Critique of Firestone's View on Incompatibilities in the Quranic Teachings of Jihad

Reuven Firestone, the American Islamist, is one of the Western scholars with a sympathetic approach to Islam. Among his main interests is just war in Abrahamic religions. This paper aims to review his thesis on the process of legislation of jihad in the Qur’an. He holds the view that Muslim Jurisprudents have developed a later evolutionary theory on this issue and attributed it to the Qur’an to solve the problem of disparity between the Qurānic verses on war. In contrast to this traditional view, Firestone suggests an inventive scenario which indicates that opposed Qur’anic verses on war refer to opposing groups in early Muslim society. This contribution tries to show the weak-points in Firestone’s presuppositions, sources and methods of analysis.