J C Brown - what is he on about?

I was in my local library and read some excerpts from Jonathan C. Brown's atleast book 'Misquoting Muhammad'. It's about hadith traditions and how certain hadiths were fabricated and the debates many scholars have had concerning classification and interpretation of Muhammad's alleged words. Brown doesn't shy away from covering controversial topics such as Riba, huris and child marriage. However, rather than tackle the issues and come to a resolution as to whether the hadith traditions are authentic or accurate he tends to delve into descriptive writing i.e. the historical development of hadith traditions relating to certain subjects. This is enlightening particularly when he refers to the rift which erupted between the falsafa group (philosophers) and the ulema over the issue of whether 'huris', heaven, hell or an arsh actually exist. Whilst this is interesting Brown tip toes around the subject as if too scared to evaluate the arguments and arrive at a sound conclusion. Thus a discussion of huris in Heaven may appear to be tantalising at first but you're in for a dissapointment as all he ends up doin is positing certain views. There is also a covert agenda that can be identified. Whislt acknowledging that stricter Sunni/Shia vews relating to matters such as 'could a woman lead a nation' were mainstream, had a richer history and was the dominant view of most Scholars, this is mentioned almost in passing wilst providing undue attention and detail to the handful of revivalist/reformist scholars who attempted to modernise Islam by dismissing certain hadiths as either forged or limited to their times/context. It also appeared as though that sufi schoalrs such as al-Arabi were caricatured as innovators with good intentions but ultimately liars. Read the book if you will but I found it a tough read because whilst the topics are juicy the book doesn't deliver. You would expect a book entitled 'misquoting Muhammad' to provide a strong case for him being misquoted but it fails to do that (at least in the parts I read).

http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Muhammad-Challenge-Interpreting-Prophets/dp/178074420X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416255852&sr=1-3&keywords=jonathan+c+brown

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Topic: J C Brown - what is he on about?

Jedi

OP - November 17, 2014, 08:38 PM

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