In blog 2, Sardar runs through some of the basics, and introduces a little history. The important thing for our purposes is this. Muhammad was illiterate, and many of the suras were passed on by oral tradition, in a manner analagous to say the Iliad or the Mabinogion.
To quote Sardar
Othman, a companion of Muhammad and his third successor as leader of the Muslim community established a committee charged with assembling an authoritative text of the Qur'an, to be written down exactly as the prophet had recited it.
In other words the great book of Muhammad wasn't even assembled until after his death. It was actually compiled from an oral tradition, and by Sardar's own admission there were different versions of many texts. And yet Muslims are required to believe that the result is a perfect, entirely accurate rendering of the original, and somehow dovetails perfectly with the etheral, Platonic version which is believed to have existed before the universe was created. This is as ludicrous, though not as offensive, as any number of virgins in heaven. I mean, perfection by committee. Have these people never been to a meeting?
Sardar appears to believe this himself. To the external observer, it must surely seem massively implausible. Imagine trying to assemble an original Iliad from the multitude of available versions after Homer had died.
It is often argued that the Koran has a historicity lacking in the Bible, that its texts are more reliable. In the face of the facts, even as attested to in the official Muslim version, this surely cannot be sustained.
He also lays out that official version of Muslim history as if it was uncontroversial fact. He says that after Muhammad's death the Muslim community expanded, sliding gently over the wars of military conquest which made this possible. The lack of any reliable impartial source for any of this is not mentioned.
But it's the maculate origin of the text which is my main concern in this post. As I've previously argued and will continue to argue, it's possible to create a suitable religion for the modern world, if you really must. You simply accept that holy books are written by people, for people, and contain a mixture of good and bad advice. Give to the poor, but don't hit your wife. God will love you, but he won't burn them. It's futile and pointless, but comparatively harmless when you consider the alternative.
But if you want to have a perfect holy book, an immaculate work of God, then it should be proof to all criticism, and no book can take that kind of pressure.
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Just every paragraph has a jaw-dropper. Right off he claims muslims don't question! He claims its inconceivable to ask why god isn't making any sense, which makes me wonder why he's bothering with this project at all. Then he's on about how the book encourages a diversity of material, yet he ignores historical and contextual material in favor of what the Qur'an says of itself. This isn't a study of the quran, its a study of how to twist reality to fit the quran. So who cares?
It's no wonder he didn't allow comments on this string of counter-facts.
He blithely claims we know Muhammad was illiterate. How? The Quran says so.
He parrots the standard origin myth of Uthman perfecting the ms, ignoring abu Bakr's identical committee 20 years earlier. He fantasizes that later lessons ideally build on earlier ones, as if 'build on' were synonymous with 'flatly contradict', and as if we could even be sure of the correct order.
He argues that memorization in preliterate societies kept the book unchanged. This actually argues against his premise, because they don't memorize word for word: human memory doesn't work that way.
The quran uses Arabic in a way that is unlike any other Arabic, and native speakers barely understand it, but we're suppposed to conclude that is not lousy writing but a 'unique, heightened form': try that with your English compostion prof and see how it flies.
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