Andrew Bostom raises his eyebrows over a scandal in the world of Koranic scholarship. A priceless archive of photographs of early Koran manuscripts was claimed to have been destroyed in bombing of the Bavarian Academy of Science. This was a lie perpetrated by "a powerful figure in postwar German scholarship" according this account  by Andrew Higgins in the Wall Street Journal. Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, hid the 250 rolls of film away for decades. Higgins' Journal story focuses on Spitaler's former student, Angelika Neuwirth, now a professor at the Free University of Berlin. Neuwirth aknowledges their existence and is leading a "renewal" of Koranic studies, with state funding for her team for 18 years, expecting to take much longer to produce results. But rather than applaud the new venture Andrew Bostom points out: …in effect Neuwirth has likely DENIED serious scholars access to this material for 20 years.He cites a...(Read Full Post)