The mushrikûn
Were Christians
According to the
later – widely fictitious – Islamic historiography the Meccan and Central
Arabian adversaries of MuHammad,
the so called mushrikûn, "associators" (i.e. those who
"associate" other gods to God), were some vague "idolators"
or "pagans". However that they actually were (Trinitarian) Christians
could long since be gathered already from many dispersed old remarks still
extant in the ocean of Islamic tradition, though Orthodox Islam has tried to
eradicate as far as possible all relics of the true picture of the rise of
Islam, including the fact that these mushrikûn, "associators"
actually were (Trinitarian) Christians.
Günter Lüling in his "A Challenge to Islam for
Reformation. The Rediscovery and reliable
Reconstruction of a comprehensive pre-Islamic Christian Hymnal hidden in the
Koran under earliest Islamic Reinterpretations", Delhi (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers) 2003,[1] on page XIV points to an example of those
remarks which evaded the later "Orthodox" eradication: A tradition
still contained in AT-Tabarî's
Commentary on Surah 12:106 and ascribed to Abdullah Ibn ‘Abbas, reportedly an
uncle of MuHammad, allegedly one
of the greatest scholars of early Islam and the first exegete of the Koran.
And this is the
tradition still extant in AT-Tabarî's
commentary on surah 12:106:
حَدَّثَنِي
مُحَمَّد بْن
سَعْد قالَ
ثني أبِي قالَ
ثني عَمَّي
قالَ ثني أبِي
عَنْ أبِيهِ
عَن ابْن
عَبَّاس قَوْله
{وَمَا
يُؤْمِنُ
اكْثَرُهُم
بِاللَّهِ
إلَّا وَهُم
مُشْرِكُونَ}
يَعْنِي
النَّصَارَا
Haddathanî muHammad bnu sa‘d, qâla: [Hadda]thanî abî, qâla:
[Hadda]thanî ‘ammî, qâla: [Hadda]thanî abî ‘an abîhi, ‘an ibni ‘abbâs, qauluhu:
{wa mâ yu’minu
aktharuhum bi-llâhi illâ wa hum mushrikûna} ya‘nî n-naSârâ
Muhammad b. Sa‘d handed down to us, he said: My
father handed down to us, he said: My uncle handed down to us, he said: My
father handed down to us from his father from Ibn ‘Abbas: His [God's] speech {And most of them don't believe in God unless
they associate [other gods to
God] = And most of them believe
in God, only that they associate [other gods to God]} means the Christians.
Zurück zu Koranische Textkritik / Back to Textual Criticism Applied to the Koran
[1] Here is the English and here the Arabic translation of the review by Wolfgang Günter Lerch, a pupil of Josef van Ess and expert for Oriental and Islamic affairs with the leading German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published there on June 1st, 2004.