[WoCTrt0X]

Salam Alaykum,

Given some of the threads we have had recently, I would like to know if there can be a scholarly answer with respect to the weight given to archeology in determining Islam. (This is not presented as a matter of doubt, but so that the lay Muslims can have a clear picture of how Islamic beliefs are deduced)

The reason why this is asked is that 'modern archeology' has totally overwhelmed the Jews and the Christians, to the point that only the 'hard-headed fundamentalist Christians' believe in whatever the Bible says, while the rest are much more modest concerning their claims of what the Bible says.

Of course, such a thinking would sooner or later be applied to the Islamic primary texts, and this is one of the cornerstones of the Orientalist critique of Islam. Of course, in Islam our sources of knowledge do not take into consideration 'archeology', but perhaps there is a need for an in-depth answer to this phenomenon.

[dianakroshXX]

Just subject Archaeology to same rational philosophical criteria that Muslims scholars subject any other field of empirical science.