by Ibn Warraq

Report On The Inarah Otzenhauzen Conference On
  “The Early History Of Islam And The Koran”
     March 13-16, 2008

The newly founded institute, Inârah Institute for Research of Early Islamic History and the Koran, in cooperation with the Religious Studies Department of the University of Saarlandes, Germany and the Europäische Akademie Otzenhausen, Germany held its first International Conference on the Origins of the Koran and Early Islamic History. Inarah consists of a group of German scholars inspired by the work of Christoph Luxenberg but disturbed by the fact Luxenberg's insights were not discussed by other Islamologists because of their implications for the traditional history of the Koran (now thought to be almost certainly false, and fabricated many years after the foundation of Islam). I think it would be fair to say that the idea for the German conference came naturally after the successful conference at the University of California-Davis in January, 2007 on Scripture and Skepticism organised by the Center for Inquiry, Transnational, and the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion [CSER], inspired, organised, and coordinated by Dr. Paul Kurtz and Dr. Joseph Hoffmann. Many of the founders of Inarah, the organisers of the German conference, participated in the Davis Conference, and finding the experience exhilarating, decided a similar conference devoted entirely to the Koran and Early Islam would be in order, a conference that would fearlessly examine the origins of the Koran wherever the empirical research might lead, hence the Otzenhausen Conference.  more...