- Of the post-WW2 scholars, in 1961 the great Islamic scholar Maxime
Rodinson had this to say about the difficulties in writing his biography of
Mohammed: “How can one distinguish what is basically authentic from
what is not, the true from the false? [...] We still have the text of the
Koran. It is very hard to use, being generally extremely enigmatic, and
requiring lengthy labours to get it into chronological order...” Maxime
Rodinson, Mohammed [1961], trans. Anne Carter, New York, 1971,
p.xi. A decade after he first wrote his biography of Mohammed,
Rodinson was lamenting that all critical accounts of Islam had become
unthinking apologism for Islam: “the anti-colonialist left... often goes so
far as to sanctify Islam... to number among the conceptions permeated
with imperialism, any criticism of the Prophet’s moral attitudes...
Understanding has given way to apologetics pure and simple.” Maxime
Rodinson, “The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam”, in Joseph
Schacht (ed.) The Legacy of Islam, Oxford, 1974. ↵
dana p.
(Dana P.)
#1