The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam

The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam is a 1999 book in the field of Quranic studies published by G. R. Hawting. The book explores the Quranic conception of paganism and idolatry and how it has been understood, or perhaps misunderstood, through the lenses of later Islamic tradition, especially major works such as the Book of Idols of Hisham ibn al-Kalbi, as well as other sirah (biographies of Muhammad) and tafsir (exegeses of the Quran), which Hawting sees as unreliable and more representative of later attitudes towards the history of pre-Islamic Arabia as opposed to genuine information transmitted from the lifetime of Muhammad and earlier.

Thesis

Hawting argues that the Islamic perspective on monotheism emerged from a formative period of inter-monotheistic competition/debate, which he sometimes likens to the disputes about monotheism between 16th-century Protestants and Catholics. This, Hawting argues, is in opposition to the traditional view of the emergence of Islamic monotheism against a polytheistic background. The associators ("mushrikūn") described in the Quran are not polytheists, per Hawting, but fellow monotheists who believed in the supremacy of Allah but made the mistake of associating with him the veneration of lower, angelic beings. Finally, he geographically situates this competition among Middle Eastern confessional communities in the eighth or ninth centuries (following John Wansbrough's position in Quranic Studies (1977)) instead of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh-century.

Criticism

One of the most controversial aspects of Hawting's work amongst other historians has been his conclusion, from his analysis about the religious background against which the Quran and Islamic monotheism emerged, that it should be geographically situated outside of Arabia. Though praised by some as an important attempt to critically analyze Islamic traditions about the provenance of the Quran, Fred Donner stated that no evidence for such an extra-Arabian venue for the origins of the Quran has been offered by Hawting. Likewise, Yasin Dutton considers this re-placement to be tenuous and speculative.

See also

• Hadith studies

References

Sources

• Donner, Fred (2011). "The Historian, the Believer, and the Qurʾān". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). New Perspectives on the Qur'an: The Qur'Ɨn in Its Historical Context 2. Routledge.
• Hawting, Gerald (1999). The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History. Cambridge University Press.
• Sirry, Mun'im (2021). Controversies over Islamic Origins: An Introduction to Traditionalism and Revisionism. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.