rationalskepticism.org

Zwaarddijk wrote:Fomenko seems to have an iffy understanding of historical linguistics as well. Take, for instance:

"Lüling resumes his results this way: Compared to the original Koran the modern version of the holy book of Islam is the product of total rearrangement by changing the value of the consonnants ending up in a text void of essence. The underlyeing Christian hymns have been emptied of their sense. Additional there is the damage done to Islam by the Persian culture in the time of the Abbassides. And finally, by avoiding the discussion about the Christian sources the Islamic theology has darkened itself : „The simplicity to alter the text by changing consonnants and vowels graphically ... and the artificial language (Arabic) that defines its own rules ... as well as the inflexible religious domination have made Islam a monstre that lives its proper life beyond all religions ever thought of by mankind.“"

The claim here regarding the orthography having been changed - "the original Koran the modern version of the holy book of Islam is the product of total rearrangement by changing the value of the consonnants ending up in a text void of essence" - this clearly sounds as though he thinks there was a text with symbols, and then the way hese symbols were read out loud was changed, and this divorced the text from its original meaning, and new meaning was assigned after the fact, simply to hide underlying Christian hymns. This is not very realistic a view of linguistics in any way whatsoever - and there's good evidence against it. (C.f. how older, cognate languages from which we have well-preserved writing makes this stance come off as not just ignorant, but silly!) (Also, Occam's razor is a good thing to keep in mind when trying to claim big radical artificial language changes.)