Lecture at the Faculty of Theology, Istanbul University, May 10, 2016
Muslims are not the only monotheists who have had to puzzle over the authority of scripture in relation to other sources of authority. In particular, Qur’an only ideas are superficially similar to Protestant ideas about the Bible. One rallying cry of post-reformation Protestants was sola scriptura – scripture alone – and each of the major Protestant reformers justified their positions by arguing that the Bible was the sole authority for Christian faith and practice. Can a comparison with Protestant ideas about the Bible help us in any way to better understand the emergence of Qur’anist ideas among modern Muslims?
Pursuing this comparison may be useful for another reason. Repeatedly over the last century or more we have had to endure the lament that Islam has never experienced a reformation, with the implication that it needs to. And periodically some liberal Muslim intellectual will be optimistically labeled the “Martin Luther” of Islam. I have a shelf load of books by such Muslim candidates for Luther’s mantle. Such comparisons will certainly continue to show up in popular articles and on book jackets. It may be worth our while to pause and ask whether comparisons like these to the Protestant reformation make any sense, or are in any way helpful.
Daniel Brown is the author of Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought and A New Introduction to Islam. He directs the Institute for the Study of Religion in the Middle East
