Pragmatic wrote:
Linguistic wrote:
استحالة وجود النسخ بالقرآن، إيهاب حسن عبده، نشر مدبولي الصغير ٢٠٠٥م
...
In my search for these two books, I found a lot of criticism directed at the authors. In general, it is not surprising that an anti-abrogation author will have other opinions that are also not mainstream. It is also not surprising that such author will be attacked, sometimes in colorful language
. However, I could not tell if these books and authors are on the fringe like others we ran into in our searches before, or they are 'legitimate'. In particular, the first of the above books is more than 500 pages long, making it the longest anti-abrogation book that I have seen, and I wonder if it has useful details given its length.
I got the book "Impossibility of the existence of abrogation in the Quran" by Ihab Hasan Abdou
استحالة وجود النسخ بالقرآن، إيهاب حسن عبده، نشر مدبولي الصغير ٢٠٠٥م
and started reading it. He follows a Quran-only approach to religion, and uses strong and colorful language (and many exclamation marks) to further this agenda and attack the opponents. Because of this, it would be considered a fringe book.
The introduction and the first two chapters (through page 222) are dedicated to advocating the Quran-only approach, with very little direct discussion of the abrogation issue. The discussion of abrogation starts in Chapter 3 on page 223 and it addresses the abrogation doctrine only through page 356 which is the end of Chapter 6. Thus, most of the 504 pages of the book do not address the abrogation doctrine, an unusual situation for a book about abrogation.
If one starts with Chapter 3, the book sounds substantive if aggressive. The author seems to quote texts that are logically consistent with the points he is advocating so at least he put an effort in working on his arguments. He raises some points and makes some arguments that have merit, notwithstanding the strong Quran-only agenda that colors the book.
From Chapter 7 on (starting on page 357), the author discusses abrogation of both recitation and ruling as well as abrogation of recitation and keeping the ruling. He dedicates almost 100 pages to refuting the stoning verse and ruling, in what must be the most thorough treatment of that subject that I have seen to date.