A Historical Survey of the Western Studies on the Islamic Idea of the Biblical Falsification (Tahrif)

Western students of Islam have so far investigated many aspects of the history of different Islamic ideas and doctrines, including theological, jurisprudential, and interpretive ones, which led to presenting many theories on the history of their development, or modifying, criticizing or rejecting the predecessors' views. One of the most fascinating aspects of Islamic studies for the Westerns has been and continues to be the history of Islamic-Christian and Islamic-Jewish polemics, and they have long written different works on this subject. Since one of the most fundamental issues in this scope is the subject of the Biblical falsification (taḥrīf), it seems in the beginning that Westerns must have made great efforts at studying the intellectual history of this idea and have achieved significant results. Here I try my best to review all the achievements of Western Islamists in this area, in a chronological order from the beginning to the present, i.e. since the middle of the nineteenth century up to 2016. In this review, we will see that firstly, the Western scholarship has not yet done but scratching the surface of the subject, and, secondly, rather than enlightening, it has increased ambiguity and, rather than answering the present problems, it has posed further questions.