Garth Fowden has broken through the impasse of Western and Muslim historiography with his latest book Before and After Muhammad (see Michael Pregill's excellent review here).
On page 48, Fowden crystallizes in a single sentence the thesis which underlies my 2008 doctoral dissertation Modern Qur'anic Hermeneutics:
"The refusal of many in the Islamic world to acknowledge the late antique pluralism to which the Qur'an responds undermines their grasp on history and their access to the context and contacts which are Islam's birthright" (emphasis added).
I alluded to this fact throughout my dissertation, beginning with my epigram from the Qur'an (25:30): "And the Messenger says, 'O Lord! Verily my people [mis]take this Recitation [for something] without roots'" [my translation].
The sacred history of the Islamic tradition, a triumphalist narrative (like all sacred histories), has had the unintended consequence of impoverishing Muslims' appreciation of their own past. Severing themselves from that past has had one advantage: it allowed Muslims to claim that their religion was sui generis. But no religion is sui generis, and Muslims have substituted myth for history for so long that, in Fowden's wonderfully Biblicist expression, they have traded their own rich historical inheritance for a mess of ideological pottage.
Fowden promises further work in this vein and I can only say that it will be welcomed by all who wish to see the historical narratives of Muslims and "the West" made to conform more faithfully to the historical record.
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