This is an important discussion--the only one I've seen--of a completely neglected topic. Here's another example, in the same vein. In his authoritative book, History of the Arab Peoples, Albert Hourani raises the old question of the originality of the Qur'an, suggesting that the Qur'an in its current form contains "echoes in it of the teaching of earlier religions" (p. 21).

Having described this obvious fact, Hourani immediately tells us that "Such traces of the past need cause no anxiety to a Muslim, who can regard them as signs that Muhammad came at the end of a line of prophets who all taught the same truth..." As for those who regard the "echoes" as borrowings, Hourani criticizes them of "misunderstanding what it is to be original."

What's remarkable about this passage is that it should find its way into a book of historiography at all. Why should it be the concern of the historian whether the facts of history cause anxiety or not? If they do, why should he hasten to produce the explanation to mitigate it? And why should he be so eager to attack one of two interpretations of the evidence, simply to avoid anxiety to one side?

If we look at the evidence objectively, it is in fact Hourani who misunderstands "what it is to be original." It's true that if we're talking of human activities and human authors, any original creation depends on previous efforts. But this obviously cannot be true of divine originality, where we're talking about an ex nihilo creator of the universe. Hourani would thus have us believe that the Muslim God could create the universe from nothing but couldn't write a radically original book about himself.

Hourani is a world-class historian, but such apologetics are the norm even among the world-class historians of Islam. They cannot seem to write history without worrying, simultaneously, what Muslims will think of their writing. This gives the lie to Edward Said's protestation in Covering Islam that Orientalist writing on Islam fails to be "accountable" to Muslims.

As with so much Said wrote about Islam, the truth is just the reverse of what he says. In fact, as Ibn Warraq shows here, the biggest problem with Orientalist writing on Islam is that it tries so hard to be accountable to Muslims. This is one of those cases where the old maxim about "If you don't succeed at first..." ought to be waived.  

It is clear that Mr. Esposito has not followed the experience of Iran and that "democratic Islam" is a contradiction in term. The Islamists that were participants in the Islamic Revolution have themselves realized this fallacy and that the only way to reach democracy is through secularism and effectively kicking out Islam from the sphere of politics.  The only place in the moslem world that this seems possible is Iran, a country that has kept its national pre-islamic identity and language despite being one of the first countries conquered by the fascist Islamic army over 14oo years ago.