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NickAdams
Taken from wikipedia:
Satanic Verses is an expression coined by the historian Sir William Muir in reference to a few verses delivered by Muhammad as part of the Qur'an and later retracted.
Basic narrative
There are numerous reports on the incident, which differ in the construction and detail of the narrative, but they may be broadly collated to produce a basic account. In its essential form, the story reports that Muhammad longed to convert his kinsmen and neighbors of Mecca to Islam. As he was reciting Sūra an-Najm, considered a revelation by the angel Gabriel, Satan tempted him to utter the following lines after verses 19 and 20 ("Have you considered Allāt and al-'Uzzā / and Manāt, the other third?")
These are the exalted gharāniq, whose intercession is hoped for.
Allāt, al-'Uzzā and Manāt were three goddesses worshipped by the Meccans. Discerning the meaning of "gharāniq" is difficult as it is a word found only in one place. Commentators wrote that it meant the Numidian cranes, which fly at great heights[citation needed]. The Arabic word does generally mean a "crane" - appearing in the singular as ghirnīq, ghurnūq, ghirnawq and ghurnayq, and the word has cousin forms in other words for birds, including "raven, crow" and "eagle".
The subtext to this allegation is that Muhammad was backing away from his otherwise uncompromising monotheism by saying that these goddesses were real and their intercession effective. The Meccans were overjoyed to hear this and joined Muhammad in ritual prostration at the end of the sūrah. The Muslim refugees who had fled to Abyssinia heard of the end of persecution and started to return home. Islamic tradition holds that Gabriel chastised Muhammad for adulterating the revelation, at which point [Qur'an 22:52] is revealed to comfort him,
We have sent no messenger or apostle before you
with whose recitations Satan did not tamper.
Yet God abrogates what Satan interpolates;
then He confirms His revelations,
for God is all-knowing and all-wise.
Muhammad took back his words and the persecution by the Meccans resumed. Verses [Qur'an 53:21] were given, in which the goddesses are belittled. The passage in question reads:
Have you thought of Allāt and al-'Uzzā
and Manāt, the other third?
Are there sons for you, and daughters for Him?
This is certainly an unjust apportioning.
These are only names which you and your fathers have invented. No authority was sent down by God for them. They only follow conjecture and wish-fulfillment, even though guidance had come to them already from their Lord.
In early Islam
The Satanic Verses incident is reported in the tafsir and the sira-maghazi literature dating from the first two centuries of Islam, and is reported in the respective tafsīr corpuses transmitted from almost every Qur'anic commentator of note in the first two centuries of the hijra. It seems to have constituted a standard element in the memory of the early Muslim community about the life of Muhammad. The earliest biography of Muhammad, Ibn Ishaq (761-767) is lost but his collection of traditions survives mainly in two sources: Ibn Hisham (833) and al-Tabari (915). The story appears in al-Tabari, who includes Ibn Ishaq in the chain of transmission, but not in Ibn Hisham. Ibn Sa'd and Al-Waqidi, two other early biographers of Muhammad relate the story. Scholars such as Uri Rubin and Shahab Ahmed and Guillaume hold that the report was in Ibn Ishaq, while Alford T. Welch holds the report has not been presumably present in the Ibn Ishaq.
Transmission of the narrative
The tradition of the Satanic Verses never made it into any of the canonical hadith compilations (though see below for possible truncated versions of the incident that did). The temporary control taken by Satan over Muhammad made such traditions unacceptable to the compilers. This is a unique case in which a group of traditions are rejected only after being subject to Qur'anic models, and as a direct result of this adjustment. The reference and exegesis about the Verses appear in early histories. In addition to appearing in Tabarī's Tafsīr, it is used in the tafsīrs of Muqātil, ‘Abdu r-Razzāq and Ibn Kathir as well as the naskh of Abu Ja‘far an-Nahhās, the asbāb collection of Wāhidī and even the late-medieval as-Suyūtī's compilation al-Durr al-Manthūr fil-Tafsīr bil-Mathūr.
Objections to the incident were raised as early as the fourth Islamic century, such as in the work of an-Nahhās and continued to be raised throughout later generations by scholars such as Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 1157), Fakhr ad-Din Razi (1220) as well as al-Qurtubi (1285). The most comprehensive argument presented against the factuality of the incident came in Qadi Iyad's ash-Shifa‘.[1] The incident was discounted on two main bases. The first was that the incident contradicted the doctrine of isma‘, divine protection of Muhammad from mistakes. The second was that the descriptions of the chain of transmission extant since that period are not complete and sound (sahih). Ibn Kathir points out in his commentary that the various isnads available to him by which the story was transmitted were almost all mursal, or without a companion of Muhammad in their chain. There exists a complete version of the isnad continuing to ibn ‘Abbās, but this only survives in a few sources. Uri Rubin states that the name of ibn ‘Abbās must have been part of the original isnad, and was removed so that the incident could be deprived of its sahih isnad and discredited.
Those scholars who acknowledged the historicity of the incident apparently had a different method for the assessment of reports than that which has become standard Islamic methodology. For example, Ibn Taymiyya took the position that since tafsir and sira-maghazi reports were commonly transmitted by incomplete isnads, these reports should not be assessed according to the completeness of the chains but rather on the basis of recurrent transmission of common meaning between reports.
‘Urtubī (al-Jāmi' li ahkām al-Qur'ān) dismisses all these variants in favor of the explanation that once Sūra al-Najm was safely revealed the basic events of the incident (or rumors of them) "were now permitted to occur to identify those of his followers who would accept Muhammad's explanation of the blasphemous imposture" (JSS 15, pp. 254-255).
By the time of Qurtubī (d. 1272), a series of ever more elaborate exculpations had accrued to the basic narrative. These variously claimed that:
The entire incident is nothing more than a rumor started by Meccans.
Muhammad uttered the Satanic Verses unaware.
Satan deceived Muhammad into reciting the verses by delivering them in the guise of the angel Gabriel; this would cast all other revelations from Gabriel in doubt.
Satan, while invisible, projected his voice so that the verses seemed to emanate from Muhammad.[citation needed]
Some enemy of Muhammad (either satanic or human) recited the verses in Muhammad's voice to discredit him.