Talk:History of the Quran

Ignorance about Naksh.

The person who wrote this article has no Idea about Naksh or abrogation of Quranic laws and verses which he described as lost verses.Also he wrote a lot of weird things without giving a source. 103.106.201.51 (talk) 18:04, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Salla

What to say 71.123.46.27 (talk) 21:20, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Revisionist accounts

The section "View of non-Muslim scholarship" is in need of serious editing. To show some of the issues with this section, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook are used as references to the theory that the Quran wasn't spoken by Muhammad. Their book "Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World" is also referenced in this section to support that point. The central thesis of this book doesn't seem to be positively accepted by the academic community at all and Crone and Cook have since expressed views that contradict the assertions they made in that book. Crone's updated views have already been referenced in the first topic on this talk page. Crone also gave a summary on the state of scholarship as it pertains to the origin of the Quran where she states that it is "difficult to doubt" that the Quran was "uttered" by Muhammad. All of this, on Crone's views, can be found in this article she wrote titled, "What do we actually know about Muhammad". As for Cook, in a forum in 2006, he states, "Muhammad was born about 570. Forty years later, around 610, he began to receive revelations from on high. He continued to receive those revelations for something like 20 years, and collectively, those revelations constitute the Koran. The Koran was put together in the exact form in which we have it today something like 20 years after his death in 632. Some time around 650 —–give or take a few years — the Koran is put together the way it is now." The fact that these two scholar's views, today, on the origins of the Quran match the mainstream view of the Quran's origins is especially noteworthy given how prominent the two are in the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies.

This article is giving too much weight to the skeptical theories of the Quran's origins which seem to be in the minority of the academic community and thus not reflective of the academic community's general views. Accurate minority views should be noted, but they should be labeled as such and not the primary focus of the section. I, however, am not accustomed to editing on Wikipedia so I am hesitant to begin such extensive editing on my own. Input on this matter would be appreciated. Renegade4dk (talk) 00:38, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

True, there is even contrariy evidence among researches that parts of the Quran predate Muhammad. The article gives too much weight on Criticism, while the best evidence currently available, even among secular scholars, is the account by Muslim sources. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 11:16, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Neutrality concerns

Does this edit seem reasonable? I suspect that it might have WP:NPOV issues, particularly regarding WP:DUE and WP:FRINGE, with a great deal of attention and prominence in the lead section being given to Revisionist school of Islamic studies. If there's pushback from others, I'm inclined to restore the stable version of this article. Courtesy pings to @NGC 628: and users who have had recent involvement with this topic @Tgeorgescu, Gråbergs Gråa Sång, VenusFeuerFalle, Barbardo, R Prazeres, and Iskandar323: for community input. Left guide (talk) 08:15, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

The material appears well-sourced, but looks rather undue in the lead. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

This user has been pushing large additions about the Revisionist school across several articles. I'm also seeing the discussion at Talk:Islam#Revisionist school, I'm inclined to encourage more discussion there and perhaps take consensus there as a good example to follow elsewhere. It seems WP:UNDUE, since this school of thought is not widely followed or accepted. A mention of it is fine, but probably not a long paragraph giving it equal weight to other perspectives. R Prazeres (talk) 08:39, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@R Prazeres: yeah I noticed that as well. To be honest, if this persists, we should probably take this to either WP:NPOVN or WP:FTN since it appears to be a systemic issue involving multiple related articles. On a smaller note, I also just noticed that the recently updated version of this article contains some weird citation formatting errors appearing in the etymology section, and malformed tags there too. Left guide (talk) 09:37, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the general wave of edits concerning the "Revisionist school of Islamic studies, I want to point out at the following: AVOIDCREATE (Wikipedia surveys existing human knowledge; it is not a place to publish new work). WP:NRV ("No subject is automatically or inherently notable merely because it exists: the evidence must show the topic has gained significant independent coverage or recognition, and that this was not a mere short-term interest, nor a result of promotional activity or indiscriminate publicity, nor is the topic unsuitable for any other reason."), WP:ARTN ("If the subject has not been covered outside of Wikipedia, no amount of improvement to the Wikipedia content will suddenly make the subject notable."), and WP:FORUM ("Primary (original) research, such as proposing theories and solutions, communicating original ideas, offering novel definitions of terms, coining new words, etc. If you have completed primary research on a topic, your results should be published in other venues, such as peer-reviewed journals, other printed forms, open research, or respected online publications."). No Original Research also contains WP:NOTESAL ("A common mistake is to present a novel synthesis of ideas in an article."). The edits seem to be doing such sort of synthesis. It is mostly a text consisting of different references in support of the proposed theory, rather than a lot of sources agreing or dealing with this theory. For example the encyclopedia of Iranica (COINS AND COINAGE – Encyclopaedia Iranica (iranicaonline.org)) cited does speak about the coins, but not about a criticism of Islamic history. The statement "As the Arabs of the Ḥejāz had used the drahms of the Sasanian emperors, the only silver coinage in the world at that time, it was natural for them to leave many of the Sasanian mints in operation, striking coins like those of the emperors in every detail except for the addition of brief Arabic inscriptions like besmellāh in the margins" is completely out of context, and, for someone educated in the history of the Middle East, these coins are of no surprise. Syncretism is well known in the history of Islam, by both Western and Muslim sources. This is no support for Revisionistic School. Not only are the sources most of the time used as a form of synthesis, the theory itself isn't well established in academic sources to be phrase it as a valid alternative account on the history of Islam. Maybe there can be a short reference to a the Criticism section, but I don't see it worth of more attention than that. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 11:13, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@VenusFeuerFalle: thank you for the very thorough policy-based analysis of this situation, and I generally agree; throughout these various rounds of discussions, there doesn't appear to be any evidence yet that this material can be presented anywhere on Wikipedia aside from possibly articles like Criticism of Islam and Criticism of the Quran, contextualized in due proportion against other criticisms and of course the mainstream prevailing scholarship. Left guide (talk) 11:49, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@VenusFeuerFalle: Your explanations are really important for me, thank you very much. They will be useful for my future contributions NGC 628 (talk) 12:14, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Massive deletion

Yesterday I spent hours carefully and selectively restoring and re-arranging a lot of material that was deleted in August, and made several other small improvements as well (see my edit). Now I find that User:R Prazeres has simply reverted everything I did, even undoing the improvements and the anchor I added. I think this is unacceptable. I should not have to argue for the inclusion of all the paragraphs I restored. On the contrary -- many editors over the years have added those portions, with lots of references, and the one who wants to delete it all should be the one who argues for that on the talk page! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:47, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Eric Kvaalen, I appreciate any work you put into this. But as I mentioned in my revert, another editor (Pogenplain) also put work into streamlining the article in August 2024 and they provided justifications in their edit summaries. A quick spot-check suggests to me that their edits were sensible. I'm not necessarily insisting that all their edits be sustained, but, respectfully, you have not provided any clear reason for restoring the content, other than (in paraphrase) "content should not be deleted without discussion". There's nothing wrong with editors removing material if it serves the article's purpose, so that in itself is not a helpful justification in my view. I think it's reasonable to expect that if you are undoing another editor's work months later, you will provide more of an explanation that relates to the content itself.

In any case, I also invite Pogenplain to respond to this. I have no further objection to restoring Eric Kvaalen's edit if that's what others prefer or if it facilitates discussion per WP:STATUSQUO (though the comment above mentions other changes, so I'm not sure if the "status quo" is clear here). I certainly have no objection with fixing any broken anchors, though I suggest making functional fixes like that separately. Also, I'll remind all that an alternative to deleting content is moving it to other articles; something to consider, if relevant here.

Side-note for Eric Kvaalen: you said that you restored, re-arranged, and made other improvements in your edit. As general advice: when you are making an edit of this scale, you cannot reasonably expect other editors to sift through every individual change you made in isolation from the wider change, especially when your edit summary doesn't mention any of this ([1]). If you really care about having different parts of your edit evaluated separately, then in the future I recommend you break up this kind of edit into multiple edits. E.g.: if you're deleting or restoring content, do that in one edit, then make new changes in separate edits. This makes it: a) easier for others to identify the different changes you made; b) easier for you to explain different actions in different edit summaries; and c) easier for editors to revert a specific edit without necessarily reverting the others.

Cheers, R Prazeres (talk) 22:45, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I removed this months ago w/ explanation (& no one objected then). Wholesale restoration now demands some kind of justification. Editorial improvements unrelated to content restoration can be made in an independent edit. Pogenplain (talk) 00:28, 27 October 2024 (UTC)