Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Could One of the Most Influential Men Who Ever Lived Never Really Have Lived At All?

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The book “The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History” puts him at number one, above Jesus Christ, Buddha, Isaac Newton, Christopher Columbus, Johannes Gutenberg, Albert Einstein, and everyone else you can think of. To this day, multitudes of people the world over strive to follow his example. Many take his words and deeds as a guide for every detail of day-to-day life, no matter how trivial. Some among his followers commit unspeakably violent and savage acts in his name, and think that by doing so they are serving God. But did Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, ever really exist at all? And if he did, what did he really say and do?

These may strike many people as absurd questions. As far back as 1851, the French historian Ernest Renan made his oft-quoted assertion that Islam “was born in the full light of history.” Nearly two centuries later, most historians still take that view for granted, albeit without examining in any depth the issues involved.

The novelist Salman Rushdie, who spent years in hiding and ultimately was critically injured for the crime of mocking Muhammad, much more recently confidently stated his agreement with Renan, saying that “for the life of Muhammad, we know everything more or less. We know where he lived, what his economic situation was, who he fell in love with.”

Rushdie’s statement would have been more accurate if he had said that there are Islamic sources that claim to give us all this information about Muhammad. Renan’s claim, likewise, would be closer to the truth had he said that “the earliest Islamic sources purport to show us Islam being born in the full light of history.” For an oft-overlooked fact is that light of history was not actually switched on until well over a century after Muhammad lived. There was a tremendous proliferation of material about his life in the ninth century, but that was fully two centuries after the traditionally accepted date of his death, 632 AD.

Whether for fear of incurring a death fatwa and a life-threatening attack like Rushdie or the opprobrium of their peers for being “Islamophobic,” however, Western academics have been hesitant to examine the historicity of Muhammad or the reliability of the Islamic accounts of Islam’s origins. This is despite the fact that, as “Muhammad: A Critical Biography” shows in detail, there is no agreement in the earliest Islamic sources about the most fundamental details of this towering figure’s life. There are conflicting accounts of key details of his life, including the circumstances and contents of the first revelation he claimed to have received from Allah; the year of his birth; the length of his prophetic career; the name of the angel who supposedly appeared to him; and even his own name.

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Comments

  1. Before Islam appeared in Arabia, the Christians had a coins minted, on the coins was a monk holding a cross with the word ” Mohamad ” stamped at the bottom of his robe.
    Mohammad means ” Praiseworthy ” So I think Mohammad as a person did not exist.

    Investigating Islam with Dr. Jay Smith
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40DclW84HkM&t=1s

  2. One thing is for sure. If it existed, mohammed is a “pig-faced dog who enjoys f**king donkeys”. If he didn’t exist, (or even if he did), his followers are the donkey.

  3. mohammed used to fly around up in the clouds on Buraq,a flying female centaur with a woman’s face and a peacock tail……

    • Well if you believe that, you can believe that Mohammad was a Profit, & I mean profit as he was raiding caravan traders.

      • Apparently,so the legend goes,he liked to wear Ayesha’s dress whilst chanelling allah in the cave.

        • Oh, and don’t forget that according to Allah himself (speaking through Muhammad, of course) Muhammad is the most “beautiful pattern of conduct” and “example” for mankind to follow! (Quran 33:21), as well as the “exalted standard of character” (Quran 68:4).

          So is any surprises that the followers of Mohammad do what they do in the name of Allah. What a strange lot of Sheeple !

  4. It is actually irrelevant whether Muhammad existed. What is relevant is that a murderous cult has been conjured up. The cult promotes cannibalising societies, terrorizing them and has a complete tool kit for that purpose.

  5. Please read Peter Harremoes’s article “Rate distortion theory for descriptive statistics” which does not sound like a treatise on the early history of Islam but it convincingly shows that the first holy city of Islam was Petra, not Mecca and also locates an intermediate holy city prior to Mecca but after Petra. It’s in the journal Entropy, volume 25, number 456. I think the download is free. It’s best printed in color due to the maps involved.

  6. An excellent resource on this topic is Daniel Janosik’s “The Guide to Answering Islam.”

    The fact is there is NO concurrent archeological evidence of his existence from the time that Muhammad was supposed to have lived, or even any evidence for the existence of Mecca.

    There is very good evidence that “Islam” started out as a heretical form of Christianity which denied the deity of Jesus.

  7. Assuming that the basic instinct of humans is competition, survival being simply a competition against nature, then the religion with the most ability to grow through aggression and war will be the one which allows the worst spontaneous nature of men to be exercised upon those who do not agree with it.

    Every movement needs a founder’s story and most of them are myths. It would be hardly surprising to find that Muhammad was as real as a Greek God. The notion of Muhammad seems to be a simplification of multiple gods into one multiple-spirited being with Muhammad as the human spokesman. The invention of Jins seems to have been been superfulous, not getting much attention.

  8. If he lived, he was never a “man.” If he lived, he was a foul, despicable, mass-murdering, raper of children, lying sack of feculent debris, son of satan the devil, “doing the desires of his father.”

    If he lived, he no longer lives, but has long been worm castoffs, doing nothing, saying nothing, thinking nothing and cannot reward anyone following in his path of demon filth.

    And if he never lived, then the person(s) who thought up the foulest of the foul, had the mind of satan.

    • In one article, my students and I classified 69 doctrines by agreement or not between Christianity and Islam and then by being paradoxical or not. About 85-90% of the agreement was for non-paradoxical doctrines and 85-90% of the disagreement was over paradoxical doctrines. Whoever invented Islam was screening out paradox. My guess is that someone wanted to create a unity between religion, politics, and society in contrast to the divisions between Christianity, politics, and pagan societies. One way to do that would be to create the simplest, easiest, most logical, least paradoxical religion ever, a kind of least common denominator. It would not be based on race or nationality as that would be too limiting to its expansion. It would not be a “narrow way” as that would limit its growth. It would be based on being pleasing to the flesh and thus antithetical to the Spirit of God. Jesus said to love your enemies, Islam is far more favorable to killing them. Which approach is of the Spirit of God vs. of the spirit of the flesh? Sadly most folks seem too timid to confront the flaws in Islam.

      • It is my belief that islam is just another religion produced by satan the devil.

        The demon snake has been in opposition to God since he rebelled and induced Eve to disobey, which led to Adam joining her in disobedience.
        They were told by the devil that they wouldn’t die as God had warned.
        Since that time, many false religions…the worship of.molech/moloch, dagan, ba’al, and others have been found among various groups.

        Once Jesus Christ, a Perfect Man and Prophet of God, introduced a “New Covenant (Promise) with the “Kingly Law of Love” as its ultimate command, satan thought up another false religion using a pretend “perfect man as a prophet.”

        Everything in islam is the opposite of everything in Christianity.

        • Somehistory, I see it the same way. Islam is the complete opposite of Christianity, which teaches such high ideals of love, tolerance and the golden rule. Islam seems to teach endless hatred and intolerance for non cult members. I do worry that, at least in this earthly life, the murderous Muslims might win because Christians a bit too gentle and peaceful and so they may be beaten by the vicious,endlessly violent Muslim hordes.

        • thank you, Tim. Christ will not allow His children to be entirely defeated. He has promised to “be with (us) all the days until the end.’

          He did say, “All those who endure to the end, will be saved.” We must just keep our faith and endure whatever comes which we can’t keep from coming.

        • I agree, somehistory. Probably the best, and safest way to deal with murderous, hate filled Islam, is shut them out of our countries in way that the Hungarians and the poles do

        • If they were kept out, Tim, it might be easier for more people to see how truly evil islam is as the mozlums wouldn’t be using their political clout to silence those who know.
          It seems too late for most nations now.

      • With all respect, Dr. Schumm, there is little that is logical–or decent–in Islam.

  9. At this point, I’m thoroughly convinced that he was a fictitious character, and that…

    ⮞ The Arab conquests started from Damascus, not Medina. It would explain how the Arabs so easily won the battle of Yarmouk, which is close to Damascus, far from Medina and this was way before the Damascus-Medina railroad, built by the Ottomans, existed
    ⮞ The theology was developed in seminaries in Baghdad and Buqhara, and kept on evolving during Ghaznavid, Seljuq and Qhwarezmid rule. They had the policy of waging jihad to stamp out all other religions in the neighborhood – Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, et al, but didn’t immediately replace it w/ islam. That came much later
    ⮞ The Arabian peninsula, far from being where it originated, would have been one of the last places islamized, contrary to the narrative of the Rashidun caliphate

    Only mystery to me is why islam encoded Arab supremacy, rather than Turkish

    • Dan Gibson’s work suggests they started from Petra, which would explain their better interior lines of communication, recruiting, and logistics (vs. Mecca) and their early victories. Perhaps later they used Damascus as a central staging area. Petra is like ten times closer to Jerusalem than Constantinople.

      • So a militia that started from Petra decided to invade Damascus before it invaded Jerusalem? That would be like a militia based in Newark invading Philly before it decided to turn towards New York

        I don’t discount Dan Gibson’s work in terms of where the basis for islam started i.e. in Petra instead of Mecca. But the conquests couldn’t have started from Petra

        Yarmouk is a place in North Jordan, near the modern Syrian border, and that was where the Arabs supposedly defeated the Byzantines. Put yourself in 7th century Levant, and you are going from Petra to Damascus heading a bunch of camel-archers and swordsmen. it would take you about 2 days to get there. There, you would be confronted by a bunch of Syrians who would be relatively fresh, since Damascus to Yarmouk takes just half the time. The idea that that city would just fold w/o resistance is unbelievable

        I also read up about what Damascus was like during that time. It turns out that they had a theological split from Constantinople. The latter was enforcing mainstream Christianity that proclaimed the divinity of Christ (not sure whether the split b/w Catholics & Orthodox Christians had yet occurred?), whereas the Damascenes followed a Monophysite version of Christianity, where the divinity of Christ was not acknowledged. So they were at odds w/ Constantinople for this, and maybe other reasons as well

        What I can conclude putting 2 & 2 together is that the Arabs who defeated the Byzantines at Yarmouk were from Damascus: fresh out of there, and they defeated the Byzantine army, which probably was also local (maybe from Amman) but completely burnt out after wars w/ the Sassanids. They then decided to take advantage of the fact that both the Eastern Romans and the Persians were completely burnt out, and decided to be bold and invade. They then captured Jerusalem, defeated the Sassanids, captured their capital Ctesiphon and continued to overrun all of the Levant and Iran, and continue into Egypt

        The above explanation also covers why
        ⮞ Dome of the Rock, after the Bismillah statement, goes on to describe Christ, rather than any Muhammad. It would make perfect sense if Muawiya was a Monophysite Chrisitan, and started from Damascus
        ⮞ The earliest qur’an manuscripts, which were unintelligible in Arabic, somehow made more sense when read as being Syraic. That would be expected if the original Arab conquerors were native to Syria, rather than Arabia

        I do think that there were events that went on in Petra, including the possibility of a man named Qutham who lived there, and may have done a few of the things attributed to Muhammad. However, I think that that was retroactively written into islamic texts centuries later by future Arab rulers

  10. Salman Rushdie talking about Mohammad’s lovelife (“Groan with the Wind”?). Gruesome.
    I can see Rushdie’s illustrious obsequious anscestor busily scribbling Bollywood-style romances about The Prophet’s long-lasting uprightness in front of nine year-old girls.
    Rushdie has lost the plot -again, but I guess he can present a medical certificate as an excuse this time.

  11. The only thing that matters is that muslims believe that muhammad existed.

    Even if he didn’t…

    • They would probably still believe that he did. Since they can simultaneously hold the following contradictory beliefs:

      ⮞ qur’an was a book divinely written by allah and presented to Muhammad via an angel Gabriel
      ⮞ Everything written in the qur’an is valid, no matter whether it contradicts other things written there

      Also, logic is haram in islam, so they’re not gonna question logically inconsistent ideas

      Yeah, I don’t totally buy Robert’s hypothesis that if Muhammad is proven to never have existed, that a majority of muslims would leave islam in droves. Maybe a minority will, maybe a significant percentage will. But not the majority

      Point is that muslims didn’t become muslims by reasoning. They were either born into it or forced into it. So to get them to do the opposite – leave islam – they have to be either be freed to leave it, in case of the latter, or forced out of it, in case of the former

      • And….so many are psychopaths and like what they do. islam gives them *license* to ‘steal, kill and destroy’ while claiming what good people they are.
        Psychopaths never see what they do as being wrong.

        • Yes–one reason why most male Western converts are violent prisoners.

  12. Vorschlag. Statt sich mit diesem Aberglauben und ob es diesen oder jenen wirklich gegeben hat, zu beschäftigen und seine Zeit mit den menschenverachtenden Taten gewisser historischer Personen zu beschäftigen, sollte man stattdessen ein Buch über Manipulation und Indoktrination lesen. Die Naturwissenschaften bieten auch einen unerschöpflichen Fundus an Erkenntnis und Freude über das Wunder des Lebens und der Evolution. Denken kann sooo schön sein.

    • Skeptiker, I think that all of these lines of scholarship are important.

  13. It has always been questioned the reality of Mohammed,where was he born, died etc. Unlike Jesus where there is documents of his birth, life and death there are questions about Mohammed that need to be fact based documented history that are not based on here say handed down through out time something like a MYTH.

  14. Religious figures like Mohammad, Jesus, Buddha never have any testable, verifiable evidence they existed or did any of the things claimed of them. Instead of scientific testable proof, religion substitutes faith. If any of them could be verified as real people who existed outside of a religious text and accomplished miraculous things that could be proven, that religion would become the only religion in the world. The inescapable truth.

    • Don, so why does no one seem to care that Gibson et al. have proven the early history of Islam to be dare I say bogus?

    • There are at least 20 secular sources of the existence and life of Jesus Christ. Some written by those who opposed Him and His disciples.
      But people, many people, refuse to accept that there is One above humans Who has the Right and Authority to rule over and make demands upon mankind.

  15. Could One of the Most Influential Men Who Ever Lived Never Really Have Lived At All?
    ………………………………………

    As it turns out, probably not, given the lack of historical record.

    But perhaps more astonishing is that this figure was invented in the first place. One can imagine inventing a figure like Jesus or Buddha (I am *not* making a case for these figures not being historical, just saying that they both represent ideals of behavior).

    But to invent the vicious “Prophet” Muhammed as an ideal–a warlord, pedophile, caravan raider, slaver, rapist, and mass murderer–is so perverse. It presents an excuse–a sacralization, really–of the worst in human behavior.

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