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The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History. By G. R. HAWTING. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1999. Pp. xvii + 168. $54.95.
This interesting book proposes two hypotheses about the origins of Islam and also about the various ways the Islamic community elaborated its own view of those origins. It is a book intended for specialists, replete with sometimes complex argumentation and with many philological and other technical asides; yet despite this, it is generally clear, well presented, and probably accessible to the determined non-specialist (e.g., the student of comparative religion).
The author's first argument (articulated in chapter two) is that the Quran's invective against the mushrikun, which can be translated "associaters" or "idolaters," need not be taken as binding evidence that the Quran emerged historically in a pagan environment. Rather, Hawting argues, these references should be understood as metaphor or hyperbole: the Quran in effect attacks some people as being "like idolaters" or "as bad as idolaters," by calling mushrikun those whom it deems "soft" in their monotheism. This practice, Hawting alleges, is what one would expect in an environment marked by intense polemic among various kinds of monotheists-an idea he documents thoroughly in the third chapter, which shows that such hyperbolic use of charges of "idolatry" was quite common in the monotheist polemic of many periods-Christian, Jewish, and Muslim.
This first argument strikes me as not only plausible, but, on the basis of Hawting's evidence, quite likely, and constitutes an impressive contribution to scholarly thinking about the Quran. Accepting it, however, forces us to confront its implications for our understanding of the Quran's historical context, which brings us to Hawting's second argument. Traditional Islamic narratives portray the Quran has having been revealed to Muhammad in the thoroughly pagan or idolatrous context of western Arabia, but this, of course, does not fit well with Hawting's first hypothesis. So how is this apparent contradiction to be resolved? Logically, it seems that two options present themselves: the first is to argue that Mecca on the eve of Islam was not a stronghold of...