Abstract:The talk summarizes the traditional view of Islam's origins and its limitations, particularly the problem of deficient sources, and then sketches out differing revisionist approaches on Islam's origins and on the nature and early history of the Qur'an text. While skepticism about some information in the traditional Islamic narratives is warranted, it is also clear that these sources must be used, albeit critically, to reconstruct Islam's origins. The paper closes with a summary of a reconstruction, based mainl… Show more
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