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Convenient Revelations: Difference between revisions
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According to Islamic tradition, the [[Quran]] was [[Revelation|revealed]] gradually to the prophet [[Muhammad]] over the 23 years of his prophethood, generally in the form of divine guidance for the circumstances Muhammad found himself in at any given time. Thus, in addition to containing commandments and [[Shari'ah (Islamic Law)|laws]] aimed at the entire Muslim population, the Quran also contains content intended only for Muhammad's employment. Often revelation of the latter sort was related to the extremely personal circumstances of the prophet, including exclusive exemptions for Muhammad from Islamic law, admonitions of his [[Muhammad's Marriages|wives]] and guests, and intimate [[Ahl al-Bayt (Muhammad's Household)|family]] affairs. In addition to revelations passed to Muhammad in the form of the Quran, according to the hadith literature, Muhammad would sometimes assert he had received a message from [[Allah (God)|God]] which was not intended as part of the Quran but which was nonetheless binding in all the same ways. These non-Quranic revelations form a genre of the hadith known as the ''hadith qudsi''. Traditional Islamic scholars do not consider these hadith qudsi to be any more important than regular hadiths, although the reasoning behind this absence of distinction has not been clarified by them or agreed upon in common. | |||
== Historical interpretations of convenient revelation == | |||
There are three different historical interpretations of this highly-intimate variety of [[Asbab al-Nuzul (Revelational Circumstances of the Quran)|revelational circumstance (''Asbab al-Nuzul)'']], particular where it occurs in the Quran. | |||
=== Traditionalists === | |||
According to traditional Islamic scholars and perhaps the Quran itself, while these "convenient revelations" may appear superficially to be of no use to individuals other than Muhammad, they are in fact spiritually, legally, or theologically instructive in some manner and are thus God is entirely justified to include them in the Quran. | |||
=== Critics === | |||
According to critics, this variety of revelation scarcely merits inclusion in a eternal document of divine importance that conceives of itself as "guidance for all of mankind". In this vein, critics often cite the hadith in Sahih Bukhari according to which Aisha, Muhammad's favorite wife, once said to him after such revelation, "I feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires."<ref>{{Bukhari|6|60|311|}}</ref> To critics, these highly-personal and suspiciously convenient revelations are evidence that Muhammad simply employed God's voice to get what he wanted, such as, for instance, an exemption from the four-wife limit imposed by Islamic law as well as a last-minute clarification that marrying the ex-wife of one's adopted son was permissible. | |||
=== Historians === | |||
According to most historians, the highly convenient revelational circumstance attributed to certain Quranic verses are no more, or even far less reliable as historical documentation than the typical variety of revelational circumstance used to explain the meaning of any other verse in the Quran. To these historians, the vast majority of the hadith corpus was generated many decades after Muhammad's death in order to justify competing legal preferences and in order to explain otherwise context-bereft and incomprehensible passages in the Quran, of which there are many (this end being not entirely distinct from the former). Some other historians, however, prefer to view the the convenient revelational circumstances reported in the hadith as being exceptionally reliable due to their apparently condemnatory nature. The reasoning with these historians is that anecdotes which appear to cast Muhammad in an often negative light could not have been made up by devout Muslims, and thus may actually have historical basis. These two interpretations advanced by historians are not mutually exclusive and are often considered in tandem, with the explanations of some passaged being later inventions and some being historically plausible. | |||
==The Revelations== | ==The Revelations== | ||