The Origins of the Koran – Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book by Ibn Warraq, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1998. 411 pages.
Ibn Warraq is the pseudonym for a Muslim background scholar who is now an atheist living in the West. His object here is “to bring to the study of Islam and the Koran the same healthy skepticism developed within modern biblical studies…” To do this he assembled 13 classic (most written before 1950) studies by nine authors about the collection and early variants of the Koran, its sources, and a literary analysis. They are detailed and scholarly, but fascinating, and a welcome change to the credulous volumes written by Muslims or modern Western scholars eager to be politically correct.
