The carbon dating of the Koran fragments found in a Birmingham library shows that they almost definitely predate Mohammed. And there I was, thinking that Birmingham’s sole contribution to civilisation is Balti cuisine.
Turns out it may well be the birthplace of Islam, invalidating the prior claims of Mecca and Medina. As indirect proof, Birmingham certainly has a greater Muslim population than those two put together, although, unlike them, it also has a smattering of infidels.
Actually, I must admit I had my suspicions before. I used to go to Birmingham quite often, on business (nobody goes there for pleasure), and my impression was that the city was predominantly Muslim. There must be some hidden magnetic force, I thought, attracting Muslims to that part of the Midlands, and it can’t be just the free-spending social.
The impression that Birmingham was mostly Muslim was purely that, an impression, for demographic surveys show that only a quarter of the city’s population espouse Islam. Still, you can understand my error: Muslims somehow stand out in Britain, and seeing so many in one place may easily lead one to infer that they predominate.
Also, now that we know that Islam started in Birmingham and not, as was previously thought, in the Arabian peninsula… oops, sorry. My wife has just looked over my shoulder and pointed out that Birmingham was only founded in 1871, which makes it an unlikely birthplace of Islam, seeing that it has been around for 1,400 years.
Fine, I’m man enough to admit I’ve made yet another error. If it’s an error, that is. Allah, after all, is just the Arabic for God – the same deity that’s accepted as such in both parts of the Bible. I may find Allah an odd name for God, but it’s infinitely preferable to its Russian equivalent, which is Bog. Don’t know about you, but I’d rather pray to God, or even at a pinch to Allah, than to Bog.
But God, whatever you call Him, is outside time. Hence, looking at it from His perspective, it’s possible that a city we think only appeared in the late Victorian era was already up and running circa 568 AD, when the Birmingham Koran was produced.
Hold on, I’ve just spotted a theological flaw in this argument. Yes, God is outside time – but we aren’t. Since we’re strictly temporal, at least in this life, it’s utterly presumptuous even to suggest that we can look at the world through the eyes of Allah, otherwise known as God.
Hence both Birmingham and its Koran exist on a human timescale and can’t possibly overlap. One must grudgingly admit that the distinctly Muslim character of the city must come from a different source – quite possibly from the free-spending social.
Yet the dating of the Birmingham Koran, if it’s reliable, tears a hole in the patchwork quilt of a religion otherwise known as Islam. Its founding tenet is that Allah spoke directly to Mohammed, who then initiated the game of Arab whispers by passing the message on to Abu Bakr, one of his fathers-in-law (since Mohammed had several wives, he must have had several sets of in-laws, and his ability to cope with that arrangement must be seen as divine by anyone who has ever struggled with even one set).
Abu Bakr then passed the good news on to assorted other caliphs and so forth, all the way to Osama bin Laden. This admittedly schematic history of Islam begins to wobble somewhat if it turns out that Mohammed had his epiphany second-hand, and that he more or less cribbed it from a pre-existing document.
That may create a conundrum for Muslims, as the existence of such a document casts a shadow on Mohammed’s claim to be the prophetic primus inter pares. But I don’t doubt for a second that Islamic scholars will handle the problem.
They could, for example, claim not unreasonably that carbon dating isn’t all that precise, and in this case an error of a few years here or there would be enough to reinstate Mohammed’s patent rights.
Or else they may decide to adopt the so-is-your-aunt-Tilly tactic of pointing out that the carbon dating of the Turin Shroud may also be at odds with the claims Christians make for that garment.
Yet such savants will find it difficult, not to say impossible, to deny the synthetic nature of Islam. In fact, they ought to take their cue from Marx and own up to Mohammed’s tendency to borrow from other religions.
Marx honestly identified three ingredients he shook together to produce the heady cocktail of Marxism: German philosophy, mainly Hegel and Feuerbach; British economics, mainly Smith and Ricardo; and French socialism, mainly Saint-Simon and Fourier.
Even if we discard the Birmingham Koran, Mohammed also used three principle sources: Judaism, Nestorian Christianity and Zoroastrianism. Thus he could proudly claim to be a heretic to three major religions, and we aren’t even talking about the minor ones.
But who’s to say that mixing multiple ingredients can’t produce an original concoction? No one, especially not those bar-hoppers who enjoy the unique taste of the odd Mojito, Daiquiri or Long Island Tea.
A note to those intemperate infidels: if you enjoy your cocktails, steer clear of Muslim countries. The Koran, Birmingham or otherwise, says that indulging that taste will get you flogged within an inch of your life.