David S. Powers

On his book Muhammad is Not the Father of any of Your Men: The Making of the Last Prophet

Cover Interview of September 04, 2009

Comments

August 08, 2017

I believe more research in this field is very beneficial. I hope there are more researchers inspired by your efforts.

June 13, 2016

In reply to a question about al-kalala, the Qur’an itself at Q4: 176 takes the question to refer to a person who dies leaving no offspring (walad), giving some support to the traditional Muslim interpretation.

June 13, 2016

Does kalala at Q4: 176 in the Paris MS show the same evidence of tampering as at Q4: 12?

religion / polemics / christianity / ideology / islam / muhammad / judaism / kinship / interpretation /

Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.

Daryn Lehoux,
Interview of November 13, 2017

It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.

Christopher Rea,
Interview of October 26, 2016