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ORIENTALIST MOTIVATIONS: A STUDY OF SUBJECTIVITY 333

civilization and law, at least in the West".40 "We may decide simply that
Schacht is right," echoed Humphreys." Critical study of his work has been
systematically neglected," if not barred. When the late Amin al-Masrl
chose a critical study of the work as the subject of his Ph.D. thesis, the
University of London rejected his application; he fared no better at Cam-
bridge University." Professor NJ. Coulson tried to gently point out some
of the weaknesses in Schacht's thesis, though insisting that in the broad
sense it was irrefutable; a short while later he left Oxford University.
Wansbrough, building on Schacht's findings, concluded that "with very
few exceptions, Muslim jurisprudence was not derived from the contents
of the Qur'an". And so the Qur'an's status in early Islamic history was even
further marginalized at the hands of Wansbrough, who almost entirely
eradicated it from the Muslim community's dealings. The few remaining
cases that could be used as evidence of derivation from the Qjrr'an were
casually dismissed: "It may be added that those few exceptions .. . [are]
not necessarily proof of the earlier existence of the scriptural source."
He provides a reference for this conclusive idea. One may wonder what
pioneering work has established this blanket statement about the Qur'an,
but the footnote mentions: Strack, H., Introduction to the Talmud andMidrash. 44
Which implies that if anything is true of the Talmud and Midrash, then
it must be even truer of the Qjrr'an.

ii. The Jewish Question and the Erasure of
History and Fabrication of a New One

A fresh impetus has been added to the Orientalist cause since 1948: the
need to secure Israel's boundaries and regional ambitions. To study this new
motive requires us to first examine the jewish Question'. The brutality of
the Spanish Inquisition, perpetrated by a nation claiming to embrace a
God of love,resulted in the peninsula's 'cleansing' from all Muslim presence

40 H.A.R. Gibb, Journal ofComparative Legislation andInternational Law, 3rd series, vol.
34, parts 3-4 (1951), p. 114.
41 Humphreys isthe King 'Abdul-Aziz Professor of Islamic Studies at the University
of California, Santa Barbara. For this quotation refer to his Islamic History, p. 84. See
alsoJ. Esposito, Islam: the Straight Path, Expanded edition, Oxford Univ. Press, New
York, 1991, pp. 81-82.
42 Such as M.M. al-A'zami, On Schacht's Origins ofMuhammadan Jurisprudence, John
Wiley, 1985.
43 See Mustafa as-Siba'i, as-Sunna waMakiinatuhii, Cairo, 1961, p. 27.
44 Wansbrough, Qyranic Studies, p. 44.