Response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali (and Pat)
I have a piece up at the ABC Religion & Ethics portal that is a response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in particular chapter 16 of her new book Nomad. One commenter, Pat, raised the issue of abrogation, so I’ve posted a further response but some of it was cut off by the word limit, so I’m posting the full response here:
Greetings Pat,
There is a lot to reply to in your message, more than I can encompass in a single message. However I’ll choose one thing, that if I’d had more space and time in the article I would have elaborated further originally. You wrote:
“The Quran does state than the vilest of all “beasts” are unbelievers (8:55), which is one of the 28 Late Medinan Surahs, which abrogate earlier Surahs which touched on the subject.”
One of the misunderstandings that is currently being disseminated through anti-Islam sites, is the notion that there are whole bunch of “nasty” verses that abrogate (nullify) the “nice” verses of the Qur’an. It’s based on a misrepresentation of the legal tool of “abrogation” that was developed in the post-Prophetic scholars as a way of attempting to harmonise what at first glance appeared to be contradictory rulings on a matter and as a way of trying to understand why the early generations of Muslims practiced a particular thing that did not appear in the text of the Qur’an itself, but there was reference to there having been a ‘revelation’ on the topic in the historical memory of the community.
Abrogation itself is a heavily contested concept. Not all Muslims accept that it is valid (except for the consensus that the most general meaning of abrogation is that the Islamic scripture “abrogates” all older pre-Qur’anic scriptures). Shi’a Muslims, for example, reject the concept, and whilst the majority (not all, Abu Muslim al-Isfahani (d. 933CE) is a famous dissenter) of Sunni scholars came to accept it, there has been wide disagreement among Sunni scholars as to its scope and applicability. For example, some scholars hold that only five verses have been abrogated, at the other end, some hold that around two hundred and fifty (and in one case, close to three hundred) verses have been abrogated. There is no “official” list of what abrogates what, so I question where you get your information from that 8:55 abrogates anything.
What is agreed upon, by those who accept abrogation, is that fundamental rule that abrogation only goes in one chronological direction. Always it must be a later text that abrogates an earlier-revealed text never vice versa. One problem for the scholars discussing abrogation, however, is that there is no agreement as to the chronological dating of all the verses of the Qur’an. Scholars know the rough gist of the ‘story’ of the Qur’an, but aside from a relatively small number of specific verses that can be dated with accuracy, it is impossible to re-construct the chronology of the Qur’an. What this means, is that whilst Bin Laden and the anti-Islam movement might *like* to propose that the verses dealing with military matters abrogate all the harmony and interfaith verses, this is simply a proposition they hold, and a flawed one at that precisely because of the verses that we can date, there are interfaith-minded verses that amongst the last to be revealed. These include the inter-marriage and positive social relationship commendation the Prophet gave in his last sermon, I quoted in my article.
Second you’ve used the word “unbelievers”. The actual word in the original text is “kafir”, which is not merely someone who is not a Muslim, but rather carries the specific meaning of “truth-concealing ingrate”. Someone who *knows* the truth but covers it over and obscures it, and generally works *against* the will of God. Think ‘followers of the anti-Christ’ if you want a Christian equivalent. The Qur’an uses many different adjectives to describe non-Muslims, some positive, some negative. It even has some negative ones for Muslims claiming to be good but who are really sinful, such as the “munafiqun” (hypocrites). ”Those who believe (in the Qur’an), those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Sabians and the Christians,- any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness,- on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” (Q5:69) Note that this also is one of the most chronologically late verses.
As for your other comments, they essentially are covered by the initial point I was making: you may wish to view the “Islam” of Bin Laden as being the authentic “true” Islam, but the vast majority of Muslims do not.