Satanic Verses

, flanked by goddesses Manāt and al-'Uzzá There are some accounts of the incident, which differ in the construction and detail of the narrative, but they may be broadly collated to produce a basic account. The different versions of the story are recorded in early (Quranic commentaries) and biographies of the Prophet, such as Ibn Ishaq's. In its essential form, the story reports that Muhammad longed to convert his kinsmen and neighbors of Mecca to Islam. It then reports that as he was reciting these verses of surah 53, considered a revelation from the angel Gabriel: Satan tempted him to utter the following line which does not appear in the Quran: Al-Lat, al-'Uzza, and Manat were three pre-Islamic Arabian goddesses worshipped by the Meccans. Discerning the precise meaning of the word has proven difficult, as it has multiple appropriate meanings. Commentators have written that it means 'cranes'. In other contexts, the Arabic word does mean a craneappearing in the singular as and , and the word has cousin forms in other words for birds, including 'raven', 'crow' and 'eagle'. Taken as a segment, "exalted " has been translated by Orientalist William Muir to mean 'exalted women', while contemporary academic Muhammad Manazir Ahsan has translated the same segment as 'high-soaring ones (deities)'. Thus, whether the phrase had intended to attribute a divine nature to the three idols is a matter of dispute. In either case, scholars generally agree on the meaning of the second half of the verse, "whose intercession is hoped for". ==Tabari's account==

An extensive account of the incident is found in al-Tabari's history, the Tarikh (Vol. VI, ): ==Reception in Muslim exegesis==

Early Islam Shahab Ahmed, author of a book on the Satanic Verses in early Islam, observed that in the era of early and sirah (maghazi) literature, the incident was near-universally accepted by the early Muslim community and illustrative of a concept of prophethood involving an ongoing struggle. Later, it was rejected when the logic of the era of hadith collections and subsequent orthodoxy was based on two epistemological principles: the theological principle of (impeccability of the prophets) and the hadith methodological principle of assaying reports by their isnads. Ibn Hazm considered the story to be fabricated, saying: "The hadith which includes the phrase, 'Indeed, they are the lofty Gharaniq, and their intercession is hoped for,' is an absolute lie. It is neither valid in terms of transmission nor worthy of being engaged with, as fabricating lies is within anyone's capacity." According to Ibn Taymiyyah, there are two opinions in regard to this. It was transmitted that the early Islamic scholars (Salaf) believed the story, while later scholars (Khalaf) say that the transmission of the account is not established as reliable. This was a reference to the narration recorded by scholars such as Al-Bukhari and Al-Muslim who mentioned the recitation of the current verses of Chapter 53 and the prostration of the Muslims and the disbelievers upon their recitation, but not the intervention of Satan. Ibn Sa'd and al-Waqidi, two other early biographers of Muhammad relate the story. The doctrine of has been most forcefully and consistently upheld by the Shi'a, for whom it is a central tenet. It therefore appears that no Shi'ite of any school has ever accepted the Satanic Verses incident. Those Sunni scholars who did accept the incident had a slightly, but very significantly, different understanding of . Later medieval period Due to its controversial nature, the tradition of the Satanic Verses never made it into any of the canonical hadith compilations (though possible truncated versions of the incident did). In addition to appearing in Tabari's tafsir, it is used in the tafsirs of Muqatil, Abd al-Razzaq al-San'ani and Ibn Kathir, as well as the of Abu Ja'far an-Nahhas, the asbab collection of Wahidi and even the late-medieval as-Suyuti's compilation . Objections to the incident were raised as early as the fourth Islamic century, such as in the work of an-Nahhās, and continued to be raised throughout later generations by scholars such as Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi (), Fakhr ad-Din al-Razi (1220) as well as al-Qurtubi (1285). The most comprehensive argument presented against the factuality of the incident came in Qadi Iyad's . Those scholars who acknowledged the historicity of the incident apparently had a different method for the assessment of reports than that which has become standard Islamic methodology. For example, Ibn Taymiyyah took the position that since tafsir and reports were commonly transmitted by incomplete , these reports should not be assessed according to the completeness of the chains but rather on the basis of recurrent transmission of common meaning between reports. Acceptance of the story is often considered grounds for takfir (being declared an unbeliever). Aqa Mahdi Puya has said that these fake verses were shouted out by the Meccans to make it appear that it was Muhammad who had spoken them; he writes: ==Historicity debate==

Since William Muir, the historicity of this episode had been accepted by secular academics. Some Orientalists, however, argued against the historic authenticity of these verses on various grounds. Sean Anthony observes a trend of more recent scholarship towards rejecting the historicity of the story after a period in which scholars were more divided. Orientalists, including the authors of the most widely-read biographies of Muhammad (Muir, D. S. Margoliouth, W. Montgomery Watt, Maxime Rodinson and F. E. Peters), have generally accepted the veracity of the story, arguing that it is implausible that Muslims could have fabricated a story so unflattering to their prophet. However, Shahab Ahmed writes, "The widespread acceptance of the incident by early Muslims suggests, however, that they did not view the incident as inauspicious and that they would presumably not have, on this basis at least, been adverse to inventing it." Disagreeing with Burton, G.R. Hawting writes that the Satanic Verses incident would not serve to justify or exemplify a theory that God reveals something and later replaces it himself with another true revelation. Maxime Rodinson finds that it may reasonably be accepted as true "because the makers of Muslim tradition would never have invented a story with such damaging implications for the revelation as a whole." He writes the following on the genesis of the verses: "Obviously Muhammad's unconscious had suggested to him a formula which provided a practical road to unanimity." Rodinson writes that this concession, however, diminished the threat of the Last Judgment by enabling the three goddesses to intercede for sinners and save them from eternal damnation. Further, it diminished Muhammad's own authority by giving the priests of al-'Uzza, Manat, and al-Lat the ability to pronounce oracles contradicting his message. Disparagement from Christians and Jews, who pointed out that he was reverting to his pagan beginnings, combined with opposition and indignation from his own followers influenced him to recant his revelation. However, in doing so he denounced the gods of Mecca as lesser spirits or mere names, cast off everything related to the traditional religion as the work of pagans and unbelievers, and consigned the Meccan's pious ancestors and relatives to Hell. This was the final break with the Quraysh. Since John Wansbrough's contributions to the field in the early 1970s, though, scholars have become much more attentive to the emergent nature of early Islam, and less willing to accept back-projected claims of continuity:To those who see the tradition as constantly evolving and supplying answers to question that it itself has raised, the argument that there would be no reason to develop and transmit material which seems derogatory of the Prophet or of Islam is too simple. For one thing, ideas about what is derogatory may change over time. We know that the doctrine of the Prophet's infallibility and impeccability (the doctrine regarding his ) emerged only slowly. For another, material which we now find in the biography of the Prophet originated in various circumstances to meet various needs and one has to understand why material exists before one can make a judgment about its basis in fact... In Rubin's contribution to the debate, questions of historicity are completely eschewed in favor of an examination of internal textual dynamics and what they reveal about early medieval Islam. Rubin claims to have located the genesis of many prophetic traditions and that they show an early Muslim desire to prove to other scriptuaries "that Muhammad did indeed belong to the same exclusive predestined chain of prophets in whom the Jews and the Christians believed. He alleges that the Muslims had to establish the story of Muhammad's life on the same literary patterns as were used in the vitae of the other prophets". The incident of the Satanic Verses, according to him, conforms to the common theme of persecution followed by isolation of the prophet-figure. As the story was adapted to include Quranic material (Q, Q), the idea of Satanic temptation was claimed to have been added, heightening its inherent drama as well as incorporating additional Biblical motifs (cf. the Temptation of Christ). Rubin gives his attention to the narratological exigencies which may have shaped early material, as opposed to the more commonly considered ones of dogma, sect, and political/dynastic faction. Rubin also claimed that the supposed temporary control taken by Satan over Muhammad made such traditions unacceptable to early hadith compilers, which he believed to be a unique case in which a group of traditions are rejected only after being subject to Quranic models, and as a direct result of this adjustment. Patricia Crone makes a similar point but regarding the preceding verses, Q.. She argues that "Have you seen al-Lat...?" should be taken as a hostile question about literally seeing the three deities, particularly since the preceding half of the surah repeatedly claims that Allah's servant saw the heavenly being, and noting also other verses where a similar question is asked (Q. and Q.). On the other hand, Tommaso Tesei builds on the common observation (also mentioned by Crone) that verses 23 and 26-32 of Q. 53 appear to be an interpolation of long verses into a surah of otherwise short verses. Tesei argues that those verses display stylistic incoherence as well as a theological tension with the rest of Q. 53, a surah which is consistent with evidence external to the Islamic tradition regarding pre-Islamic deities and star worship. Of relevance to the possibility of historical elements in the Satanic Verses story, Tesei notes that the interpolation (as he sees it) coincides exactly with the traditional account that an explanatory comment was inserted to rectify the identification of the pagan deities as divine intercessors. Shahab Ahmed noted that the Quran is at pains to deny that the source of Muhammad's inspiration is a shaytan (Q., Q.) because for his immediate audience, the sources for the two categories of inspired individuals in society, poets and soothsayers, were shaytans and jinn, respectively, whereas Muhammad was a prophet. ==Related traditions==

Several related traditions exist, some adapted to Quranic material, some not. One version, appearing in Tabari's tafsir and attributed to 'Urwa b. al-Zubayr (d. 713), preserves the basic narrative but with no mention of Satanic temptation. Muhammad is persecuted by the Meccans after attacking their idols, during which time a group of Muslims seeks refuge in Abyssinia. After the cessation of this first round of persecution () they return home, but soon a second round begins. No compelling reason is provided for the caesura of persecution, though, unlike in the incident of the Satanic Verses, where it is the (temporary) fruit of Muhammad's accommodation to Meccan polytheism. Another version attributed to 'Urwa has only one round of , which begins after Muhammad has converted the entire population of Mecca, so that the Muslims are too numerous to perform ritual prostration () all together. This somewhat parallels the Muslims and mushrikun (idolater) prostrating themselves together after Muhammad's first, allegedly Satanically-infected recitation of surah 53, in which allegedly the efficacy of the three pagan goddesses is acknowledged. Thus, according to Rubin, "the story of the single polytheist who raised a handful of dirt to his forehead ... [in an] attempt of an old disabled man to participate in Muhammad's ... in ... a sarcastic act of an enemy of Muhammad wishing to dishonor the Islamic prayer". And "traditions which originally related the dramatic story of temptation became a sterilized anecdote providing prophetic precedent for a ritual practice". ==See also==