This piece continues the debate regarding the historicity of
Mohammad. As stated below, it is completely creditable that a tribal
leader organized a successful war machine out of the Arab tribes at a
time when local military power was in ebb. The tale of divine
inspiration is far less creditable as there we get a picture of
clinical epilepsy. Epilepsy does not lend itself to rational
scholarship but does scare everyone around that perhaps a divine
event is taking place. If anything, it weakens the mind and it is
difficult to make progress.
Putting all that aside, we have an Arab headed political regime that
was effectively illiterate and needed to structure its culture in
competition with the conquered civilized world. It would be
completely sensible to produce a Arab scripture and use an Arab
friendly alphabet already somewhat in place. After all they had the
example before them of Constantinople which had held them off.
That places the Koran as a first example of the political scripture
which includes Das Capital, Mein Kamp and Mao's Red book. All are
used by States to brainwash the child to become a willing obedient
servant to the glory of the State. Properly revealing this purpose
may be beyond anyone's capacity but it will still be the final answer
to this ideology of hate.
Unmasking
Muhammad’s Dubious Existence
Posted by Fjordman Bio
↓ on May 2nd, 2012
Author Robert Spencer,
founder of the major website Jihad Watch, recently published a book
with the provocative title Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into
Islam’s Obscure Origins.
The foreword was
written by the eminent scholar Johannes J. G. (Hans) Jansen, an
Arabist and a Professor of Modern Islamic Thought at the University
of Utrecht in the Netherlands until his retirement in 2008. Among his
other accomplishments, he has translated the Koran into Dutch. Jansen
points out that what sparse information and physical evidence we do
have does not seem to confirm the traditional Islamic accounts of the
sixth and seventh centuries.
In fact,
archaeological findings contradict the traditional picture. Only
further archaeological work in present-day Arabia and Greater Syria
can shed more light on these issues. In Saudi Arabia, such
excavations are forbidden, and Wahhabi hardliners have actively
destroyed some sites. Furthermore, the religious authorities may
not be interested in bringing to light findings that might contradict
their religious views or undermine Saudi Arabia’s central status in
Islam.
As Jansen states, “An Iraqi scholar, Ibn Ishaq (c. 760), wrote
a book that is the basis of all biographies of Muhammad. No
biographical sketches of Muhammad exist that do not depend on Ibn
Ishaq. If an analysis of Ibn Ishaq’s book establishes that for
whatever reason it cannot be seen as an historical source, all
knowledge we possess about Muhammad evaporates. When Ibn Ishaq’s
much-quoted and popular book turns out to be nothing but pious
fiction, we will have to accept that it is not likely we will ever
discover the truth about Muhammad.”
Moreover, a fully
developed Arabic script did not yet exist at the time when the Koran
was supposedly collected for the first time, which further
introduces substantial sources of error. The Koran itself was
probably far less stable and collected much later than Muslims
believe.
Finally, the
hadith collections which elaborate upon the personal example of
Muhammad were developed many generations after the alleged events of
his life had taken place, and are considered partially unreliable
even by Muslims. It is likely that a great deal of this material was
fabricated outright in a process of political and cultural struggle
long after the first conquests.
Spencer does not
claim to be an original scholar in these matters, but credits such
individuals as Ignaz Goldziher, Theodor Nöldeke, Arthur Jeffery,
Henri Lammens, Alphonse Mingana, Joseph Schacht, Aloys Sprenger and
Julius Wellhausen, as well as more recent researchers such as
Suliman Bashear, Patricia Crone, Volker Popp, Yehuda Nevo, Michael
Cook, Ibn Warraq, Judith Koren, Ibn Rawandi, Günter Lüling, David
S. Powers and John Wansbrough.
Several contemporary
critical scholars — Christoph Luxenberg, for example — have been
forced to write under pseudonyms due to persistent threats against
their lives. This virtually never happened to scholars in Christian
Europe who critically examined the Bible or the historical Jesus
during the nineteenth century, but it happens frequently to those
who question Islam and its traditions.
One might suspect
that the main reason why many Muslims often tend to react with
extreme aggression against anyone questioning their religion is
because it was originally built on shaky foundations and could
collapse if it is subjected to closer scrutiny.
Non-Muslim
chroniclers writing at the time of the early Arabian conquests made
no mention of the Koran, Islam or Muslims, and scant mention of
Muhammad. The Arab conquerors themselves didn’t refer to the
Koran during the first decades, quite possibly because it did not
then exist in a recognizable form.
Islamic apologists
love to talk about the supposedly tolerant nature of these
conquests. Yet as historian Emmet Scott has demonstrated
in his well-researched book Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited,
the archaeological evidence clearly indicates that the Arab
conquests caused great devastation to the conquered regions.
Furthermore, we must consider the possibility that Islam as we know
it simply did not exist at the time of the initial conquests.
Modern scholars like
Patricia Crone have questioned whether Mecca as an important trading
city and center of pilgrimage truly existed by the year 600, as
Islamic sources claim. Its location makes no sense if it was
supposed to be located on the trade routes between the Indian Ocean
and Mediterranean Europe. No non-Muslim historian mentions it in any
accounts of trade from the sixth or seventh centuries. Given the
centrality of Mecca in traditional history, this casts the entire
canonical story of the origins of Islam into doubt.
The Koran claims to
be written in clear Arabic, but even educated Arabs find parts of it
hard to understand. The German philologist Gerd R. Puin, whose
pioneering work is quoted by Ibn Warraq in What the Koran
Really Says, states that up to a fifth of it is just
incomprehensible.
Perhaps one of the reasons why the Koran stresses its Arabic
nature may be, ironically, that portions of it were not originally
written in Arabic at all, but in related Semitic languages.
Christoph Luxenberg
has suggested that some sections of it were originally written in
Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic that had long been used as a literary
language in much of the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent. He
demonstrates convincingly that certain puzzling Koranic verses make
more sense if you read them in Syriac. The virgins that
brave Muslim men are supposed to enjoy in Paradise (Koran 44:51-57,
52:17-24, 56:27-40) may not be virgins at all, but rather white
raisins, or perhaps grapes. Yes, fruit.
It’s possible that
some of these Christian Syriac texts were written by a heretical
group that rejected the Trinity of mainstream Christianity. It’s
certainly true that a few Koranic chapters as we know them are
somewhat more tolerant than others, but if we believe this
non-traditional reading of history, some of them were based on
pre-existing Jewish or Christian texts.
In the final section
of the book, Spencer sums up the findings to date. He suggests
that Muhammad may have existed as a semi-legendary figure, comparable
to Robin Hood, King Arthur or William Tell, whose exploits were
greatly elaborated upon by later generations. Yet the traditional
account of him as Islam’s founder is riddled with gaps and
inconsistencies.
The Arab conquerors
may have known some vague monotheism partly inspired by Christians
and Jews, but in the generations and centuries after the conquests
they abandoned this and developed a more militant creed that came to
function as a vehicle for Arab nationalism and imperialism. Perhaps
the conquests shaped Islam more than Islam shaped the conquests.
But if someone more or
less invented Muhammad, wouldn’t they want to invent a more
sympathetic character than the very ruthless and brutal man we see
emerge from the traditional accounts? Possibly yes, but as Spencer
comments, the Arabs of this age may have thought that such a ruthless
character was an inspiration for conquest and empire-building.
It’s open to serious
debate whether Muhammad ever existed, but I lean towards concluding
that he did, at least in the vague sense of a militant Arab leader
who helped unify different tribes and redirect their tribal energy
outwards towards the goal of external conquest. This would not be
substantially different from the way Genghis Khan managed to unify
squabbling Mongolian tribes into a viable Mongol nation capable of
conquering a vast empire.
The major difference
is, of course, that a new religion was not built around the
personality of Genghis Khan. Perhaps we should be grateful for that.
Otherwise, the largest voting block at the United Nations might now
have been the Organisation of Mongolian Cooperation, and the BBC and
the New York Times would warn us against the dangers of
Genghisophobia.
Robert Spencer
possesses a special talent for presenting complex issues in a way
that is accessible and understandable to an educated mainstream
audience. His latest work is no exception. Did Muhammad
Exist? is a competent and readable introduction to some of the
most vexing riddles regarding the true birth of the creed we now know
as Islam.
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