Osama's Islamism and Saddam's Baathism are more alike than you think

Read the book "Islam: The Arab National Movement" by the great ex-Muslim Anwar Shaikh here:

http://www.islamreview.org/AnwarShaikh/arabnationalism/

"Islam: The Arab Imperialism" :

http://www.islamreview.org/AnwarShaikh/arabimperialism/index.html

A. El Haji: "Ali Dashti is always busy with posting links to obviously anti-Islamic websites."
- that would mean that among others, e.g. bbc, arabnews, al-jazeera, globeandmail etc. are "obviously anti-Islamic". I don't think so.

OBL may be banned from Saudi Arabia, but the imam (or sheikh, or mullah, or whatever they're called in that particular place) who is still his huge family's "spiritual guide", announced in a documentary on bin Laden family I saw recently, that as long as Americans "inhibit" them from "spreading Islam", there will be, and should be, more strikes like 9/11. He didn't say "as long as those infidels are in the Arab lands", he said as long as they stand in the way of the Wahhabis spreading their fundamentalist ideology in the West, they must be attacked (I don't quite understand what "inhibiting spreading Islam" actually means, given the amount of Western dhimmitude and the growing Saudi influence in Western mosques, but maybe it's just not going fast enough for them). No one has banned that terrorist ideologist from Saudi Arabia, he is still alive and preaching and "spiritually guiding" the totally "respectable" Saudi elites.

Regarding books and texts on Islam, I've been wondering why the Islam-critical books by Robert Spencer, V.S. Naipaul, Oriana Fallaci etc. take an estimated half a year to get to Europe by US Amazone, when most other books take just a couple of weeks? Are we dealing with a censorship here?

Let's all be real here.

We invaded Iraq because our military presence in Saudi Arabia was needed because of the threat Saddam Hussein posed to S.A. OBL's biggest complaint about us is the fact that we occupy their bull____ holy land.

We eliminate the threat, we reduce our presence in the holy land of these so-called people.

Then, OBL is happy, the Saudi family is happy, and the oil keeps flowing.

We let them win.

I am against multi-culturalism, but my President is so close with the SA royals that Prince Bandar is nicknamed Bandar Bush. He had dinner at the white house shortly after 9-11.

Remember that our President said " Islam is peace." How can you people possibly support this President?

No multicultualism.
English as the national language.
Reduce dependence on foreign oil, (or any oil for that matter).
Respect the fact that our strength comes from the separation of Church and state and the work ethic of the Judeo-Christian faith.
Reduce immigration from suspect countries.
Shore up those borders.
PC talk about Arabs? I didn't see any Arabs strung up in the trees after 9-11. Nor should I, but free speech is a fricking constitutional right. All Muslims are not Jihadis, but all Jihadis are Muslim.
Racial profiling? Well, yes. Duh.

The Iraqis? I really don't care anymore. We are going to end up with another Islamist shithole because we deposed Saddam to make S.A. feel better.

Christianity calls for tolerance, it does not call for blind allegiance to a decent, but misguided individual.

Three months ago I attempted in a post to suggest that the “secularism” of the Ba’athists had been exaggerated, and that both Ba’athism and Nasserite pan-Arabism could be seen as variants of, rather than antagonists to, Islam (which is, of course, the same thing as pan-Islamism). A comparison was made between Saddam Hussein’s Ba'athism, and Ataturk’s Kemalism -- a word used to refer to those measures undertaken by Ataturk, after 1924, to constraint the practice, and attractiveness, of Islam to Turks.

Nasser’s pan-Arabism was not dealt with extensively in that June posting. The supposed conflict of “Arab nationalism” (pan-Arabism) and Islam is a subject that many, including almost-truth tellers such as Bassam Tibi and Fouad Ajami, who always get leery when the little matter of Islam has to be confronted head-on, and so lose some of their value, is something of which much has been made. Too much. This emphasis on the opposition of pan-Arabism and Islam is misleading; both the pan-Arabism of Nasser, and the Ba’athist variant, can be analyzed most intelligently as local attempts to deal with potential political rivals centered in the mosques. Alawites, not-quite-halal Muslims because of their worship of Mary, a military cast that represents less than 15% of the Syrian population, naturally would be most enthusiastic about Ba’athism as a variant on pan-Islam currents; for the same reason so would Sunni Arabs in a country where they were outnumbered 3-1 by Shi’a Arabs, not to mention the Kurds.

As for Nasser, like Saddam Hussein whenever he needed to repair to the imagery, the words, the hatreds of Islam, he did so. One need only time-travel back to those stirring days of yesteryear, and in particular of mid-May 1967, with the haranguing of Cairene crowds as to their ultimate victory over the Zionist enemy. Were those speeches not full of Islam? And what about all the other Egyptian commentators, then and all through the years of Nasser? Sadat was no saint, and he long ago ought to have been knocked off his phony pedestal, but at least he was an Egyptian nationalist, and would practice diplomatic deception with the Israelis not for the sake of pan-Arabism, but for the sake of Egypt alone.

Consider Nasser. He comes to power after the colonels’ coup. Naguib having been disposed of, Nasser becomes not merely primus inter pares, but primus tout court. And what does Nasser do first? He helps to weaken Egypt’s economy, and even more important, to impoverish – possibly permanently – Egypt’s intellectual life, by nationalizing the property of all non-Egyptians – Greeks, Italians (a little quiz: where was Cavafy born and where did he spend his life? And where was Ungaretti born, and where did he spend his youth until the age of 24, and what hot sun may have inspired him to write that shortest poem in Italian literature: “M’illumino d’immenso”?),Armenians, Jews all had their property seized, and they were booted out overnight. Was this pan-Arabism, or was this Islam speaking? When Nasser was in power, of course, the West had not yet been cowed. And the OPEC oil bonanza had not provided the wherewithal to fund mosques and madrasas everywhere. Muslims had not entered Europe in large numbers – that would come only after Nasser’s death. And in dealing with the West, which still retained a residual sympathy for Israel, it was always clear to the Arabs that the best way to present their case was to hide, coute que coute, the fact that what Israel faced, what it had always faced, was a relentless Jihad that could never be dealt with by a mere reduction in size, however even more absurdly small that tiny state was forced to become – no, it was far better to present the issue as one of rival nationalisms (and that got a boost from the invention of the “Palestinian people” after 1967). Nasser’s pan-Arabism was most importantly a means to cow his Muslim Brotherhood opponents. They got in the way. They did not approve of the stratokleptocracy – rule by the military, and an extremely corrupt military at that, aided by a host of hirelings and hangers-on in the Egyptian press and government. And of course pan-Arabism, to the extent that it could control the worst excesses of the Muslim Brotherhood, was a way for the Copts, still significant and like Michel Aflag, who found a way for the Christians of Syria to participate in Arab political life through the creation of Ba’athism, could support pan-Arabism – some of them, scared dhimmis, proving their fealty to Islam by being ostentatious in their promotion of the Jihad against Israel.

And if, domestically, pan-Arabism papered over persecution of the Copts, at a time when all other non-Muslims were being expelled from Egypt, and if it also gave Nasser an “ism” with which to beat the Muslim Brotherhood (who hung Qutb, after all?), Islam made no sense abroad. Did Nasser, in impoverished Egypt, think he could win over the Iranians and the Turks – the first ruled by a secular Shah, the second still firmly controlled by the Kemalists – who in any case exhibited the historic contempt of Persians and Turks for Arabs. No, Nassser who lacked the OPEC funds that would eventually flow to other Arabs, would have regarded the notion of a pan-Islamist appeal as far too ambitious.

What may also have contributed to "pan-Arabism" was the fact that many Arabs in fact subliminally understood that for economic and other kinds of development, Islam was an obstacle -- of course, this could never openly be admitted, except obliquely in such odd places as Bourguiba's Destour-Party despotism in Tunisia. And of course, for a while it was convenient to disguise the Jihad against Israel as something else,and for this, it was useful to give prominence, as propagandists, to "Palestinian" Christians or Islamochristians, precursors of the Ashrawis, Michel Sabbaghs, Archbishop Cappuccis, Naim Ateeks with whom we are all so familiar (though they have recently displayed the Presbyterian scalp, and no doubt will soon have that of the Anglicans as well, their little game has a finite life, not least because so many “Palestinian” Christians are getting out of P.A.-held territories just as fast as they can, some trying desperately to acquire Israeli citizenship, others lighting out for Australia, Canada, Chile, wherever they can get a visa).

Remember that one class in mathematics about set theory, and you drew little circles that intersected, but did not overlap, bigger circles? Remember Zermelo, and Cantor? Remember irrational numbers, and the Dedekindest cut of all? Well, even if you don’t, you get the point – pan-Arabism is a natural subset of pan-Islamism. For never forget that the Arabs are the center of Islam, no matter their numbers: the Qur’an was sent down, in their language, to them, the best of peoples. And they will never let other Muslims forget it – just look at how the Arabs behaved in Afghanistan, look at the contempt with which they treat all other Muslims when given half a chance.

But the main subject here is the nature of Ba'athism. It should not surprise, but should be regarded as perfectly natural, that Ba'athists can make common cause with, or even turn into, newly fervent Believers egged on by hysterical imams in that Sunni isosceles triangle. Saddam Hussein, that mosque-builder, that patron of Qur’ans, who so quickly adapted the language of Islam – was he really a “secularist”?

Okay, I allow myself to reprint here that previous post from June, which has not lost its relevance:

Ba’athism is not, I think, the same thing as Kemalism. Kemalism was the result of the efforts of an enlightened despot, one who made war, for 15 years, through a series of acts and laws, against the power of Islam. From the Hat Act (which outlawed the tarboosh), to ending the use of Arabic script in which Ottoman Turkish had been written, to giving women the right to vote decades before they acquired that right in some countries of Western Europe, to ensuring that in the army no one could rise if he exhibited signs of undue Islamic fervor, or had too much Muslim schooling (ditto with government jobs, for which the hijab was outlawed)—all of this was done because Ataturk, and his successor Inonu, realized that Islam was, for Turkey, a weight and a threat. There was no way to change the texts of Qur’an and Hadith and the sacralized biography of Muhammad, the sira. There still aren’t. All this talk about “reformation of Islam” is nonsense; some of it is thrown up by Bright Young Muslim Things, hoping to get tenure for their brave “reforms,” and other such nonsense comes from the Yale Law students and others who propose to do what intelligent people, born into Islam, could not achieve in the last millennium or so—changing Islamic doctrines. Can’t be done, won’t be done.
As for the supposed similarity of both Ba’athism and pan-Arabism to Kemalism, this is, I think, a misreading. Pan-Arabism does not, pace Bassam Tibi and others, stand in contradistinction to pan-Islam fervor; it is simply a subset of it, and arose at a time when the Arab countries were too weak to dream of something still grander, involving Muslims beyond the Arab League.

Nasser wanted to crush the Muslim Brotherhood not because he was against Islam, but because they were a direct threat to him for being not sufficiently Muslim in the way that they wanted. But he did not hesitate to boot out as many non-Muslims as he could, nationalizing their property and leaving them penniless. Over the years, how many Greeks, Italians, Armenians, Jews have I met who were kicked out of Alexandria or Cairo (Bat Ye’or herself had to leave, quickly, as a young girl, in 1959). Nasser was perfectly ready to employ Islamic texts, appeals to Muslim history and Muslim battles, whenever he had too—just look at the rhetoric from May and early June 1967. It is indistinguishable, in its Muslim fervor, from that of any Muslim terrorist group today.

What about Ba’athism? Some suggest that this was a form of Kemalism. I disagree. Ba’athism arose from the desire of mainly Christian Arab “intellectuals” (always an absurd word)in Damascus to come up with an ideology which would allow them something more than a marginal existence in Arab political life. Its main founder, Michel Aflaq, finally converted to Islam—having been an Islamochristian all his dismal life—on his deathbed.

But what is Ba’athism, really? It took root only in Syria and Iraq. Both countries possess ruling classes that needed an ideology that would at least de-emphasize Islam—but that is not the same thing as actively fighting to control Islam, to suppress its practice, to monitor the mosques, and so on, which is what Kemalism did.

In Syria, the Alawite military caste that had been cultivated by the French during their period of dominion had no intention of relinquishing their rule, though as Alawites, they were regarded with deep suspicion by orthodox Muslims. Their worship of Mariam (Mary), is just a bit too syncretistic for the Muslims to take. The Alawites, who were never more than 20% of the population of Syria, and now constitute about 12%, are keenly aware that their main opposition comes from orthodox Muslims (of course, it would have to, for the Christians, such as the nearly 200,000 Armenians who once lived in Aleppo—Haleb—are now emptying out and never could participate in Arab political life in any case). Ba’athism allowed the Alawites to adhere to, and to promote, an ideology that limited political rivals among the Sunni Muslim majority, but did not itself constitute a conscious effort, a la Mustafa Kemal, to tie Islam in knots.

The same is true in Iraq. Like the Alawites in Syria, the Sunni Muslim Arabs constitute a very small part of the population—about 20%. It would have been unwise to stress Islam front and center, for that would have guaranteed, amidst the strong sectarian splits, that the Shi’a would have taken power. Ba’athism presented a way for the Sunni Arabs to hold to that power.

But again, like Nasser, Saddam Hussein was perfectly willing to embrace Islamic slogans whenever he needed to. The battles he invoked in his eight-year war against Iran were that of Qadassiya, and other victories against the Persians 1200-1300 years earlier. He put Qur’anic verses on the Iraqi flag. He was a great builder of mosques, each one larger and more lavish and more hideous than the next. He had a Qur’an fashioned by a famous calligrapher; the ink was supposedly Saddam’s own blood. His speeches increasingly were full of Islamic imagery, and appeals. How could it be otherwise? For Arabs, their sense of themselves, their “Arabness,” is so tied up with the idea of Islam that even the least devout find themselves defending Islam, through taqiyya and kitman, and all the wiles of the army of apologists for Islam that we see about us, far more than, say, Turks or Kurds or Berbers who at least may have the sense of an identity that predates, or possibly transcends, Islam and only Islam.

There are many things that can be done. Here are five:

1) shoot down, interfere with, or otherwise put out of commission Al Jazeera and Al-Arabiyya. If they cannot be put out of commission, then have hackers arrange things so that, randomly, pornographic movies will come on during broadcasts; this should cut down on the number of Muslim families willing to get Al-Jazeera by cable, if only because their sense of female “honor” may be impugned if it is known that they subscribe to Al-Jazeera and that it has some peculiar interruptions.

2) seize, with a small force, the southern Sudan, and hold it until the southern blacks can hold a referendum on independence. Such a seizure, a bold taking back of part of what the Arab Muslims are insisting is part of Dar al-Islam, would establish a fault line and an issue that the Arabs cannot win. Will the Arab League insist that it has a divine right, after 2 million southern Sudanese have been killed, and now that the “mawali” (i.e. non-Arab) Muslims of Darfur are also being harried and murdered (so that even the densest of reporters, such as Nicholas Kristof, has to recognize the horror, even if he has no idea that what is going on in the Sudan is simply classic Jihad—nor would he recognize the relentless siege against Israel as a classic Jihad). Scenes of smiling black faces, truly grateful to their American saviors and protectors, as opposed to the attitude of Iraqis, which ranges from sullen to murderous hostility directed at the Infidels, no matter how many electricity grids, water-treatment plants, roads, schools, hospitals are built or rebuilt, repaired or re-paired, and no matter how many soccer balls are handed out to smiling Iraqi children, who may help to kill soldiers an hour later. And the Christian southern Sudan has oil. A base there, as opposed to one in Kurdistan, will be permanent. Within easy range of both the Saudi oil fields of al-Hasa, and of all of North Africa, with its Salafist Army of Combat and Call (qital and da’wa—they are two ways to achieve the same thing), American protection of Sudanese Christians would hearten black Christians from Nigeria and Togo (where a Christian despot-president nonetheless fulfills the Muslim agenda, and the Francophone Christian elites are leaving Lome for France, Italy, Greece, Germany, anywhere they can go, and as fast as they can go), and Kenya, and Tanzania (which has its own problems with the Muslims of Pemba and Zanzibar, once the main holding-pens for the Arab slavers, who would lead their human cargo first by slave coffle, and then at the coast by dhow, up to Oman, and then into the Arabian interior and to the slave markets of the north. The Sudan, not Iraq—which is at this point a misallocation of men, materiel, money, and above all, of American attention—is the place to seize, and to find a grateful population. Nor will Kofi Annan, responsible for the UN’s complete failure in Rwanda, dare—one supposes—to demand that the Arab Muslims be permitted to keep on with what they have been doing. Nor will the EU, which has allowed itself to be split both from its responsibilities to Israel and its people, and from its natural ally and protector, the United States, have an easy time demanding that the U.S. leave the black Sudanese, of the south or Darfur, to their otherwise grim fate.

3) end all military aid to Muslim countries. No Muslim country, in the end, is a ‘friend’ to Infidels. It is not possible to trust Muslim countries with major weaponry for several reasons. One, the governments themselves cannot be trusted. Two, within the governments, even if there may be elements that actually are temporarily to be trusted, there are many others in that same government whose overriding loyalty will be to the umma al-islammiyya, the community of Islam. Many high-ranking Egyptians, it has been discovered through documents found in Baghdad, were being paid by Saddam Hussein. That is not surprising; perhaps they are now being paid by the Saudis. They cannot be trusted. Three, even if the government of a particular Muslim country were simon-pure, they cannot be relied on not to allow certain weapons to be acquired, from government stores, by determined members of the Muslim population.

This is not a question of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons alone. Muslim countries cannot, it is now obvious, be entrusted with Stinger missiles, or anything that could cause major casualties among Infidels.

Rifles and jeeps—that’s about it.

4) Begin to educate large numbers of people about Jihad: what are the sources in Qur’an and Hadith? What is the history of Jihad in time and space? What is the institution—Dhimmitude—which, post-Jihad, defines the status of all non-Muslims who remain alive, and still unconverted—what precisely are its elements? When, and where, were some of those elements modified or mitigated, and why? And what is the current evidence as to how non-Muslims are treated in the Muslim world—using Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq (the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Mandeans), Saudi Arabia—as places to examine in detail.

5) Attempt to arouse publics in the cretinized world of “Eurabia”—that is, a demoralized Western Europe that now has a horrific problem with its Muslim population, a population that the criminally negligent elites (especially in France) allowed in to the country, without understanding, or even attempting to study, the tenets of Islam, and the reason why this kind of immigration was completely different from all other kinds, given the inculcated hostility toward all non-Muslims, and the uncompromising war between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb.

In other words, a campaign similar to that waged by the United States after World War II in Western Europe, to win back Europeans from the siren-songs of Communism (the largest political parties were the Communist parties of France and Italy, but Thorez and Togliatti eventually were defeated by the artful deployment of money and propaganda), must be waged against the forces of Islam, that are already well-ensconced, through the “Euro-Arab Dialogue,” in the corridors of power at the EU, and of course at the United Nations itself (just look at Edward Mortimer, chief speechwriter for Annan, who is most famous for his praise of the ascent of Khomeini—”quite the most glorious morning in the history of mankind” is how he put it, and for his equally noteworthy embrace of the left-wing Lonni Brenner’s “theories” about the close collaboration between Nazis and Zionists—Mortimer even wrote an enthusiastic review of the book, one which Brenner has subsequently used as the foreward to his second edition).

There is much more that one could add. But the main point is that this war of self-defense, against a Jihad that ranges from the Philippines to Portland, Oregon, from Nigeria to New York, from Madrid to Madras, is a war to be waged not merely, not even mainly, through military might. Those pushing the Jihad use far more than military means, and in self-defense, the same methods must be used. Muslim migration must not only be halted, but the mental ground prepared among Western Europeans for reversing the Muslim presence in their countries; at the moment, one out of every three babies now born in France is Muslim. In 20 years, every third 20-year-old will be Muslim; in 30-40 years, France will be a country with a Muslim majority. This is not absurd extrapolation, but absolutely the driest of statistics. What will that mean for France? For control of the Force de Frappe? For the Venus de Milo and the paintings in the Louvre? For the very idea of the West, and of Western civilization? Anything? Nothing?

Shall we think this through now, or wait another decade?

After France, Holland and Italy will follow soon after, and one cannot imagine Western civilization without Italy (nor, as Israel has been invoked, can I imagine Western civilization if Israel is thrown to the wolves, and Islam again reigns in the Holy Land).

I prefer to think about these things now.

My dear El-Haji:

You say: "Although Saddam Hussein is declared to be a non-Muslims"

When and by whom?

You say: "The 'Islamic' extremic movement (Ikhwaan al-Muslimoon): banned (from Egypt)."

This is not exactly true. Search for "Muslim Brotherhood" at this site and you will see.

You say: "The 'Islamic' extremic head of Al Qaida(Usamaah Ibn Laaden): banned (from Saudi Arabia)."

Yes, but why? And how much support does he have in the Kingdom? Why did a recent poll there suggest that over 50% think of him as a hero How many friends in high places does he have there?

You say: "Have you know idea there is a crucial difference between Arabic nationalism and Islam? Let me sum it up for you:
Arab nationalism: 'We don't want Islam'
Islam: 'Islam should be the way of governing'"

Thank you at least for acknowledging that Islam asserts itself as the best system of government. American Muslim spokesmen will not admit that. But in any case, if the distinction between Islam and Arab nationalism is as sharp as you say, why did Saddam Hussein portray defense of his regime as a jihad? Wouldn't he have shunned such language if he were indeed a non-Muslim who didn't "want Islam"?

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Tiny little Israel(Judah), a nation of peoples gathered from the nations of the Gentiles( Islamic, Christian or otherwise) don't care about pan-arabism, pan-islamism, or pan-christianism, or pan-secularim, or pan-paganism, they are more worried about pan-brutalism. Israel is full of Arabs, but that is irrelivant. We all should be aware that thugism morphs. And these survivors have been brutalized by all nations; by our words and deeds. Where does peace lie and trust begin? God is going to be proved to the peoples of the Earth when a coalition of the willing attempt to enforce U.N. sanctions on Israel. But I know Saudi Arabia(Dedan) and Yemen(Sheba) will not go to fight againt Israel at that time. The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel relates this. How much of an ally is the Arabian Peninsula to the U.S.? Does it transcend Religion? How will history be morphed at the end of the of the rule of the king of this age?

Witch,

It is absurd to use Bush's " Islam is peace," as "evidence" that he favors the Saudis. Unlike the rest of us, politicians have to worry about violent reprisals, international alliances, and votes. Furthermore, the fact that Hillary used to unvite CAIR and the AMC to the Whitehouse harldly demonstrates that the democrats would be any more "Wahhabi friendly."

Unger's book has been thoroughly discredited, most prominently by another Bush hater; Richard Clarke, who openly admits having ordered the exit of the Bin Laden family.

The Bush haters eat up the crap that Unger writes because the belief that Bush's unwavering stance against Muslim terrorism is an "illusion" deflects attention from their own weakness in confronting the same enemy.

On the face of it, the Bush administration has done more to displease the Saudis and Saudi-supported organizations since Nixon sent arms to Israel during the Yon Kippur War. Bush has stopped pressuring the hardline government in Israel to use restraint and go back to the "peace" process, and distanced itself from CAIR and other Saudi-supported advocacy groups in the U.S.

If the Saudi's like Bush so much, why aren't they pumping more oil into the world market to ease our current recession?

Don't believe everything you read. Think about your sources.

Anouar El Haji ;

Thank you for confirming for us how Muslims react when they percieve that one of their leaders has "insulted" their faith.

Let me assure you, if a president in America were to "go against" Christianity, there would be denunciations and there might even be calls for his impeachment, but this hardly qualifies as "chaos" in the land.

Christian scripture does not need to be "defended" with violence because its moral truths are self-evident.

Perhaps it's time for you to re-consider why Muhammad was so obsessed with jihad.

correction!

that Hillary used to unvite CAIR and the AMC to the Whitehouse harldly demonstrates that the democrats would be any LESS "Wahhabi friendly."

There is a problem with the Arabs' story concerning the origins of the Qur'an. First of all, a mosque was unearthed at Hazor, Palestine during the 1950s that is over 3000 years old. Thus, it follows that Islam does not and cannot possibly originate from the Qur'an. There is also the problem that not all of the Quran is in Arabic--some of it is in Hebrew, some of it is in Greek, and some of it is in Persian. Al-lah actually originates from the Phoenicians' and bore the name Baal. The Arabs' nationalistic zeal is discernible in their long-standing denial of this fact. But that does not mean the Arabs were the creators of Islam. History is not on the Arabs side.

Thus the Arabs are either liars or delusional or both. They can believe what they want. But Islam's origins are apocryphal in the extreme. If they want to claim Islam as their own, they can have it (who else would want it?), but their claims are as apocryphal as the so-called religion of Islam itself.

You will also notice that Islam's god, 'Al-lah', is not the Judeo-Christian god 'Yahweh'. Presumably, the Arabs know this. Therefore, Muhammed was not and could not have been visited by Yahweh's leading angel and messenger extraordinaire, Gabriel. 'Al-lah' was playing on someone else' team (if Al-lah ever really existed at all (except as an idol), which is doubtful). Maybe something got lost in translation into Arabic from 71-Virginsville-godspeak.