Shoemaker’s Creating the Qur’an is IMO a conclusion in search for an argument. Example: He claims that Ibn Sa’d’s early biographical work raises doubts about the idea that the caliph Uthman was the universally acknowledged person behind the authoritative edition of the Quran 1/7 “the complete absence of any mention of his efforts to standardize the Qur’an in his own extensive biography in this collection remains very telling and significantly undermines claims of unanimity on this front” That seems convincing until one actually consults the source 2/7

The design of the ISIS flag can be traced back to shady Orientalists in the 1850's... In 1854 the Journal Asiatique published an article by the French Orientalist François Alphonse Belin, telling the story of a junior compatriot, Etienne Barthelemy, who discovered an original letter of Muhammad to the head of the coptic church in Egypt in a coptic monastry.