When many of us think of a scripture, we think of the Protestant Christian Bible: a well-defined, reasonably small library of writings which can be printed in a single, thick volume.

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It’s not that simple in Islam. While there is the Qur’an, there is also an enormous body of reports about Muhammad’s sayings and deeds called the Hadith, and Islamic law is fundamentally based on these more than on the Qur’an.

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As it is clear that many are inaccurate, Islamic scholars have long tried to sort these Hadith reports into the categories of “sound,” “well-known,” or “weak.” But even when this is done, the modern believer faces the problem of scriptural passages which seem implausible or morally problematic. In his Misquoting Muhammad, Dr. Jonathan A.C. Brown discusses many ways Islamic scholars have grappled with problematic scritural passages. In this interview we discuss some notorious examples, including a passage from Sura 4 of the Qur’an, and the hadith of the fly.

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• Dr. Brown’s home page
• Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy
• Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World
• The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim
• Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction
• Scholar’s Chair – Interview with Dr Jonathan A.C. Brown
• Sharī’ah, Violence, and Contemporary Issues
• Dr. Brown addresses Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha
• The Role of Sunnah and Classical Scholarship – Dr. Jonathan Brown
• The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary
• Hadith Collection
• Koran by Heart
• Münster rebellion
• Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah – Life of the Prophet of God
• This episode’s thinking music is “Between Worlds (Instrumental)” by Tobias Weber (aka Aussens@iter).

Bonus audio: Dr. Brown talks about his conversion to Islam and about his interest in Egypt.