um uh work there thank
you so much sir for your thank you and um you you you even suggested you might come again to talk
about other texts like uh isaiah 42 um which is another key key text in the bible much uh
discussed today countless youtube videos about it would be good to have um a scholarly um assessment
of the evidence and really what does it say and uh i think it's a very strong candidate myself for um
uh the prophet uh of islam and put it that way a rather strong candidate for that
um passage um thank you is there anything else you wanted to say sir before we um conclude thank you
thank you for having me and um you know i again i uh encourage people to uh subscribe to the channel
um i mean this is this is uh this is what it's all about right it's it's god talk it's theology
may god continue to bless you paul and looking forward to coming back inshallah thank you so much
certainly be very welcome and i know there are many many people who will watch this um and will
benefit from enormous i know from your last time you were on blogging theology the huge positive uh
and almost a static um response that people had to what you were saying i was quite quite overwhelmed
by it so i'm sure that'd be the same and uh anyway thank you very much i'll end it i think it's been
two hours but uh it went by very quickly so thank you very much indeed thank you paul take care