Satanic Verses

This article is about the religious verses. For other uses, see Satanic verses (disambiguation).

The Satanic Verses are words of "satanic suggestion" which the Islamic prophet Muhammad is alleged to have mistaken for divine revelation.[1] The first use of the expression in English is attributed to Sir William Muir in 1858.[2]

The words praise the three pagan Meccan goddesses: al-Lāt, al-'Uzzá, and Manāt and can be read in early prophetic biographies of Muhammad by al-Wāqidī, Ibn Sa'd and the tafsir of al-Tabarī. Religious authorities recorded the story for the first two centuries of the Islamic era. Strong objections to the historicity of the Satanic Verses incident were, however, raised as early as the tenth century.[3] By the 13th century, most Islamic scholars (Ulama) started to reject it as being inconsistent with Muhammad's "perfection" ('isma), which meant that Muhammad was infallible and could not be fooled by Satan.[1] According to some Islamic traditions, God sent Satan as a tempter to test the audience. Others categorically deny that this incident ever happened.

The incident is accepted as true by some modern scholars of Islamic studies, citing the implausibility of early Muslim biographers fabricating a story so unflattering about their prophet.[4][5] Alford T. Welch, however, argues that this rationale alone is insufficient but does not rule out the possibility of some historical foundation to the story. He proposes that the story may be yet another instance of historical telescoping, i.e., a circumstance that Muhammad's contemporaries knew to have lasted for a long period of time later became condensed into a story that limits his acceptance of the Meccan goddesses’ intercession to a brief period of time and assigns blame for this departure from strict monotheism to Satan.[6] Carl W. Ernst writes that the existence of later insertions in early Meccan Surahs indicates that the Qurʾan was revised in dialogue with its first audience, who recited these Surahs frequently in worship services and asked questions about difficult passages. Application of this principle to Surah 53 (“The Star”) leads to the conclusion that the so-called “Satanic Verses” in all likelihood never existed as part of the Qurʾan. He argues that the literary composition of the Chapter where the verses are alleged to have been recited, is heavily focused on rejection of polytheism which makes the inclusion of the Satanic Verses quote unrealistic. Its absence from the Canonical Hadith collections supports his claim.[7] Others have suggested that the story may have been fabricated for theological reasons.[8]

  1. ^ a b Ahmed, Shahab (1998). "Ibn Taymiyyah and the Satanic Verses". Studia Islamica. 87 (87). Maisonneuve & Larose: 67–124. doi:10.2307/1595926. JSTOR 1595926.
  2. ^ John L. Esposito (2003). The Oxford dictionary of Islam. Oxford University Press. p. 563. ISBN 978-0-19-512558-0. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016.
  3. ^ McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, ed. (2001). Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān: EQ. Leiden: Brill. p. 533. ISBN 978-90-04-14743-0.
  4. ^ Watt, Muhammad at Mecca
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference EnQ was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Buhl & Welch 1993.
  7. ^ Ernst, Carl W. (2011). How to read the Qur'an: a new guide, with select translations. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-3516-6.
  8. ^ Hoyland, Robert (March 2007). "Writing the Biography of the Prophet Muhammad: Problems and Solutions". History Compass. 5 (2): 581–602. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00395.x. ISSN 1478-0542.