Perspectives on the Qur'an: Negotiating Different Views of a Shared History

Directors: Angelika Neuwirth (Free University Berlin) and Stefan Wild (Bonn University)
Members: Islam Dayeh, Michael Marx, Nicolai Sinai, Ghassan El-Masri

This research field is associated with the Corpus Coranicum Project of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

 
While Western research sees itself as indiscriminately subjecting the Qur'an to the same methods of historical-critical scrutiny that it routinely applies to the Bible as well, Muslim scholars have often complained and still complain about what they perceive as Orientalist attempts to undermine the Qur'an's position of religious authority within the Islamic community. This accusation is in part fuelled by the openly depreciating tone of voice prevalent in some nineteenth-century qur'anic scholarship. Non-Muslim scholars who deal with a subject as sensitive as the Qur'an will have to take these attitudes into account; they certainly must not forego well-established techniques of philological study out of an irenic desire to minimize intercultural conflict, but they will have to put more effort into explaining convincingly why precisely they do what they are doing - and to critically examine the assumptions and motives of the scholarly traditions in which they stand.

Please find a complete description of the research field here.