Free Republic

A number of Islamic associations have put a quick end to their collaboration with a professor -- and trainer of people who are supposed to teach Islam in German high schools -- who has expressed his doubt that Muhammad ever lived. Islam scholar Michael Marx spoke with SPIEGEL ONLINE about what lies behind the debate and the historical person of the Prophet.

“The Quran gained a popular readership among Protestants both in England and in North America largely out of curiosity,” says Denise A. Spellberg, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Thomas Jefferson’s Qu'ran: Islam and the Founders. “But also because people thought of the book as a book of law and a way to understand Muslims with whom they were interacting already pretty consistently, in the Ottoman Empire and in North Africa.” When Jefferson bought his Quran as a law student in 1765, it was probably because of his interest in understanding Ottoman law....

To Muslims the Koran is the very word of God, who spoke through the Angel Gabriel to Muhammad: "This book is not to be doubted," the Koran declares unequivocally at its beginning. Scholars and writers in Islamic countries who have ignored that warning have sometimes found themselves the target of death threats and violence, sending a chill through universities around the world. Yet despite the fear, a handful of experts have been quietly investigating the origins of the Koran, offering radically new theories about the text's meaning and the rise of Islam. Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages ...

According to an Islam tradition, Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins. But some Koran scholars point to a less sexy paradise. While beautifully written, Islamic texts are often obscure. The Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and growing evidence suggests that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic. Specifically, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get “hur,” and the word was taken by early commentators to mean “virgins,” hence those 72 concubines. But in Aramaic, hur actually meant “white” and was commonly used to specifically mean “white...

According to author Christoph Luxenberg, due to a possible mistranslation of the Koran (if one were to read certain words as Syriac instead of Arabic), the "virgins" some terrorists believe they will be rewarded with in paradise may be "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" instead.

Donovan Barnes, a first year student at Georgetown University, recently published a “viewpoint” article in the school’s student newspaper titled “Develop Gender-Neutral Language in Arabic.” Barnes’ March 25 op-ed in The Hoya expresses the opinion that “to aid the fight for gender inclusivity in the Arabic language, Georgetown students and instructors have the responsibility to work toward language that includes all gender identities, not just identities within the cisnormative male and female binary.” The student explained that he is studying Arabic at Georgetown and had “valid concerns” coming into the program because he is learning a language that is “radically...