Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses are words of "satanic suggestion", which the Islamic prophet Muhammad had mistaken for divine revelation. The first use of the expression in English is attributed to Sir William Muir in 1858.

According to early prophetic biographies of Muhammad by al-Wāqidī, Ibn Sa'd and the tafsir of al-Tabarī, Muhammad was manipulated by Satan to praise the three chief pagan Meccan goddesses—al-Lāt, al-'Uzzá, and Manāt—while preaching Islam to an audience in Mecca. Religious authorities recorded the story for the first two centuries of the Islamic era. The words of praise for the pagan deities allegedly elicited by Satanic temptation are known as the Satanic Verses. A version of this episode, in which Muhammad does not issue the purported Satanic Verses, takes place in surah 53 of the Qur'an.

Strong objections to the historicity of the Satanic Verses incident were raised as early as the tenth century. By the 13th century, most Islamic scholars (Ulama) started to reject it as inconsistent with the theological principle of 'iṣmat al-anbiyā (impeccability of the prophets) and the methodological principle of isnad-criticism. According to some Islamic traditions, God sent Satan as a tempter to test the audience. Others categorically deny that this incident ever happened.

Some modern scholars of Islam accept the incident as historical, citing the implausibility of early Muslim biographers fabricating a story so unflattering to their prophet. Alford T. Welch considers this argument insufficient, but does not dismiss the possibility that the story has some historical basis. He proposes that the story may reflect a longer period of Muhammad's acceptance of the Meccan goddesses, known by his contemporaries and later condensed into a story that limits his acceptance of the Meccan goddesses’ intercession to a single incident and assigns blame for this departure from strict monotheism to Satan. Carl W. Ernst writes that the existence of later insertions in early Meccan surahs indicates that the Qur'an was revised in dialogue with its first audience, who recited these surahs frequently in worship services and asked questions about difficult passages. A reading of surah 53 with this in mind leads Ernst to conclude that the Satanic Verses likely never existed as part of the Qur'an. He argues that the surah is heavily focused on rejection of polytheism, which makes the inclusion of the Satanic Verses quote unrealistic. Its absence from the canonical hadith collections supports his claim. Others have suggested that the story may have been fabricated for theological reasons.