Page 184 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

164 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIe TEXT

born Muslim state, and how it differed from the turmoil of the ]udeo-
Christian communities in their infancies. The disparity could not be more
striking. A child of well-established lineage is being compared with one
abandoned before an orphanage, and the irony is that in determining the
parentage of this known child, the procedure for the abandoned one is
being insisted on. I have endeavoured to show the gaping flawsin Orientalist
logic but, as my previous experiences have taught me," I expect that all
these observations will go totally ignored by that camp. Here I simply seek
to point out the fallacy of their approaches, but I am very much aware that
these duels of refutation must end somewhere; otherwise Muslim scholars
will be kept busy in an endless war of words.
As for the pious Muslim there can be no question that Allah, vowing
repeatedly to preserve His Book, would never have selected a 'defective'
language or script to carry the burden of His [mal revelations. In itsliterary
capacity, depth of expression, poeticism, orthography and palaeography,
Arabic was sufficiently advanced that Allah blessed it as His choice from
among all others. And from then it was the privilege of the Muslim masses
to continue reciting it in the original, and to incorporate markings so that
non-Arabs may also recite the original with ease.
Long have I alluded to the Islamic methodology and its pivotal role in
preserving the qird'a: of the Qjir'an and the sunna of the Prophet free from
adulteration throughout the centuries. Examining this methodology in detail
is the aim of my next chapter.

44 Most of my early work, such as Studies in Early lfadith Literature, my criticism of
Goldziher, and On Schadit's OriginsifMuhammadan jurisprudence (awork devoted to refuting
Schacht), are all serious academic works which Prof. John Burton labelled as 'Islamic
Perspective' [An Introduction to the Hadith, Edinburgh Dniv. Press, 1994, p. 206] and which
have been generally ignored in academic circles.