5 ms·

Alright, this headline just seems wrong. First, radiocarbon dating comes with error bars. The date range identified is from 570 C.E. to 632 C.E. Given that Muh

by s_q_b 11y ago

Alright, this headline just seems wrong. First, radiocarbon dating comes with error bars. The date range identified is from 570 C.E. to 632 C.E. Given that Muhammad is thought to have founded Islam in the period from 610 C.E. to 630 C.E., and that date keeping was relatively good in this period, this would seem to confirm rather than dispute the traditional accounts. Second, the radiocarbon dating was performed on the parchment only, not the ink, as the article belatedly notes. Given the practice of ancient scribes to re-use parchment repeatedly, a rather unfortunate practice that has resulted in the loss of uncountable ancient texts, the age of the writing would be controlling, not the age of the parchment. Third, I'm forced to draw a rather unfortunate conclusion from this information. The assertion in this article seems deliberately calculated to undermine the historicity of Islam. There is a very sad and shortsighted movement in some corners of military scholarship right now that identifies Islam itself as the enemy, often beginning with Huntington's "clash of civilizations" narrative and ending with some examples of sheer lunacy, such as the recent article by a West Point associate professor arguing that legal human rights scholars are "an Islamist fifth column." Islam is one of the world's great religions, and like all religions it inspires everything from massive works of charity to zealotry, persecution, and bigotry. I have known many good people who drew their strength from Islam, and condemning an entire religion is a type of insanity that is directly contrary to the founding principles of the United States. Islam is not the enemy. Those who would pervert it for their own violent ends are. We cannot lose that distinction.

DanBC 11y ago
> and like all religions it inspires everything from massive works of charity to zealotry, persecution, and bigotry. A few people try to claim that other religions don't inspire terrorist groups, but that's clearly bullshit. Buddhism is generally seen as pacifist but there's a Buddhist army and probably 2 Buddhist terrorist groups. (And that's not including Aum Shinryko) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Karen_Buddhist_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Karen_Buddhist_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodu_Bala_Sena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodu_Bala_Sena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/969_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/969_Movement etc.
- s_q_b 11y ago
  Wholeheartedly agreed. The ethnic cleansing by the Buddhist majority of the Muslim minority in Myanmar is horrifying right now. I'm very disappointed in Aung San Suu Kyi's leadership thus far. I suppose we'll see what she does after the election.
  - mc32 11y ago
    I don't think you can blame her. She's in a very difficult position. She has to think of getting the country from under the throes of dictatorship before she can address civil rights. If she starts with civil rights, her effort will sputter and nothing will happen.
    - s_q_b 11y ago
      I agree that she's in an impossible position, with the Junta on one side and Buddhist extremists on the other, but her extreme popularity makes her uniquely capable of speaking up on behalf of the Rohingya. Also, she seems to be constructing her party along an authoritarian model. I was a supporter of her while under detention, but today I just don't know. I very sincerely hope she lives up to her rhetoric once in power.
- npalli 11y ago
  I hadn't heard of the Buddhist Army, so I looked at your link in wiki. Kind of undermines your point. > Though the majority of Karens are Buddhist, the Karen political leadership and leadership of the Karen insurgency have been overwhelmingly Christian, as a legacy of American missionary influence over the 19th and early 20th centuries.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Re-read the first line: > The Democratic Karen Benevolent Army formerly known as Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (Burmese: တိုးတက်သော ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာ ကရင်အမျိုးသား တပ်ဖွဲ့; abbreviated DKBA) is a breakaway group of Buddhist former soldiers and officers of the predominantly Karen Christian led Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), one of the larger insurgent armies in Burma. The KNLA is mostly Christian. The DBKA is the buddhist breakaway group.
stonewhite 11y ago
> The first known formal text of the Koran was not assembled until 653 A.D. on the orders of Uthman Hence the predating. It was memorized and written on leaves, stones etc. before that. Even if it was assembled before the said date, still a large portion of official Islamic history is at stake.
- s_q_b 11y ago
  And what we have here are a few fragments of the Quran that may or may not predate the other fragments. That doesn't seem contradictory with the current historical understanding. This article states that the Quran may predate Muhammad, which is a very much different assertion.
mc32 11y ago
I don't think this is set out to undermine religion. Believers will believe despite strong contrary evidence, if anything, it redoubles their beliefs. That said, if scholarly religious studies or any studies undermine the great religions and lesser religions, all the better. We'll all be better off without fervent believers. I understand the cultural aspect of these religions will outlast religion and I'm okay with that. It's part of people's cultural identities. I don't think for example, we should start renaming all the "San/Santa xxxxxx" city names to secular names.
- escape_goat 11y ago
  I seem to be writing short comments this morning myself, for which I apologize, but this is an absolutely terrible non-argument. You have a thesis statement, an assertion of fact that is essentially irrelevant to that thesis, and then the assertion that, besides, it would be good if your thesis was wrong. What you actually meant to say is "if scholarly religious studies do undermine the great religions and lesser religions, all the better." Which is fine, if that's an assertion you'd like to share with us, but you're not really all that interested in whether or not the article undermines religion; not enough to actually have anything to say about it.
  - mc32 11y ago
    To undermine a religion, it's necessary for the religion to have fragile beliefs or beliefs proven untrue and accepted untrue. Since their beliefs are faith based, it's hard to undermine them. Believers would have to believe these findings upended their religions, which is something I find unlikely. So, it's almost impossible to undermine them. The only thing these findings do is reinforce what non believers already know and adds to historical knowledge. Therefore I don't think it sets out to undermine religion.
    - escape_goat 11y ago
      What is the thing that "non-believers already know" that these findings reinforce? I do not think that you will find a rational basis for any such thing in the facts cited by the article, as I shall discuss presently. This suggests that it is the tone and context of the article which provides your feeling of 'reinforcement', which in turn suggests that what is being appealed to is not your capability for reason, but your acquired prejudices. The article presents a single scientific finding: the parchment on which the Birmingham Koran was written was very likely manufactured sometime between 568 AD and 632 AD. That is all. There is no other finding presented in the article. The article presents four pieces of valid contextual information regarding dates. Firstly, that Muhammed most likely lived between 570 AD and 645 AD. Secondly, that Islam is generally regarded as having been founded in 610 AD. Thirdly, that the first Muslim community was established at Medina in 622 AD. Fourthly, that the first known 'official' version of the Koran was assembled on the orders of the third Caliph, Uthman, in 653 AD. The article also clarifies it is known for a fact that many sections of the Koran had been written down well before 653 AD. In this context, we have Keith Small's statement: "This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran's genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven," Clearly, the prior existence of the text of the Koran would establish a solid, factual doubt regarding the story of the Koran's origins. But just as clearly, no such thing is established here. The evidence presented merely fails to eliminate the possibility the Koran could have been written before so-and-so date. The parchment could have been written on before 610 AD, for instance. But even if it had not been, the possibility that parts of the Koran predated Islam would remain, because there is no way to disprove a hypothetical. Thus, it is hard to see how the assertion that 'more ground is given' makes any sense outside of a prejudicial, opinionated context. There is no ground given that was not already there. What Keith Small is announcing is basically that the available evidence fails to disprove his admittedly fringe hypothesis. What he is overlooking is that the evidence we are discussing could only ever has (a) proven, or (b) failed to disprove his hypothesis. It was never at risk of falsification. There is no rational basis to regard the "failure to disprove" as significant, and to treat it as such is evidence a prejudicial and emotive involvement in the subject matter.
mtviewdave 11y ago
> The assertion in this article seems deliberately calculated to undermine the historicity of Islam. There is a very sad and shortsighted movement in some corners of military scholarship right now that identifies Islam itself as the enemy... FWIW I've seem some pretty ridiculous "historical" claims made against the historicity of Christianity. When it comes to the history of someone else's religion, I find people tend to tolerate a lot of sloppiness. I wouldn't take this article as specifically anti-Islam, but rather an example of such sloppiness.
32bitkid 11y ago
> Given the practice of ancient scribes to re-use parchment repeatedly, a rather unfortunate practice that has resulted in the loss of uncountable ancient texts... I wonder if future historians will look back on modern mutable storage devices with the same distain.
haliax 11y ago
> Third, I'm forced to draw a rather unfortunate conclusion from this information. The assertion in this article seems deliberately calculated to undermine the historicity of Islam. There is a very sad and shortsighted movement in some corners of military scholarship right now that identifies Islam itself as the enemy, often beginning with Huntington's "clash of civilizations" narrative and ending with some examples of sheer lunacy, such as the recent article by a West Point associate professor arguing that legal human rights scholars are "an Islamist fifth column." This is an article from a private news source about work done by academics at a private university, saying that the parchment MAY predate the accepted dates of Islam's founding. How do you get from that to military scholarship and an attack on Islam? It's perfectly possible (leaving aside the deficiencies in the radiocarbon dating) to believe that the accepted dates are incorrect without condemning Islam in any way. People frequently discuss errors in the histories of other religions (e.g. the Old Testament has god giving an incorrect value of Pi) without condemning their followers in any way. tl;dr: "undermine the historicity of Islam" != "condemning an entire religion"
- s_q_b 11y ago
  This is a very good point. I'm drawing on a few cues here that raise my antennae, e.g. the conflict with scholars of Islam, the strength of the assertions compared to the shoddiness of the evidence, the promotion by a particular source (News Corp., which has an unabashed record of Islamophobia), the prolific use of A.D. vs C.E., etc. Particularly, the assertion that the Quran predates Muhammad seems absurd given the evidence, and leads me to believe that this is part of a pattern of anti-Islamic articles I've noticed recently. Take my comment for what it's worth. Your conclusions may vary.

by s_q_b 11y ago

DanBC 11y ago

> and like all religions it inspires everything from massive works of charity to zealotry, persecution, and bigotry. A few people try to claim that other religions don't inspire terrorist groups, but that's clearly bullshit. Buddhism is generally seen as pacifist but there's a Buddhist army and probably 2 Buddhist terrorist groups. (And that's not including Aum Shinryko) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Karen_Buddhist_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Karen_Buddhist_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodu_Bala_Sena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodu_Bala_Sena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/969_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/969_Movement etc.

s_q_b 11y ago
Wholeheartedly agreed. The ethnic cleansing by the Buddhist majority of the Muslim minority in Myanmar is horrifying right now. I'm very disappointed in Aung San Suu Kyi's leadership thus far. I suppose we'll see what she does after the election.
- mc32 11y ago
  I don't think you can blame her. She's in a very difficult position. She has to think of getting the country from under the throes of dictatorship before she can address civil rights. If she starts with civil rights, her effort will sputter and nothing will happen.
  - s_q_b 11y ago
    I agree that she's in an impossible position, with the Junta on one side and Buddhist extremists on the other, but her extreme popularity makes her uniquely capable of speaking up on behalf of the Rohingya. Also, she seems to be constructing her party along an authoritarian model. I was a supporter of her while under detention, but today I just don't know. I very sincerely hope she lives up to her rhetoric once in power.
npalli 11y ago
I hadn't heard of the Buddhist Army, so I looked at your link in wiki. Kind of undermines your point. > Though the majority of Karens are Buddhist, the Karen political leadership and leadership of the Karen insurgency have been overwhelmingly Christian, as a legacy of American missionary influence over the 19th and early 20th centuries.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Re-read the first line: > The Democratic Karen Benevolent Army formerly known as Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (Burmese: တိုးတက်သော ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာ ကရင်အမျိုးသား တပ်ဖွဲ့; abbreviated DKBA) is a breakaway group of Buddhist former soldiers and officers of the predominantly Karen Christian led Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), one of the larger insurgent armies in Burma. The KNLA is mostly Christian. The DBKA is the buddhist breakaway group.

stonewhite 11y ago

> The first known formal text of the Koran was not assembled until 653 A.D. on the orders of Uthman Hence the predating. It was memorized and written on leaves, stones etc. before that. Even if it was assembled before the said date, still a large portion of official Islamic history is at stake.

s_q_b 11y ago
And what we have here are a few fragments of the Quran that may or may not predate the other fragments. That doesn't seem contradictory with the current historical understanding. This article states that the Quran may predate Muhammad, which is a very much different assertion.

mc32 11y ago

I don't think this is set out to undermine religion. Believers will believe despite strong contrary evidence, if anything, it redoubles their beliefs. That said, if scholarly religious studies or any studies undermine the great religions and lesser religions, all the better. We'll all be better off without fervent believers. I understand the cultural aspect of these religions will outlast religion and I'm okay with that. It's part of people's cultural identities. I don't think for example, we should start renaming all the "San/Santa xxxxxx" city names to secular names.

escape_goat 11y ago
I seem to be writing short comments this morning myself, for which I apologize, but this is an absolutely terrible non-argument. You have a thesis statement, an assertion of fact that is essentially irrelevant to that thesis, and then the assertion that, besides, it would be good if your thesis was wrong. What you actually meant to say is "if scholarly religious studies do undermine the great religions and lesser religions, all the better." Which is fine, if that's an assertion you'd like to share with us, but you're not really all that interested in whether or not the article undermines religion; not enough to actually have anything to say about it.
- mc32 11y ago
  To undermine a religion, it's necessary for the religion to have fragile beliefs or beliefs proven untrue and accepted untrue. Since their beliefs are faith based, it's hard to undermine them. Believers would have to believe these findings upended their religions, which is something I find unlikely. So, it's almost impossible to undermine them. The only thing these findings do is reinforce what non believers already know and adds to historical knowledge. Therefore I don't think it sets out to undermine religion.
  - escape_goat 11y ago
    What is the thing that "non-believers already know" that these findings reinforce? I do not think that you will find a rational basis for any such thing in the facts cited by the article, as I shall discuss presently. This suggests that it is the tone and context of the article which provides your feeling of 'reinforcement', which in turn suggests that what is being appealed to is not your capability for reason, but your acquired prejudices. The article presents a single scientific finding: the parchment on which the Birmingham Koran was written was very likely manufactured sometime between 568 AD and 632 AD. That is all. There is no other finding presented in the article. The article presents four pieces of valid contextual information regarding dates. Firstly, that Muhammed most likely lived between 570 AD and 645 AD. Secondly, that Islam is generally regarded as having been founded in 610 AD. Thirdly, that the first Muslim community was established at Medina in 622 AD. Fourthly, that the first known 'official' version of the Koran was assembled on the orders of the third Caliph, Uthman, in 653 AD. The article also clarifies it is known for a fact that many sections of the Koran had been written down well before 653 AD. In this context, we have Keith Small's statement: "This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran's genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven," Clearly, the prior existence of the text of the Koran would establish a solid, factual doubt regarding the story of the Koran's origins. But just as clearly, no such thing is established here. The evidence presented merely fails to eliminate the possibility the Koran could have been written before so-and-so date. The parchment could have been written on before 610 AD, for instance. But even if it had not been, the possibility that parts of the Koran predated Islam would remain, because there is no way to disprove a hypothetical. Thus, it is hard to see how the assertion that 'more ground is given' makes any sense outside of a prejudicial, opinionated context. There is no ground given that was not already there. What Keith Small is announcing is basically that the available evidence fails to disprove his admittedly fringe hypothesis. What he is overlooking is that the evidence we are discussing could only ever has (a) proven, or (b) failed to disprove his hypothesis. It was never at risk of falsification. There is no rational basis to regard the "failure to disprove" as significant, and to treat it as such is evidence a prejudicial and emotive involvement in the subject matter.

mtviewdave 11y ago

> The assertion in this article seems deliberately calculated to undermine the historicity of Islam. There is a very sad and shortsighted movement in some corners of military scholarship right now that identifies Islam itself as the enemy... FWIW I've seem some pretty ridiculous "historical" claims made against the historicity of Christianity. When it comes to the history of someone else's religion, I find people tend to tolerate a lot of sloppiness. I wouldn't take this article as specifically anti-Islam, but rather an example of such sloppiness.

32bitkid 11y ago

> Given the practice of ancient scribes to re-use parchment repeatedly, a rather unfortunate practice that has resulted in the loss of uncountable ancient texts... I wonder if future historians will look back on modern mutable storage devices with the same distain.

haliax 11y ago

> Third, I'm forced to draw a rather unfortunate conclusion from this information. The assertion in this article seems deliberately calculated to undermine the historicity of Islam. There is a very sad and shortsighted movement in some corners of military scholarship right now that identifies Islam itself as the enemy, often beginning with Huntington's "clash of civilizations" narrative and ending with some examples of sheer lunacy, such as the recent article by a West Point associate professor arguing that legal human rights scholars are "an Islamist fifth column." This is an article from a private news source about work done by academics at a private university, saying that the parchment MAY predate the accepted dates of Islam's founding. How do you get from that to military scholarship and an attack on Islam? It's perfectly possible (leaving aside the deficiencies in the radiocarbon dating) to believe that the accepted dates are incorrect without condemning Islam in any way. People frequently discuss errors in the histories of other religions (e.g. the Old Testament has god giving an incorrect value of Pi) without condemning their followers in any way. tl;dr: "undermine the historicity of Islam" != "condemning an entire religion"

s_q_b 11y ago
This is a very good point. I'm drawing on a few cues here that raise my antennae, e.g. the conflict with scholars of Islam, the strength of the assertions compared to the shoddiness of the evidence, the promotion by a particular source (News Corp., which has an unabashed record of Islamophobia), the prolific use of A.D. vs C.E., etc. Particularly, the assertion that the Quran predates Muhammad seems absurd given the evidence, and leads me to believe that this is part of a pattern of anti-Islamic articles I've noticed recently. Take my comment for what it's worth. Your conclusions may vary.