/lit/ - Literature

>>23324932
>Many of the "heretical" splinters that we know about come from heresiographers themselves, e.g., al-Ash’ari (d. 324/935), al-Baghdadi (d. 429/1037) and Ibn Hazm (d. 456/1064). These sources are obviously problematic for the same reason one might not wish to consult with Irenaeus or Eusebius for an accurate portrayal about, say, Gnostic Christianity.
This redditor just assumes without reading the source material. Sunni "heresiographers", if you can call them that, quoted "heretical" writings and poetry directly, and in some cases, even preserved them.

They assume that just because a piece of writing is polemical, it immediately follows that it is disingenuous and problematic. They see proto-orthodox lie and slander the other christian sects and immediately think muslims did the same without research

>>23324888
>I'm wondering if there were any similar movements within Sunni Islam, in Sufism maybe?
All the crazies in early Islam flocked to the extreme proponents of Ali's Shia, but there is doubt as to whether or not Abdullah ibn Saba' was a real person, because the parallels between him and Paul of Tarsus almost seems planned

>>23267794
On hadith, and the preservation of Islamic source material, I'd recommend Al-A'zami's Studies in Early Hadith Literature.

For the preservation of the Qur'an and the modern Muslim perspective on the OT and NT, Al-A'zami's History of the Quranic Text is good.

For the Islamic perspective on Christianity, Qadi Ibn Abdul Jabbar's Critique of Christian Origins is good, though he is a Mu'tazili.

For the biography of the Prophet, everyone recommends The Sealed Nectar or Martin Lings' Muhammad.

>>23098661
One exception is the revisionist view of Islam, that is, that most of Early Islamic History is fiction and that the Qur'an was created by a committee of Abbassid era experts of eloquence and scripture in conspiracy with the government. This, of course, did not exist before the 20th century.

In my study of Christians writings on Islam, both in and outside of the Islamic empire, early Islamic history was never put into question, becuase these writers were living in the direct consequence of it. If all of it were invented, Christians would have been the first to proclaim such. Yet, historical Christians claims have always portrayed Muhammad as possessed, as the Anti-Christ, as someone who was taught by Jews and Heretics or as a true prophet but only to the Arabs.

As for the so-called "Syro-Aramaic reading of the Qur'an", there isn't nearly as much manuscript evidence for it as the claims in that book demands. In fact, there is zero.

In the 70s, Islamic skeptics argue that the Qur'an was written in the Abbasid period, and the hadith were invented in this time. With the recent discovery of the San'a and Birmingham Qur'ans, there has been a mass exodus from this view, with only the illiterate polemicists still persisting. Now, they are claiming that the Qur'an was written much earlier instead, which also requires manuscript evidence