" The Islamicist account of the rise of Islam is
overwhelmingly based on ḥadīth, indeed on ḥadīth as opposed to the Qurʾān,
reflecting the preference for tradition that prevailed among Muslims themselves
until quite recently. It is the revolt against traditional tafsīr, the move
back to the Qurʾān, of the modernists that allows all of us to take the Qurʾān as
evidence in a way that would have been unthinkable forty years ago. "

― Patricia Crone , The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters