Tweet
Provocative author Robert Spencer has released a new book questioning whether Muhammad existed at all.
. . . Spencer has taken a page from authors like Bart Erhman (Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
, his answer being ‘yes’) and Shirley and Laurence Dalton (Jesus Christ: A Pagan Myth: Evidence That Jesus Never Existed
, whose answer is ‘no’). Except Spencer has turned his eye not toward Jesus, but toward the prophet of Islam, the man of whom cartoons launch a thousand jihads, Muhammad.
The conservative FrontPage provides a review. In part:
Did Muhammad exist? I don’t know. I’d never considered it to be in question . . . but many consider the existence of Jesus to be in question, too. If they won’t accept gospels written 60 years after the fact, should they accept fragments of a biography written 125 years after the fact?
, his answer being ‘yes’) and Shirley and Laurence Dalton (Jesus Christ: A Pagan Myth: Evidence That Jesus Never Existed, whose answer is ‘no’). Except Spencer has turned his eye not toward Jesus, but toward the prophet of Islam, the man of whom cartoons launch a thousand jihads, Muhammad.The conservative FrontPage provides a review. In part:
Even in the rarefied world of academic scholarship, this fear of offense has protected Islam from the sort of critical scrutiny every other world religion has undergone for centuries. Some modern scholars who do exercise their intellectual freedom and investigate these issues, like Christoph Luxenberg or Ibn Warraq, must work incognito to avoid the wrath of the adherents of the “Religion of Peace.” Now Robert Spencer, the fearless director of Jihad Watch and author of several books telling the truths about Islam obscured by a frightened academy and media, in his new book Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins
challenges this conspiracy of fear and silence by surveying the scholarship and historical evidence for the life and deeds of Islam’s founder.
As Spencer traces the story of Muhammad through ancient sources and archaeology, the evidence for the Prophet’s life becomes more and more evanescent. The name Muhammad, for example, appears only 4 times in the Qur’an, as compared to the 136 mentions of Moses in the Old Testament. And those references to Muhammad say nothing specific about his life. The first biography of Muhammad, written by Ibn Ishaq 125 years after the Prophet’s death, is the primary source of biographical detail, yet it “comes down to us only in the quite lengthy fragments reproduced by an even later chronicler, Ibn Hisham, who wrote in the first quarter of the ninth century, and by other historians who reproduced and thereby preserved additional sections.”
Nor are ancient sources outside Islam any more forthcoming. An early document from around 635, by a Jewish writer converting to Christianity, merely mentions a generic “prophet” who comes “armed with a sword.” But in this document the “prophet” is still alive 3 years after Muhammad’s death. And this prophet was notable for proclaiming the imminent arrival of the Jewish messiah. “At the height of the Arabian conquests,” Spencer writes, “the non Muslim sources are as silent as the Muslim ones are about the prophet and holy book that were supposed to have inspired those conquests.” This uncertainty in the ancient sources is a consistent feature of Spencer’s succinct survey of them. Indeed, these sources call into question the notion that Islam itself was recognized as a new, coherent religion. In 651, when Muawiya called on the Byzantine emperor Constantine to reject Christianity, he evoked the “God of our father Abraham,” not Islam per se. One hundred years after the death of Muhammad, “the image of the prophet of Islam remained fuzzy.”
. . . challenges this conspiracy of fear and silence by surveying the scholarship and historical evidence for the life and deeds of Islam’s founder.As Spencer traces the story of Muhammad through ancient sources and archaeology, the evidence for the Prophet’s life becomes more and more evanescent. The name Muhammad, for example, appears only 4 times in the Qur’an, as compared to the 136 mentions of Moses in the Old Testament. And those references to Muhammad say nothing specific about his life. The first biography of Muhammad, written by Ibn Ishaq 125 years after the Prophet’s death, is the primary source of biographical detail, yet it “comes down to us only in the quite lengthy fragments reproduced by an even later chronicler, Ibn Hisham, who wrote in the first quarter of the ninth century, and by other historians who reproduced and thereby preserved additional sections.”
Nor are ancient sources outside Islam any more forthcoming. An early document from around 635, by a Jewish writer converting to Christianity, merely mentions a generic “prophet” who comes “armed with a sword.” But in this document the “prophet” is still alive 3 years after Muhammad’s death. And this prophet was notable for proclaiming the imminent arrival of the Jewish messiah. “At the height of the Arabian conquests,” Spencer writes, “the non Muslim sources are as silent as the Muslim ones are about the prophet and holy book that were supposed to have inspired those conquests.” This uncertainty in the ancient sources is a consistent feature of Spencer’s succinct survey of them. Indeed, these sources call into question the notion that Islam itself was recognized as a new, coherent religion. In 651, when Muawiya called on the Byzantine emperor Constantine to reject Christianity, he evoked the “God of our father Abraham,” not Islam per se. One hundred years after the death of Muhammad, “the image of the prophet of Islam remained fuzzy.”
Did Muhammad exist? I don’t know. I’d never considered it to be in question . . . but many consider the existence of Jesus to be in question, too. If they won’t accept gospels written 60 years after the fact, should they accept fragments of a biography written 125 years after the fact?
Comment