On Revis­ing Bigotry

Khaled Abou El-Fadl

The Con­fer­ence unfolds to the bal­anced mind. Its soul is the hon­or of the search, the equa­nim­i­ty of judg­ment and the breath of beau­ty. Beau­ty is an intri­cate state of bal­ance weighed by the scales of the Lord. The essence of beau­ty is bal­ance, like the equipoise of sight, the resti­tu­tions of love and the har­mo­ny in the Divine word.

I sit unfold­ing on the pages of the Con­fer­ence uncov­er­ing the pow­er of beau­ty to restore the imbal­ance of the mind. It is love, which I nur­ture in myself for it guards the scales. But if love has the pow­er to guard the scales, big­otry is the ugli­ness col­o­niz­ing the fee­ble soul. Big­otry is an infec­tion of fear or hate, pil­lag­ing through the immu­ni­ties of the heart. Big­otry is the quin­tes­sen­tial dis­rup­tion of the mag­na­nim­i­ty of the mind. It was the big­otry of colo­nial­ism that once intrud­ed upon our exis­tence and rav­ished our lives. It sev­ered us from our Con­fer­ence, and per­suad­ed us that our her­itage is but a lie. The dis­ease of colo­nial­ism had infect­ed our hearts, our minds, our limbs and our sight. We saw our his­to­ry as a cor­rup­tion and aber­ra­tion to be apolo­get­i­cal­ly denied. Infect­ed with big­otry, in our imbal­ance, we ide­al­ized the begin­ning of our his­to­ry, and the rest — we demonized.

>Whether it is the big­otry of fear or hate, the big­otry of the col­o­niz­er or col­o­nized, the big­otry of friend or foe, the same ugli­ness cor­rupts the scales of the Lord.

A new piece of big­otry by Daniel Pipes, and the intru­sion dis­rupts you. It is not that the big­otry is nov­el or orig­i­nal, but the very fact that you take time to respond is an annoy­ing chore. What can one say to big­otry that could pos­si­bly help it restore the imbal­ance in its soul ? What can one say to those who project their ugli­ness unto exis­tence, and come to believe that his­to­ry is like a paint­ed whore – it exists for their plea­sure, for their whims, and exists to ser­vice their polit­i­cal goals.

Pipes’ new rev­e­la­tion about Islam and Mus­lims is that their his­to­ry is quite pos­si­bly a lie. Mis­ery loves mis­ery, and so Pipes teams up with Ibn War­raq, a piti­ful fig­ure invit­ing Mus­lims to lib­er­ate them­selves from their reli­gion and their Lord. Ear­li­er on, Ibn War­raq fas­ci­nat­ed us with his rant­i­ng about why he is not a Mus­lim. Of course, his title came from Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Chris­t­ian, but while Rus­sell wrote phi­los­o­phy, what Ibn War­raq wrote is an inani­ty, and an utter intel­lec­tu­al bore. This time the man with the fun­ny name col­lect­ed a bunch of arti­cles and pub­lished them under the title The Quest for the His­tor­i­cal Muham­mad. One of the two intro­duc­tions to the book is writ­ten by a fel­low with the pathet­ic pseu­do-name Ibn Rawan­di. Per­haps, our con­tem­po­rary authors are allud­ing to friend­ship between the his­tor­i­cal Ibn Rawan­di and al-War­raq, both from the third Islam­ic cen­tu­ry. The Manicheism and heresy of the his­tor­i­cal fig­ures is debat­ed, but com­pared to the orig­i­nals, our mod­ern authors are unfor­tu­nate muta­tions and intel­lec­tu­al trolls. Per­haps, our two authors could not imag­ine that a Mus­lim writer could be named any­thing except the Ibn” or Abu” of some­thing, and thought the pseu­do-names sound­ed real­ly cool. Per­haps, our authors sim­ply sought to hide behind their big­otry, and sought to cre­ate with their pseu­do-names their own mys­te­ri­ous lore.

Pseu­do-names betray the lack of con­vic­tion and cow­ard­li­ness of their adopters. At any case, the issue is not the face­tious name hold­ers ; the issue is our osten­ta­tious long-time friend Daniel Pipes. Pipes, like his jovial friends, con­tends that Ara­bic sources on Islam are inher­ent­ly unre­li­able, and so what we think we know about Islam is not what we should know. Pipes claims that Ara­bic sources were writ­ten a cen­tu­ry and a half after the Prophet’s death. Fur­ther­more, non-Mus­lim sources dra­mat­i­cal­ly con­tra­dict the stan­dard Mus­lim biog­ra­phy of the Prophet Muham­mad, and when a Mus­lim and a non-Mus­lim speak, of course, we all know who we should believe. Pipes applauds the efforts of revi­sion­ist his­to­ri­ans such as John Wans­brough, Yehu­da Nevo, Judith Koren and Patri­cia Crone. Accord­ing to Pipes, his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism chal­lenges the idea that Muham­mad preached in Mec­ca, that Ara­bic was the lan­guage of ear­ly Ara­bia, that Ara­bic was the lan­guage of ear­ly Mus­lims, that there was ever such a thing as ear­ly Mus­lims, that the Prophet was born in 570 or, for that mat­ter, Muham­mad exist­ed at all. The Quran was not the prod­uct of the Prophet or even Ara­bia, but is noth­ing more than litur­gi­cal mate­r­i­al stolen from the Judeo-Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion, stitched togeth­er at a late point. Islam­ic his­to­ry, as found in Mus­lim sources, is no more than a pious lie, a sal­va­tion his­to­ry, by a root­less peo­ple, a soul-less peo­ple try­ing to invent a unique iden­ti­ty of their own.

Dis­charg­ing the White Man’s Bur­den, Pipes, may God bless his mer­ci­ful soul, advis­es Mus­lims that revi­sion­ism is a school that they can no longer afford to ignore. Accord­ing to Pipes, revi­sion­ism is a toothache, and those poor pious Mus­lims, immersed in their delu­sions and super­sti­tion, think that the toothache will dis­ap­pear on its own. But Pipes, like my kind moth­er who taught me oral hygiene and the impor­tance of a dai­ly show­er, teach­es Mus­lims that toothaches don’t just go away. Toothaches, you sil­ly willy-nil­ly Mus­lims need doc­tors, need ratio­nal­ists, need Pipes because, darn it, they just don’t go away on their own ! Thank God for Pipes, who like his colo­nial pre­de­ces­sors, guides us to the truth of his­to­ry, the fal­si­ty of our piety and the fact that the objec­tivism of sci­ence is the cure for our super­sti­tious souls. With­out the cant of our mas­ters how could we have ever fig­ured out what to do with toothaches, headaches or any oth­er ache or sore ?

Revi­sion­ism, like all forms of incip­i­ent or estab­lished big­otry, rests on sev­er­al pecu­liar assump­tions. Assump­tion num­ber one is that Mus­lims invari­ably lie. Per­haps the genet­ic pool of Mus­lims is the cul­prit or per­haps it is that Mus­lims are prone to con­spir­a­to­r­i­al delu­sions, and can hard­ly dis­tin­guish fic­tion from fact. Accord­ing to Pipes and his revi­sion­ists, Mus­lims have no qualms about invent­ing, lying or cheat­ing as long as it serves their sal­va­tion goals. The sec­ond assump­tion fol­lows from the first. A non-Mus­lim source is inher­ent­ly more reli­able because non-Mus­lims have a notion of his­tor­i­cal objec­tivism. There­fore, if, for instance, a hun­dred Mus­lim sources say one thing and one Syr­i­ac source says anoth­er, it is an open and shut case. The Syr­i­ac source is inher­ent­ly more reli­able because those pesky Mus­lims can­not help but lie. The third assump­tion is no less inter­est­ing. Mus­lim his­to­ry is sal­va­tion his­to­ry” writ­ten by the self-serv­ing unre­li­able faith­ful. Mus­lims are biased who are per­sis­tent in their search for their ever-allu­sive iden­ti­ty. Non-Mus­lims, on the oth­er hand, are fair-mind­ed even if non-Mus­lims have their own set of inter­ests because, after all, non-Mus­lims have no need for sal­va­tion ; their Lord has already sal­vaged their blessed souls. So the method­ol­o­gy of revi­sion­ism is sim­ple : ignore what Mus­lims say about them­selves or oth­ers, and believe what non-Mus­lims say about them­selves or Mus­lims. The fourth assump­tion of revi­sion­ism is the one least con­fessed, but is unmis­tak­able in method­ol­o­gy and con­clu­sion. Mus­lims are a bar­bar­ic peo­ple ; what­ev­er good they might have pro­duced, they must have con­ve­nient­ly bor­rowed from Judaism, Chris­tian­i­ty or some oth­er more civ­i­lized source. What­ev­er bar­barism Mus­lims might have pro­duced, that, nat­u­ral­ly, comes from the depth of their hearts and souls, but what­ev­er beau­ty they may have pos­sessed they sim­ply stole.

But revi­sion­ists will say, No, you mis­guid­ed emo­tion­al Mus­lim friend. You sim­ply don’t real­ize that Islam­ic his­to­ry was com­posed in the con­text of intense par­ti­san quar­rels. Know­ing how emo­tion­al Mus­lims can be, Mus­lims sim­ply wrote their his­to­ry to affirm their beliefs.”

But if there was no Prophet or Quran or even his­to­ry, what was the cause of the par­ti­san quar­rels ? Well, per­haps noth­ing more than the well-known Arab hunger for mon­ey and wealth, or the Arab inabil­i­ty to tran­scend their eth­nic divi­sions and pedan­tic trib­al lusts. The fact that Syr­i­ac or Jew­ish sources had their own par­ti­san inter­ests and bias­es is imma­te­r­i­al, of course, because non-Mus­lims invari­ably speak the truth. Fur­ther­more, the fact that a Greek source might be report­ing on rumors or on cor­rupt­ed trans­mis­sions received from Mus­lims them­selves does not at all impeach their reli­a­bil­i­ty. We can nev­er for­get ; Mus­lims lie and non-Mus­lims speak the truth.

Of course, Pipes, and his fun­ny named friends, con­ve­nient­ly ignore that accounts of the Prophet’s life were writ­ten in the first cen­tu­ry after his death. While they love to claim the author­i­ta­tive­ness of papyri and coinage to their side, they nev­er explain what coinage or papyri they are talk­ing about. Are papyri or coinage reli­able sources regard­less of the source ? Even more, they ignore papyri writ­ten in the first cen­tu­ry doc­u­ment­ing tra­di­tions about the Prophet, and Umayyad and Abbasid coinage sup­port­ing Mus­lim his­tor­i­cal accounts. They also ignore papyri doc­u­ment­ed by Sez­gin and oth­ers demon­strat­ing the exis­tence of the Quran in the first cen­tu­ry of Islam in its cur­rent form. Fur­ther­more, they ignore that the Quran does not reflect the his­tor­i­cal con­text of the sec­ond or third Islam­ic cen­turies, but shows an over­whelm­ing pre-occu­pa­tion with the affairs of Quraysh, Mec­ca, Med­i­na, the hyp­ocrites and the Prophet. Accord­ing to the revi­sion­ists, in the time of the Abbasids, Mus­lims fab­ri­cat­ed the Quran in the sec­ond and third cen­turies. But appar­ent­ly they did not find a bet­ter way to reflect their his­tor­i­cal con­text than to talk about Quraysh or Mec­ca, con­cepts which the revi­sion­ists believe were invent­ed and which, if one accepts the revi­sion­ist log­ic, no one under­stood or cared about. Not only that, but even more, those lying cheat­ing Mus­lims instead of rely­ing on their own poet­ry or mythol­o­gy, they could not find some­thing bet­ter than the Judeo-Chris­t­ian litur­gy. In short, such are the sad affairs of Mus­lims, they lie and even­tu­al­ly believe their own lies.

But Pipes, and his friends, will sure­ly say, Mus­lims don’t have a his­to­ry, and so his­to­ry Mus­lims can­not under­stand. You poor ahis­tor­i­cal Mus­lim here you go again with your emo­tions get­ting out of hand. Don’t you real­ize that his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism assault­ed Chris­tian­i­ty and Judaism as well ? Don’t you real­ize that both reli­gions sur­vived, but pro­found­ly changed, as Islam sure­ly will?”

Well, of course I thank you for assur­ing me that Islam will sur­vive. But revi­sion­ism in the case of non-Mus­lim his­to­ry is a crit­i­cal skep­ti­cism as to insti­tu­tion­al and offi­cial his­to­ries, but in the case of Islam it is out­right big­otry. What school of his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism has ever claimed that all Jew­ish, Chris­t­ian, British or French sources can­not be believed ? What school of revi­sion­ism has brand­ed an entire peo­ple as com­pul­sive liars?”

The truth is that revi­sion­ists deal­ing with Islam­ic his­to­ry are ide­o­logues with­out the crit­i­cal integri­ty of schol­ars. We can take one exam­ple of Pipes method­ol­o­gy and pon­der his style. Pipes claims that an unspec­i­fied inscrip­tion and a Greek account leads Lawrence Con­rad to fix the Prophet’s birth at 522 not 570. Appar­ent­ly, Pipes did not both­er read­ing Conrad’s study. Con­rad heav­i­ly relies on debates in Mus­lim sources con­cern­ing the dat­ing of the Year of the Ele­phant. He also relies on debates in Mus­lim sources regard­ing whether the Prophet was born in the Year of the Ele­phant or on an ear­li­er date. Con­rad ana­lyzes the claim that the Prophet received rev­e­la­tion at the age forty, and sim­ply points out that the age forty was con­sid­ered a lit­er­ary topoi for matu­ri­ty in Ara­bic and non-Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture. There­fore, the argu­ment that the Prophet was forty when he start­ed his mis­sion could pos­si­bly be a sym­bol­ic usage sig­ni­fy­ing that the Prophet had reached an age of matu­ri­ty. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Con­rad does not reach a con­clu­sion about the date of the Prophet’s birth. Rather, he argues that Beeston’s and Kister’s con­clu­sion that the Year of the Ele­phant was in 522, is sup­port­ed by strong evi­dence. He then, appro­pri­ate­ly, empha­sizes the com­plex­i­ty of estab­lish­ing the Prophet’s date of birth. This is a far cry from Pipes’ mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Con­rad. But Con­rad is a schol­ar, and Pipes is an ideologue.

Many of Pipes’ delu­sions are fed by the infa­mous book Hagarism. Yet, very few peo­ple in the schol­ar­ly com­mu­ni­ty take that book seri­ous­ly. Even lat­er works by the authors of Hagarism demon­strate a greater degree of fair mind­ed­ness and schol­ar­ly integri­ty. If Hagarism was writ­ten in a fit of indul­gent fan­ta­sy, the same can­not be said about works that fol­lowed in its foot­steps. Much of the work of revi­sion­ism was spear­head­ed by schol­ars with a regret­table polit­i­cal agen­da. Like vul­gar forms of Ori­en­tal­ism, revi­sion­ists sought to de-legit­i­mate and decon­struct the tra­di­tion of their per­ceived ene­mies. The big­otry of the Israeli schol­ars Koren and Nevo is evi­dent. They con­tend that any Ara­bic source must be cor­rob­o­rat­ed by a non-Ara­bic source, and if the two sources con­flict, as a mat­ter of course, the non-Arab is to be believed. Well­hausen and Wans­brough were bib­li­cal schol­ars, and their cir­cum­spect method­ol­o­gy with Jew­ish and bib­li­cal stud­ies con­trasts sharply with their spec­u­la­tive fan­cies with Islam­ic history.

The truth is that the fanati­cism of revi­sion­ism in doubt­ing Islam­ic his­to­ry is the oppo­site side of the coin of the fanati­cism of pietis­tic sanc­ti­fi­ca­tions of Islam­ic his­to­ry. Each is an imbal­ance, each is extreme and each is ugly. But the dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of revi­sion­ism is its big­otry. Imag­ine if Euro­pean his­to­ry was writ­ten only by reliance on Mus­lim sources. Imag­ine if the Jew­ish his­to­ry of the Sec­ond Tem­ple was writ­ten only by reliance on Roman sources. Imag­ine if Chris­t­ian his­to­ry was writ­ten only by reliance on Jew­ish sources. Imag­ine if the his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion was writ­ten only by reliance on British sources. Imag­ine if Israeli his­to­ry was writ­ten only through the eyes of Pales­tini­ans. But it is impos­si­ble to write these his­to­ries in this fash­ion because no respectable his­to­ri­an would claim the inher­ent inac­cu­ra­cy of all Euro­pean, Amer­i­can, Jew­ish, Chris­t­ian and Israeli sources. What would Pipes think of revi­sion­ist his­to­ri­ans who claim that the Exo­dus of Jews from Egypt is a myth, and that the First or Sec­ond Tem­ple nev­er exist­ed because Jews nev­er lived in Pales­tine at any point in their his­to­ry ? The truth is that the big­otry of revi­sion­ists is like the anti-Semi­tism of Holo­caust-deniers who write the his­to­ry of Jews by rely­ing on the sources of their Ger­man enemies.

No, revi­sion­ism is not a toothache ; it is an inso­lent attempt to deny a peo­ple their very iden­ti­ty, it is the ugli­ness of Colo­nial­ism, and the imbal­ance of fear and inse­cu­ri­ty. Revi­sion­ism is the heartache of sim­ple bigotry. On Revising Bigotry 1

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