page_title: Criticism of Islam
section_title: Lack of secondary evidence
hierarchical_section_title: Criticism of Islam / Reliability of Islamic scriptures / Lack of secondary evidence
caption_attribution_description: English: One of the Qur'an fragments from the Sana'a palimpsest, found in 1972 in the loft of the Great Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, and photographed by Doctor Gerd R. Puin who was in charge of the project between 1981 and 1985. The writings are from verses 3 to 10 of Sura 20 (Taha). The File was transferred from English Wikipedia [1]
context_page_description: Criticism of Islam is broadly defined as criticism of the Islamic religion in its beliefs, principles, or any other ideas attributed to Islam.
  Criticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages. Early written disapprovals came from Christians and Jews as well as from some former Muslims such as Ibn al-Rawandi. Later the Muslim world itself suffered criticism. Western criticism of Islam has grown in the 21st century especially after the September 11 attacks and other terrorist incidents, over its scriptures and teachings being claimed to be a significant source of terrorism and terrorist ideology. As of 2014, about a quarter of the world's countries and territories had anti-blasphemy and had anti-apostasy laws or policies. In 2017, 13 nations, all of which were Muslim majority nations, had the death penalty for apostasy or blasphemy.
  Objects of criticism include the morality of the life of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, in both his public and personal lives. Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the scriptures of Islam, both the Quran and the hadiths, are also discussed by critics.
context_section_description: The traditional view of Islam has also been criticised for the lack of supporting evidence consistent with that view, such as the lack of archaeological evidence, and discrepancies with non-Muslim literary sources. In the 1970s, what has been described as a "wave of sceptical scholars" challenged a great deal of the received wisdom in Islamic studies. They argued that the Islamic historical tradition had been greatly corrupted in transmission. They tried to correct or reconstruct the early history of Islam from other, presumably more reliable, sources such as coins, inscriptions, and non-Islamic sources. The oldest of this group was John Wansbrough (1928–2002). Wansbrough's works were widely noted, but perhaps not widely read.
  In 1972 a cache of ancient Qurans in a mosque in Sana'a, Yemen was discovered – commonly known as the Sana'a manuscripts. The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Quran fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to early part of the 8th century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but noted unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He also suggested that some of the parchments were palimpsests which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied a text that changed over time as opposed to one that remained the same.
caption: Sana'a manuscripts of the Quran
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