The revisionist school of Islamic studies (also critical school of Islamic studies and critical historians of Islam)Hoyland, In God's Path, 2015: p.232 is a scientific movement in Islamic studiesFrançois de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, S. 615, in: The Qur'an in Context, edited by Angelika Neuwirth etc., 2010Alexander Stille: Scholars Are Quietly Offering New Theories of the Koran, New York Times 02 March 2002 that questions traditional Muslim narratives of the origins of the religion of Islam.Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.38
In the early 1970s some non-Muslim Islamic scholarsDonner, "Quran in Recent Scholarship", 2008: p.30 (called "revisionists" later) began to question the traditional / conventional accounts of the rise of Islam. This origin story and the reliability of its traditional "literary sources" was subscribed to not only by the Islamic world but in large partDonner, "Quran in Recent Scholarship", 2008: p.29 by most non-Muslim Islamic scholars.for example, Revisionists had doubts about these traditional sources—which included accounts of what the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers said, did, approved of, etc, which they claim were passed down orally and then written down 150 to 250 years afterwards—that (the new scholars argued) were subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters.Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.422-6 To these traditional sources revisionists proposed employing a "source-critical" approach, including relevant archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, and contemporary non-Arabic literatureNevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.420 that they argued provided "hard facts" and an ability to crosscheck.
Revisionist scholars include John Wansbrough and his students Andrew Rippin, Norman Calder, G. R. Hawting, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook; as well as Fred Donner, Günter Lüling, Yehuda D. Nevo and Christoph Luxenberg;Reynolds, "Quranic studies and its controversies", 2008: p.8 Tom Holland,In the Shadow of the Sword (2012), cited in and Ibn Warraq; who all drew on the earlier work of Ignác Goldziher and Joseph Schacht.
Their theories are "by no means" monolithic, but they do share some "methodological premises",Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.420-441 and theories:Karl-Heinz Ohlig: Islam und Islamismus, in: imprimatur No. 48, 2015, pp. 48-53 namely that the basic principles of what we know of as Islam was formed not just during the ten years of Muhammad's mission (622–632 CE), but over a considerably longer period including the 7th-century Arab invasion of Byzantine and Persian empires, Rashidun caliphs and the Umayyad Caliphs; that the religious, political, cultural break between the civilizations of Persia and Byzantium, and the new 7th-century Arab Muslim empire, was not as abrupt as the traditional history describes; that Muhammad did not come from the city of Mecca and the belief that he did is an invented tradition from decades after his death; that the relationship between Muhammad and Jews and Christians may have originally been much less hostile than traditionally described. Issues not agreed on include the historicity of Muhammad and questions about the Quran, such as when it first appeared, how it was written, and how it was transmitted from one generation to another in its early years.
Origins and methodology Study of Islam in the West
The influence of the different tendencies in the study of Islam in the West has waxed and waned. Ibn Warraq believes "the rise of this revisionist school" may be dated from the Fifth Colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University in July 1975. Robert Hoyland believes that revisionists were ascendant in the 1970s and 1980s.
Prior to that time, scholar Charles Adams cited in describes two different approaches to the study of Islam in the West, each favored in different eras: "Western Orientalism" prevailed before World War II, and may have been guilty of "the sins of unsympathetic, hostile, or interested approaches" in its study of the religion; it was followed by a movement represented in both religious and academic circles, that stretched from the end of the War to sometime around the mid-1970s, and endeavored to show "a new attitude" and "greater appreciation" towards Islam. Herbert Berg gives Wilfred Cantwell Smith and W. Montgomery Watt as examples of proponents of this post-war "irenic" approach to Islamic history, and notes that the approach necessarily clashed with scholarship that questioned Islamic doctrine (as the revisionists did).
Sources for the different accounts of the origins of Islam During the "irenic" era of the 1950s to early 1970s, non-Muslim Islamic scholars, accepted the Islamic origin story "in most of its details", (though not the accounts of supernatural activity, such as how angels descended to fight a battle on behalf of Muhammad),Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.45 and the reliability of the story's basis — the Muslim "literary sources" used in traditional religious historical scholarship. These sources include hadith, records of the words, actions, and the silent approval of accounts of Muhammad — which like the Quran qualify as revelation from God according to the traditional Islamic history). Also foundational (though not divinely revealed) are early tafsir (commentaries on the Quran), sīrah (biography of the prophet), khabar (reports or stories about historical events from early Islam, also a “narrative of biographical character”), qissa ("edifying narratives of the prophets" often spiced with colorful stories "intended to keep the attention of the audience"), mathal (narratives or a sayings intended to prove an element of doctrine or "explain a circumstance of life"), and maghazi (narratives of Muhammad's military campaigns).
Studies of hadith
The first literary source to be questioned by secular scholars was hadith—not in the early 1970s but the early and mid-20th century, and not by revisionists but by their forerunners, Islamic scholars Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921) and Joseph Schacht (1902–1969). Goldziher and Schacht argued that the traditional Islamic accounts about Islam's early times, claimed to be written generations after Muhammad died, cannot be relied on as historical sources. Goldziher argued, in the words of R.S. Humphreys,
Schacht argued Islamic law was not passed down without deviation from Muhammad but "developed ... out of popular and administrative practice under the Umayyads, and this practice often diverged from the intentions and even the explicit wording of the Koran... norms derived from the Koran were introduced into Muhammadan law almost invariably at a secondary stage."Ibn Rawandi, "Origins of Islam", 2000: p.97
Extension of arguments
The revisionists argued that what applied to hadith also applied to the other literary sources mentioned above: Muhammad's biography; the history of the Quran's formation; and the historical developments under the first Islamic dynasty. Revisionists believe that these traditional Islamic accounts, not just hadith, also written down generations after Muhammad died, were embellished by their authors and transmitters whose biases they were subject to, and that determining the actual historical events of the earliest times of Islam requires new research and an application of the aforementioned historical-critical method, (the process of evaluating the validity, reliability, relevance, etc., of a source, to the subject under investigation). According to Nevo and Koren, that requires using the source-critical approach, (a variety of historical criticism that searches for the original sources which lie behind a given text), "to both the Koran and the Muslim literary accounts of the rise of Islam, the Conquest and the Umayyad period";Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.426 and comparing traditional accounts with non-Muslim accounts from the seventh and eighth century CE; archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics from the seventh and eighth century CE—sources which should be preferred when there is a conflict with Muslim literary sources. In the words of Cook and Crone, historians must "step outside the Islamic tradition altogether and start again." Hagarism; The Making Of The Islamic World Crone, Cook, p.3
Main Revisionist theses Questioning historical sources
Some of the reasons revisionists consider the Quran, and other religious sources unreliable, are:
Purposes Their purpose is to strengthen religious faith, not to investigate and find out what actually happened. Traditions of early Islamic military campaigns, for example, do not describe things like planning, tactics and weaponry, troop strength, layout, or movement, but rather tell stories of "past glories and heroic exploits" to encourage the troops.Hoyland, In God's Path, 2015: p.42 The literature sometimes include supernatural elements, such as sīrah author Ibn Ishaq telling of hosts of angels coming to the aid of Muhammad at the Battle of Badr.Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.39
Lateness of dates In the words of revisionist G.R. Hawting, We have no biography of Muhammad, no commentary on the Quran, no law book, no collection of Hadiths, no history of early Islam, etc. which can be said to predate, in the form in which we have it, the beginning of the third Islamic century. Oral and written transmission over generations subjects literature to distortion both intentional and unintentional. Most Islamic literature has been claimed by revisionists to have been passed down orally for generations before being committed to writing. Oral history may distort the original account unintentionally (as in the children's game "Chinese whispers"), or intentionally tell readers what they thought happened or wanted to believe happened, instead of what the transmitter actually heard or saw, (for example, substituting "Muhammad" for "The Prophet"—since the copyist "knows" The Prophet is Muhammad),Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.423
Contradictions, confusions, inconsistencies Accounts in the traditional literature of what went on in the time of early Muslims (and shortly before and after) contain "contradictions, confusions, inconsistencies",Crone, Slaves on Horses, 1980: p.7 (some examples being: Meccans first traded with foreigners who came to Mecca but stopped in the pre-Islam past; contradicted by another story of Arabs stopping trade after Islam triumphed to have more time to pray. The Meccans went to Syria every summer and winter; contradicted by Meccans going to Syria in one season and to Yemen the next).Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, 1987: p.111
Expansion of historical accounts over time
Examining sīrah, revisionist scholar Patricia Crone found a pattern, where the farther a commentary was removed in time from the life of Muhammad and the events in the Quran, the more information the commentaries provided, despite the fact that the putative sources for their contents were the earlier sources. Crone attributed this phenomenon to storytellers' embellishment. If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next storyteller would know the date of this raid, while the third would know everything that an audience might wish to hear about.Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, 1987: p.223 An example was the oldest prophetic biography—that of Ibn Ishaq (died 767)—which was much smaller than the commentary of Al-Waqidi (d.823), despite the fact that Waqidi's later works covered a shorter period of time (only Muhammad's period in Medina). Waqidi will always give precise dates, locations, names, where Ibn Ishaq has none, accounts of what triggered the expedition, miscellaneous information to lend color to the event