tallowood wrote on Nov 14^th, 2008 at 9:01am:


Thank you for your response, but I'm kinda new here, and I'm trying to be polite and respectful, so I would appreciate it if you would show me the same courtesy. Maybe I'm reading too much into your response, but it seemed very aggressive and accusative.

As for your question, while the term shaitan can be applied to any rebellious entity, be it human, jinn, or <i>The Shaitan</i> formerly named Iblis, the name of the specific narrator of this Hadith was al-Waqidi. For your questions about who determined what was true and what was not, specifically in the case of the reliability of al-Waqidi as a transmitter and his transmissions as believable or not, please see this website: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Polemics/sverses.html They go into much more detail than I could manage in these 5500 character posts.

As for your last question, of course Muhammad (pbuh) was 100% human, just as Jesus Christ (pbuh) was 100% human, but as a theist, and specifically, as an Islamic theist, I believe that God protects His prophets (peace be upon all of them) from bringing false messages to their people. As for me, I am not a prophet, so I can't trust that what I say is free from error.

Again, this is just my view coming from a theist background. You're welcome to disagree, but please try to limit the passive-aggressiveness.

Whatever I say correctly comes from God, whatever mistakes I make are my own, and please forgive me for that.

Peace!

Hmm... I think I used the phrase "as for" way too many times...

tallowood wrote on Nov 14^th, 2008 at 10:12am:


"What is the name of that narrator, not Shaitan by a chance?"

That was what seemed a little aggressive to me. But again, like I said, I might have just been reading more into it than was there.

You're right that the hadith would not violate the notion of God protecting His revelation from errors, since according to the hadith, He sent Gabriel to correct it.

However, what would violate the Prophet's (pbuh) mission is that he himself would ever accept other deities as okay intercessors after saying la ilaha (no gods) illa (except) Allah (The God). So, the hadith's relation that he accepted worship of other deities contradicts his Shahadah or testimony of faith that there is no other god worthy of worship except God.


tallowood wrote on Nov 14^th, 2008 at 10:12am:


Yes, the people were making decisions about the veracity of the ahadith (plural of hadith) were not prophets and were prone to error. However, they used a scientific method of hadith authentication and reasoning. How Al-Waqidi was determined to be unreliable is discussed in the site link I gave in the previous post, along with arguments for why the story itself is unacceptable given considerations in details of its telling and supposed time of occurence.

freediver wrote on Nov 14^th, 2008 at 11:14am:


Now there's a whole PhD of a subject right there.

Well, here is something you might find interesting to read...

http://www.quran.org/library/articles/ahmad0.htm

I'm sorry I can't give you a more concise explanation of the method of hadith authentication and its application in Islam.  I hope that this article gives you some idea of the complexity of this subject, though.

Here's what one person (http://looklex.com/contact/p_tore.htm) had to say about the method of the collection and authentication of the ahadith:

"When early Muslim scholars collected the siras, they used two methods. The first method weighed authenticity by testing the chain of the story's transmitters, isnad. Scholars would analyze how far back in time it was possible to trace the transmission, and whether the transmitters were reported to be honest people, etc. The other method compared stories, and the more a group of stories related to one another, the more reliable they were considered to be.

This scholarship resulted in 6 collections, or hadiths. Of these, the one assembled by the scholar Bukhari is considered to be the most scientifically accurate. Muslim's hadith is considered to be almost as good as Bukhari's. The other 4 also have high value, but most people reading the hadiths seldom venture beyond Bukhari and al-Muslim. The 4 are the following; Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, Abu Dawud and an-Nisai.

According to the tradition, Bukhari had 7275 traditions validated out of a material of 600,000. Muslim collected 9,200 out of a total 300,000. Among of the high number of omitted traditions many were left out for being duplicates.

The value and accuracy of the hadiths should be regarded as fairly high, when judged by modern scholarship. The techniques used by these historians, resembles to a large extent that employed by cotemporary historians. Their achievement is so much the greater, however, because they had few historical models on which to rely. While several irregularities can be traced, little can be ascribed to lack of scientific honesty."

http://i-cias.com/e.o/hadith.htm

Go tallow...  on fire 

Quote:


I don't see anything scientific in it, but then I tend to use science in the modern context, as distinct from the methods used to study history.

Emily the Muslim wrote on Nov 14^th, 2008 at 12:55pm:


Sorry I've mislead you the Full Moon made me do that , it was in another thread. So now here it is where it rightfully belongs.

Quote:
(c) SV by S. Rushdie (chapter 2, page 64)

Emily the Muslim wrote on Nov 14^th, 2008 at 1:35pm:


"a narrator who was known to be a liar and fabricator" -> The Deceiver -> Shaitan



Emily the Muslim wrote on Nov 14^th, 2008 at 1:35pm:


Of course Rushdie's SV is a fiction as books of literature are.

Rushdie's sources for the verse are Tabarī's Tafsīr, Muqātil, Abdu r-Razzāq, Ibn Kathir, Abu Ja‘far an-Nahhās, Wāhidī and Suyūtī.

His inspiration for character of Gibreel comes from Michail Bulgakov's great masterpiece "Master and Margarita".  "Woland (Satan in disguise) a 'foreign professor' who is in Moscow to present a performance of 'black magic' and then to expose its machinations. The exposure (as one could guess) never occurs, instead Woland exposes the greed and bourgeois behaviour of the spectators themselves". "He who is eternally Evil but is fated to do Good for ever."
In its own turn the character of "Woland" was inspired by "Mephistopheles" from medieval legends about Doctor Faust.

When I read SV first time few years ago I found it boring but since than the controversy of the book made me to do some research and now I really enjoying it. It is great example of intercultural transmission: from medieval Christian Europe to atheistic USSR of 1920s to modern Islamic culture of Indian subcontinent and back to modern Europe. Fantastic journey with a little help on the way from Evil Imam who was fated to do Good Work of popularising the Rushdie's book.

But a work of fiction "The Satanic Verses" and how it was recieved by Muslims is the topic. What non-fiction inspired some of the story and what was made up is just where the discussion has most recently arrived.

We may get somewhere with this. Like FD and Emily have both agreed, Scientific method can't really apply except possibly in analysing physical evidence such as origin and age but not the validity of the message.