Polemic and apologetic

Family: Encounters with other traditions · 10 entries

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Entries on this theme

Person

• Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf

  c. 585 CEA poet of Banu Nadir — Jewish on his father's side, Arab on his mother's — whose verses mourned the Meccan dead of Badr and satirized the Muslims and their women; assassinated with the Prophet's sanction in the first political killing of the Medinan period.

Event

• The killing of Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf

  c. September 624 CE · 14 Rabi' I 3 AHThe assassination of the Jewish poet Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf in Rabi' al-Awwal 3 AH by a band led by Muhammad ibn Maslama, after he incited Quraysh to war and satirized Muslim women.

Work

• The Satanic Verses

  Rushdie's 1988 novel that triggered the Khomeini fatwa and the global free-expression crisis — indexed here as a historical object, neutrally.

Concept

• Orientalism

  Zaqzuq defines orientalism in its narrow sense as Western study of the Islamic East in its languages, history, creeds, law and civilisation. He credits it with positive work on manuscripts and editions and criticises its studies of the Qur'an, Sunna and the Prophet's life. He holds the religious motive to be its first cause, names scientific, commercial and political aims, and sorts orientalists into categories. These are the author's judgements, attributed to him.

• The orientalist claim that the Prophet authored the Qur'an

  Zaqzuq presents orientalist views on the source of the Qur'an. He reports that George Sale's English preface states flatly that the Prophet was the author, a claim that shaped European writing for a long time, and that Richard Bell argued the Prophet drew on the Bible. These are the author's report and rebuttal, not a ruling by the museum.

• The orientalist claim that Islamic law derives from Roman law

  Zaqzuq reports that most orientalists think Islamic law was influenced by Roman law to varying degrees, and names Goldziher, von Kremer and Sheldon Amos, some of whom say it is derived from Roman law. The book presents the claim in order to answer it; the museum gives no ruling.

Object

• Nurse's Quran

  A printed mushaf marketed in Turkey and Europe with a fabricated tale of a nurse who received ijaza; a cautionary case of legend presented as provenance.

Screening Room

• Islam: The Untold Story

  2012 CE · 1433 AH†Islam: The Untold Story.

• Kingdoms of Fire

  2019 CE · 1440 AH†Kingdoms of Fire.

• The Lady of Heaven

  2021 CE · 1442 AH†British film about Fatima, daughter of the Prophet; it drew wide controversy and was seen by many Muslims as offensive in its depictions.

What is missing? Tell us · A theme is open when it has a reviewed guide, 10 questions, 25 entries across 5 classes, and voices from several traditions and regions.

Controversial topics

• Sexuality and gender diversity
• Converts and those who leave
• Images and figural art
• Takfir and its critics
• Dissent, heresy and freethought
• Conquest and its debates
• Violent extremism and the Muslim response
• Islam and atheism or secular thought