Criticism of the Quran

Uncommon card · No. 191239

Criticism of the Quran, the religious text held to be sacred by Islam, often concerns the text's factual accuracy, moral tenability, and supposed inerrancy claimed by ulemas. Muslims regard the Quran as the perfect verbatim word of God revealed to Muhammad. In critical and historical study, scholars, such as John Wansbrough, Joseph Schacht, Patricia Crone, and Michael Cook, seek to investigate and verify the Quran's origin, text, composition, and history, examining questions, puzzles, difficult text, etc. as they would non-sacred ancient texts. Common criticisms concern the corruption of the oral and textual transmission at the origins, imperfect preservation, reliance on various pre-existing sources, internal inconsistency, lack of clarity, and questionable ethical teachings. The Quran's oral formation and written transmission, before and after Muhammad, have been questioned on the grounds of manuscript variants, the existence of numerous early contradictory narratives of how the Quran...

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