Book Review: Cultural Exchange and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland: The English and the Irish of the Four Obedient Shires

Abstract

This study of modem Qur'iin interpretation presupposes familiarity with the details of Bible criticism. The attentoin is focused on Qur'finjc (narrations) about events that are believed by Muslims to be historic, such as the construction of the Ka'ba by Abraham and Ishmael or the story of prophets like Joseph, Moses, and Jesus. A basic shortcoming of the book under review is its taking for granted that these legends have scientifically been proved to be unhistoric. It is certainly known to many a Muslim theologian that some historians of the Bible consider Abraham a mere symbolic figure and that Jesus had once been shown to be nothing but an amalgam of Near Eastern myths. It would have lent tangibility to the book had there been an incipient chapter or at least a section where the latest findings were epitomized along with an indication of the most relevant sources, in other words, an effort to render plausible, if not cogent, why for instance Abraham is finally to be discarded as an historic personality and why the historicity of Jesus is now established beyond doubt. Without such an exposition all the author's insistence on the necessity of dissecting those tales in the Qur'iin and adopting an entirely new conception of them floats in a sort of void at least when looked at from the Muslim angle. For the non-Muslim historiaa of religions it should be of interest to know concretely what there is so utterly unhistoric about the Qur'anic q i w (said to be distorted versions of the Biblical stories) and why all this difference with traditionalist Muslims who are wont to regard the material revealed to Mubarnmad as superior, being convinced that they possess the only authentic edition of the reports about the prophets of God.