What are the Satanic Verses? with Dr Ali Ataie (2022-08-15) ​

0:00:00 now now maybe maybe i'll mention this as a as a last point um there there's there's one popular 0:00:10 christian contention that i think i should probably respond to um because christians 0:00:15 christian apologists are always bringing this up um so so christian apologists contend 0:00:21 that the prophet like moses okay um cannot be the prophet muhammad peace be upon him because 0:00:28 the prophet apparently violates deuteronomy 18 20. okay so so just as i said that the christian 0:00:36 jesus the christian jesus violates deuteronomy 18 16 christian apologists will tell me the prophet 0:00:42 muhammad peace be upon him violates deuteronomy 18 20. so what does deuteronomy 18 20 say 0:00:49 it says but the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name which i have not commanded him or 0:00:56 who speaks in the name of other gods that prophet shall die okay so what are they talking about with 0:01:03 this verse they're talking about the story of the satanic verses right of course this was a phrase 0:01:09 that was coined by you know scottish orientalist william muir muslim scholars refer to it as 0:01:16 something like that but but as you know christian christian apologists they love this story 0:01:23 right they think it's the greatest thing since the 0:01:26 oceans right they think it's the greatest thing since sliced sliced bread at holy communion
0:01:35 so as as the story goes and there and there are multiple contradictory versions of this story 0:01:41 yeah you know when when the prophet was in necca he was reciting surah to najam and he recited
0:01:49 have you not seen these three allat and menat 0:01:53 these were considered to be goddesses among the the pagans and then satan apparently whispered 0:02:00 two false verses to the prophet which he thought were divine revelation
0:02:11 eventually the prophet the muslims and all of the idolaters prostrated 0:02:16 word then spread that the prophet had compromised with the idolaters and everything just sort of 0:02:22 got along but then gabriel informed the prophet and those verses were removed from the quran so 0:02:29 that's sort of the basic story now christians they point out that this story of the satanic verses 0:02:35 it must be true because it fulfills the criterion of embarrassment right they say why would a muslim 0:02:42 invent the story why would a muslim invent a story that embarrasses the prophet it must be true 0:02:48 so i personally agree with imam al-razi about this story okay so imam al-razi he said that this story 0:02:55 not only clashes with the quran and the sunnah but also clashes with reason 0:03:02 carl ernst uh who wrote a book called how to read the quran he's professor of islamic studies at 0:03:07 chapel hill he also rejects this story on strictly historical and literary grounds he's not a very 0:03:14 flimsy basis for the history yeah but but here's here's here's my uh here's my response uh first 0:03:20 of all the the criterion of embarrassment is the weakest of the criteria of modern historiography 0:03:27 so we shouldn't really over emphasize it and i know that uh jonathan brown as you pointed out 0:03:33 uh makes that point in one of your videos um uh he makes that point in his in his introductory book 0:03:40 about the prophet peace be upon him now why would a muslim make the muslims fabricated hundreds and 0:03:46 hundreds of hadith okay ibn new jersey he actually collected he has a book called kitabul moduaat 0:03:53 right the book of fabricated hadith who fabricated these hadith jews christians no muslims muslims in 0:04:02 the past foisted lies upon the prophet this is a fact it's a sad fact but it's a fact why did 0:04:08 they do this for various reasons people wanted to justify their own theological or political 0:04:14 positions people wanted to justify their immoral behavior for selfish reasons muslims in positions 0:04:20 of power wanted to keep their power at all costs power corrupts you know people had weak faith or 0:04:27 no faith there have always been hypocrites muslims fabricated hadith that made the prophet look bad 0:04:34 they made him look like a racist at least they tried to do that they did this for their 0:04:38 own selfish reasons they wanted to justify their practice of chattel slavery for instance i mean we 0:04:45 can flip the tables on the christian here or ask a christian who wrote the infancy gospel of thomas 0:04:51 and they'll say heretics well what was their religion they were christian why did the christian 0:04:57 authors of the infancy gospel of thomas write that jesus as a child killed another child 0:05:05 and then murdered one of his teachers according to the criterion of embarrassment this must be 0:05:11 true i mean why would a christian invent the story right so i think they would get the point 0:05:17 but but but secondly in the eyes of the people who actually fabricated this particular story 0:05:23 did it really make the prophet look bad was it really embarrassing in their eyes exactly 0:05:29 maybe not i personally don't have a problem with one or the other but i don't think 0:05:33 it's historical because i understand it's flimsy but what it shows is that god through 0:05:38 through the angel gabriel protected the prophet from satan's satanic attack um 0:05:45 so it actually confirms uh the authenticity of his mission because he was protected 0:05:49 from satan so for me it's not a problem either way only if you did it in a tendentious way to 0:05:55 make a political point yeah is the problem but there's another way of looking at it 0:06:00 and to see it actually as a confirmation of the prophethood because gabriel intervened and
0:06:07 yeah and that's that's iben tamiya's position and it's in it's a respectable position right 0:06:13 so yeah on the contrary maybe for the people who invented the story 0:06:17 the story demonstrated that god rescued the prophet and the believers from the vile of 0:06:22 from the viles of the devil and the story also had an exegetical purpose i mean it explained chapter 0:06:28 22 verse 52 of the quran this idea that you know god cancels out what satan throws in so there were 0:06:35 strong theological motivations for fabricating the story it provided a subabu nuzu for 2252 0:06:43 as well as justified this type of intra-quranic or abrogation so it served a hermeneutical purpose 0:06:51 so but one might ask okay what does 2252 mean then when it says god cancels out what satan throws in 0:06:58 was it what is it referring to if not the satanic versus incident well according to imam arazi 0:07:06 this just means that the prophets are human beings they're not angels they have emotions 0:07:10 and that they're not impervious to temptation yet with god's help they're able to overcome their 0:07:16 temptations so nash in this verse is used in the linguistic sense of removing or wiping something 0:07:23 away not in the technical sense of a verse abrogating another verse but even with this said 0:07:30 the story doesn't make historical sense it clashes with reason and logic for one thing it says that 0:07:35 2252 abrogated the so-called satanic verses this is very strange why is it strange a bit ridiculous 0:07:44 because 2252 was revealed in medina many years later so were the muslims praying to alat and 0:07:52 el uzza and manat for many years these false verses were being recited by the prophet and 0:07:57 the companions for eight years of course not this is nonsense secondly and dr shabir ali 0:08:04 as well as some of the study quran commentators point this out that if the prophet said that it 0:08:10 that it was okay to pray to these goddesses that that would have been the end of his prophetic 0:08:16 career i mean he would have lost all credibility in in the eyes of both his followers and enemies 0:08:24 and we can actually i think demonstrate uh what the fabricator of the story did he took the 0:08:29 historical kernel of this story and he altered it in order to give the appearance of truth 0:08:35 so there is a hadith in bukhari that says the prophet recited surah najam and then he prostrated 0:08:41 and the muslims prostrated and the idolaters prostrated but it says nothing about satan or 0:08:48 satanic verses or you know these are the high flying cranes whose intercession is to be sought 0:08:54 it just says everyone prostrated okay so the obvious subtext is that the idolaters were 0:08:59 overcome with awe at the beauty of the prophet's recitation and so they prostrated when the prophet 0:09:06 did that's it but what about what about textual criticism right so were these verses really part 0:09:14 of the quran so so textual critics look at both external and internal evidence and i'll just give 0:09:21 you a quick example from the new testament luke 22 44 okay it says and being in agony he meaning 0:09:29 jesus prayed more earnestly and his sweat was as if great drops of blood falling down on the ground 0:09:38 when we look at the external evidence that is the manuscript evidence the manuscript witnesses 0:09:45 for this verse we notice that the earliest manuscripts of luke do not contain this verse p69 0:09:52 p75 they don't contain this verse okay internal evidence looks at both the christology of luke as 0:10:00 well as luke's style and choice of words okay the luke in jesus is basically a stoic philosopher i 0:10:07 mean he's always in control of his emotions aaron calls him imperturbable right he can't be bothered 0:10:15 by anything even on on route to the crucifixion he's having this lucid conversation with 0:10:21 with women you know don't weep for me weep for yourselves there's no cry of dereliction in the 0:10:25 gospel of luke there isn't no father my god my god why hast thou forsaken me it's not there right 0:10:33 even though luke had market mark in front of him and luke you know father into your hands i commend 0:10:39 my spirit he's always in control so luke 22 44 conflicts with the luke and jesus's personality 0:10:48 that's one thing secondly this verse interrupts a chiasm in the compositional structure of luke's 0:10:55 narrative which is really interesting thirdly this verse contains multiple hypox leguminoids 0:11:02 like words that do not appear anywhere else in luke's gospel so that's a good indicator 0:11:08 of a second hand writing these verses okay so both external and internal evidence support the 0:11:14 exclusion of this verse and fourthly i'll add this verse served a specific theological purpose 0:11:22 luke's gospel was beloved to the gnostics like marcion many of whom did not believe 0:11:28 that jesus had a an actual physical body so this verse was added by the proto-orthodox to prove 0:11:35 that jesus did have a physical body he's sweating blood right now just just interrupt their second 0:11:41 uh bar ehrman has written uh a scholarly work called the orthodox corruption of scripture 0:11:46 it's an investigation into the uh the inscribable alterations that were made to 0:11:51 the uh the manuscript tradition and the particular example you mentioned is certainly discussed in in 0:11:56 detail and with that very points if readers want to uh explore this further i do recommend bar 0:12:02 it's called the orthodox corruption of scripture it gives many examples of where later christian 0:12:07 scribes have altered the text of the new testament um and we can show this either to further a more 0:12:13 so-called orthodox theology or other agendas or adoptionist or patriotist or whatever so 0:12:19 the text has constantly been fought over by different scribes throughout the century so we're 0:12:23 altering it and changing it again and again and again yeah but but you're right this is this is 0:12:28 a good example that urban also brings up yeah but now if we if we apply yeah and that's an excellent 0:12:33 book the orthodox corruption scripture and if that proves to be too robust then he did like 0:12:38 a simpler sort of dummies version of it called um misquoting jesus sure yeah he's an academic worker 0:12:45 he's i think meant for other scholars but it's readable you're right he did a more popular work
0:12:54 yeah so so what if we applied then uh textual criticism to the satanic verses like i just 0:13:01 did to the gospel of luke and i'll end with this with respect to external evidence there are zero 0:13:08 manuscripts of the quran that contain these verses the satanic verses you can count them on no hands 0:13:14 there are zero pirate of the quran that contain these verses so these verses get an f they fail 0:13:22 miserably when it comes to external evidence bruce metzger would give them an f what what about 0:13:28 internal evidence do these verses agree with the style and context and choice of words and message 0:13:34 of the quran absolutely not there is nothing more antithetical to the message of the quran 0:13:40 than these verses also the there are certain words in these like that's a hypoxalagaminan very 0:13:47 strange world word you know these cranes you have this like form eight passive verb which is very 0:13:56 strange also a hypox lagamnon so this is clearly not the author of the quran so these verses 0:14:02 fail when it comes to internal evidence as well so the final verdict is that the satanic versus story 0:14:08 from a historical and literary perspective does not pass whatsoever the prophet peace be upon him 0:14:16 never spoke in the name of other gods he never said anything that god did not command him to say 0:14:21 and ironically in the very same surah how does the surah begin surah allah
0:14:32 the prophet never speaks from his caprice from his desires
0:14:40 everything that he says is revelation allamahu 0:14:44 he is taught by one mighty in power okay so my final conclusion would be that 0:14:51 uh that the best candidate for for deuteronomy 18 18 is the holy prophet muhammad sallam and 0:14:59 i don't think anyone even comes comes close to him no oh that's a that's absolutely marvelous 0:15:06 i i i agree there's a lot of a lot of detail there some of which i've not heard before i'm 0:15:11 so pleased to have this on tape uh as a resource uh study tool even where as you say initially 0:15:18 people should go away look up the references check them uh and investigate this uh further and as i 0:15:23 said also if you want a good general introduction to the questions of biblical interpretation the um 0:15:30 the documentary hypothesis the deuteronomistic history the history of d the d school as as 0:15:36 as it's known this book will tell you everything it's a good introductory text christine hayes i'll 0:15:42 link to it uh she teaches at yale a colleague of dale martin who are having on again in a week or 0:15:49 two um i i've read bits of it it's very readable accessible uh which is why we published it so um 0:15:55 and also uh next week talking of the satanic verses um uh dr shabir akhtar who's an academic 0:16:02 at the university of oxford um he's a towering theologian and philosopher um he's gonna appear 0:16:08 next tuesday on blogging theology talking about guess what the satanic verses but not the one 0:16:14 not the ones that we're talking about the uh the notorious uh so-called novel by salman rushdie the 0:16:21 bushes writer and uh dr um akhtar will be talking about um secularism freedom of speech um and the 0:16:30 way that muhammad that the man is is uh uh seen as a you know you can insult him and degrade him 0:16:37 in the name of free speech and the implications of this satanic verse is novel uh in uk 0:16:44 um literary history and i know this perhaps not had a big impact in the states but for uh 0:16:49 the british audience uh i i know shaba akhtar and he's an outstanding intellect and um i'm sure be 0:16:55 very interesting so that's a short advert for next time um but coming back to today thank you so much 0:17:03 uh professor ali uh attay and uh for your outstanding um introduction to these issues 0:17:09 such a um a polygon yeah certainly who is a person who can uh operate on so many different registers 0:17:16 linguistically and through various ancient texts the bible the quran and so on and there's 0:17:22 it's a real tree to have this kind of holistic synthesized um exposition of the issues rather 0:17:28 than someone is narrowly focused on just one field you you're clearly an expert on many fields 0:17:34 and it's that kind of multidisciplinary approach we really need when we're talking with christians 0:17:39 and jews and muslims together about all these texts so um outstanding um uh work there thank 0:17:46 you so much sir for your thank you and um you you you even suggested you might come again to talk 0:17:52 about other texts like uh isaiah 42 um which is another key key text in the bible much uh 0:18:01 discussed today countless youtube videos about it would be good to have um a scholarly um assessment 0:18:08 of the evidence and really what does it say and uh i think it's a very strong candidate myself for um 0:18:14 uh the prophet uh of islam and put it that way a rather strong candidate for that 0:18:20 um passage um thank you is there anything else you wanted to say sir before we um conclude thank you 0:18:26 thank you for having me and um you know i again i uh encourage people to uh subscribe to the channel 0:18:33 um i mean this is this is uh this is what it's all about right it's it's god talk it's theology 0:18:42 may god continue to bless you paul and looking forward to coming back inshallah thank you so much 0:18:48 certainly be very welcome and i know there are many many people who will watch this um and will 0:18:54 benefit from enormous i know from your last time you were on blogging theology the huge positive uh 0:19:00 and almost a static um response that people had to what you were saying i was quite quite overwhelmed 0:19:05 by it so i'm sure that'd be the same and uh anyway thank you very much i'll end it i think it's been 0:19:11 two hours but uh it went by very quickly so thank you very much indeed thank you paul take care