The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters Quotes

“The Islamicist account of the rise of Islam is
overwhelmingly based on ḥadīth, indeed on ḥadīth as opposed to the Qurʾān,
reflecting the preference for tradition that prevailed among Muslims themselves
until quite recently. It is the revolt against traditional tafsīr, the move
back to the Qurʾān, of the modernists that allows all of us to take the Qurʾān as
evidence in a way that would have been unthinkable forty years ago.”
― Patricia Crone, The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters

“Did the latter[The Messenger] have a predecessor, who envisaged
revelation as taking place by direct contact with a divine being rather than by
a book being sent down (whether as a whole or in instalments), who claimed
to have enjoyed such contact himself and who objected to the pagan angels—
not because they violated the dividing line between God and created beings
but rather because they were female? We do not hear of such a predecessor
elsewhere in the Quran, but we do learn that the Messenger had competitors in
his own time, at least in Yathrib (2:79, where they share his concept of revelation
as a book), so there is nothing implausible about the proposition that there
were preachers before him too, including some whose preaching anticipated
features of his own.”
― Patricia Crone, The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters