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>The Times of London reported that radiocarbon dating carried out by experts at the University of Oxford says the fragments were produced between the years 568 A.D. and 645 A.D. Muhammad is generally believed to have lived between 570 A.D. and 632 A.D. The man known to Muslims as The Prophet is thought to have founded Islam sometime after 610 A.D., with the first Muslim community established at Medina, in present-day…
> University of Oxford says the fragments were produced between the years 568 A.D. and 645 A.D. Muhammad is generally believed to have lived between 570 A.D. and 632 A.D. Without a narrower range, it's ridiculous to say that it predates Muhammad. At most it predates the first known, fully assembled Qur'an from 653CE. (Aside: I realize this story comes from Fox News but its listing of dates as "Anno Domini" is in poor…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_diacritics#history
This seems more like a means to incite Muslims rather than science.
> University of Oxford says the fragments were produced between the years 568 A.D. and 645 A.D. Muhammad is generally believed to have lived between 570 A.D. and 632 A.D. Without a narrower range, it's ridiculous to say that it predates Muhammad. At most it predates the first known, fully assembled Qur'an from 653CE. (Aside: I realize this story comes from Fox News but its listing of dates as "Anno Domini" is in poor…
In terms of years AD isn't really disrespectful the CE (Common Era) never really caught on and it was the same years. Muslim year numbers are in AH (1 AH is when the prophet moved to Medina) so 1 AH Day 1 is 16 July 622. So the years would be 54 BAH to 23 AH. This range means that it goes with our history from the time. As far as history goes int he last 100 years we have gotten very good at dates in our history and especially around the 6th Century. Bogus reporting on bogus scholarship.
>The Times of London reported that radiocarbon dating carried out by experts at the University of Oxford says the fragments were produced between the years 568 A.D. and 645 A.D. Muhammad is generally believed to have lived between 570 A.D. and 632 A.D. The man known to Muslims as The Prophet is thought to have founded Islam sometime after 610 A.D., with the first Muslim community established at Medina, in present-day…
> University of Oxford says the fragments were produced between the years 568 A.D. and 645 A.D. Muhammad is generally believed to have lived between 570 A.D. and 632 A.D. Without a narrower range, it's ridiculous to say that it predates Muhammad. At most it predates the first known, fully assembled Qur'an from 653CE. (Aside: I realize this story comes from Fox News but its listing of dates as "Anno Domini" is in poor…
Not living in the US, the reference to Fox News is a bit lost on me. Perhaps it's equivalent to the seemingly obligatory sideswipe at the British Daily Mail on the part of some folk. Establishes their credentials, I guess.
This is highly unlikely as the parchment contains diacritical marks which were not introduced until 4 caliphs/leaders after the Prophet who had all already died/been killed. This has been mentioned by many critics as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_diacritics#history This seems more like a means to incite Muslims rather than science.
> Article originally appeared on FoxNews.com.
yup :)
First, radiocarbon dating comes with error bars. The date range identified is from 570 C.E. to 632 C.E. Given that Muhammad is thought to have founded Islam in the period from 610 C.E. to 630 C.E., and that date keeping was relatively good in this period, this would seem to confirm rather than dispute the traditional accounts.
Second, the radiocarbon dating was performed on the parchment only, not the ink, as the article belatedly notes. Given the practice of ancient scribes to re-use parchment repeatedly, a rather unfortunate practice that has resulted in the loss of uncountable ancient texts, the age of the writing would be controlling, not the age of the parchment.
Third, I'm forced to draw a rather unfortunate conclusion from this information. The assertion in this article seems deliberately calculated to undermine the historicity of Islam. There is a very sad and shortsighted movement in some corners of military scholarship right now that identifies Islam itself as the enemy, often beginning with Huntington's "clash of civilizations" narrative and ending with some examples of sheer lunacy, such as the recent article by a West Point associate professor arguing that legal human rights scholars are "an Islamist fifth column."
Islam is one of the world's great religions, and like all religions it inspires everything from massive works of charity to zealotry, persecution, and bigotry. I have known many good people who drew their strength from Islam, and condemning an entire religion is a type of insanity that is directly contrary to the founding principles of the United States.
Islam is not the enemy. Those who would pervert it for their own violent ends are. We cannot lose that distinction.