Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy

by Jonathan A.C. Brown

The Gospels, Shakespeare’s plays and the Constitution of the United States are not just revered tomes, mere works of literature or meditations on law and justice. Each is part of a canon, a set of texts deemed authoritative by its community of readers. For Western European civilization from the fourth century until the early modern period, the Bible was the recognized vehicle of God’s truth. It remains so for many to this day. Shakespeare’s works are the measure of literary achievement in the English language, graciously bearing aphorisms on love and mortality. His grammar cannot be ‘wrong’ or his neologisms cheap. For Americans, the Constitution is the prized and venerated source of order and good governance. It is framed in the modern museum-temple, the conscript fathers who drafted it lionized anew with every heavy biography devoted to one of their number. Canonical texts may not always be above criticism, but critiquing them has its limits and its costs.