Reddit reply in r/AcademicQuran: some presumptions of historicalcritical — February 17, 2025 · md99zjr | Ali Shukri Amin

I think this is a particularly shallow quote on behalf of Sinai. It isn't just miracles or prophesies that are foreclosed by the HCM due to certain explanatory assumptions. Furthermore, it isn't just some single reasonable "historical analogy" underpinning or biasing the entire enterprise.

Like all fields of knowledge, history and historiography require a set of assumptions built upon each other over time. When you investigate the source of a particular field of inquiry, you dive deeper into this stack of assumptions into a more fundamental field.

The "assumption stack" of any field are the direct tools you use to operate in a particular science or area of research so they affect everything that's done in the field.

Modern science has an assumption stack. So does medicine. So do various approaches to history. So does the HCM.

One of the major issues scholars in any field have is that they assume the internal coherence of that field produces truth that is applicable outside of that field. In reality, without proving every step of the assumption stack, those findings are only useful within that particular approach. Furthermore, most scholars of a field know nothing about their own assumption stack or don't even know it exists. Very few scientists know much about the philosophy of science or whether science produces actual truth because "it works."

HCM has an assumption stack. It goes down to metaphysics, epistemology, and ontology at its core. The general assumption stack is the same as Western academia writ large but there are also specific assumptions and even outright incorrect biases at the final level.

I am working on something to discuss this in depth but it's going to take quite a long time.

It wouldn't be enough just to prove what the unacknowledged assumption stack of HCM is and then critique each layer. It would also have to be demonstrated across many texts that this stack really is operant with specific examples and leading to unjustifiable conclusions. That part takes even longer.

First HCM has to be defined, then you have to assert what you think is the assumption stack, then you have to prove that it exists and is in use, then you have to criticise it on theoretical grounds, then you have to demonstrate an applied criticism where the assumption stack - in the wild - leads to unjustified conclusions or analysis.

What ends up happening is that we use the HCM to criticize assumptions others made without proving that HCM can lead to any truth. That implies a large degree of cultural/civilizational chauvanism to critically deconstruct someone else's tools without applying that same critical lens to your own tools first recursively. It could initially come from a place of genuine inquiry and unawareness, but once demonstrated clearly: "this is what you took for granted, these are the flaws, this is how your own toolset leads you to erroneous conclusion" if something like that is ignored then that has some kind of baked in chauvanism.

I don't think the field is currently intentionally like that. I think the researchers have good intentions and are trying to discover truth to the best of their ability. However, as you & I have discussed before, I think this is the core issue that no one is addressing.

Just like I don't think something like HCM could natively come out of Islamicate civilization, I don't think a critique like this could natively come out of the academy. It's extremely hard to notice your own assumption stack and deconstructing it is a multi-disciplinary feat. You tend to need to have another assumption stack to rely on otherwise you'll just end up stuck at radical skepticism or nihilism and never get to an applied analysis.

Parts of this comment came from a previous comment.