Here is a new review of my last book, Did Muhammad Exist?: "Did Muhammad Exist? A Book Review," by Dallas M. Roark at Answering Islam:
What a strange question. Everybody assumes that Muhammad existed. Does not Islam affirm his existence? Why would anyone question it? Strangely enough there are many questions about Muhammad, the Qur’an, and the hadiths (traditions) that arose about Muhammad that led some scholars and researchers to the conclusion that Muhammad really did not exist. What is the cause of this doubt?A recent book by Robert Spencer has the title, Did Muhammad Exist? The book1 is well-researched and deals with many historical issues. He describes the “canonical” story, that is, the common story told by Muslims, of Muhammad and then deals with the problems of supporting the story. The conclusion is that there is little to support the Muslim claims concerning the existence of Muhammad historically....
After pursuing various issues Spencer sums up what we know about the traditional account of Muhammad’s life and the early days of Islam.
- No record of Muhammad’s reported death in 632 appears until more than a century after that date.
- A Christian account apparently dating from the mid-630s speaks of an Arab prophet “armed with a sword” who seems to be still alive.
- The early accounts written by the people the Arabs conquered never mention Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an. They call the conquerors “Ishmaelites,” “Saracens,” “Muhajirun,” and “Hagarians” but never “Muslims.”
- The Arab conquerors, in their coins and inscriptions, don’t mention Islam or the Qur’an for the first six decades of their conquests. Mentions of “Muhammad” are non-specific and on at least two occasions are accompanied by a cross. The word can be used not only as a proper name but also as an honorific.
- The Qur’an, even by the canonical Muslim account, was not distributed in its present form until the 650’s. Contradicting that standard account is the fact that neither the Arabian nor the Christians and Jews in the region mention the Qur’an until the early eighth century.
- During the reign of the caliph Muawiya (661-680), the Arabs constructed at least one public building whose inscription was headed by a cross.
- We begin hearing about Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and about Islam itself in the 690’s, during the reign of the caliph Abd al-Malik. Coins and inscriptions reflecting Islamic beliefs begin to appear at this time also.
- Around the same time, Arabic became the predominant written language of the Arabian Empire, supplanting Syriac and Greek.
- Abd al-Malik claimed, in a passing remark in one hadith, to have collected the Qur’an, contradicting Islamic tradition that the collection was the work of the caliph Uthman forty years earlier.
- Multiple hadiths report that Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, governor of Iraq during the reign of Abd al-Malik, edited the Qur’an and distributed his new edition to the various Arab-controlled provinces--- again, something Uthman is supposed to have done decades earlier.
- Even some Islamic traditions maintain that certain common Islamic practices, such as the recitation of the Qur’an during mosque prayers, date from orders of Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, not to the earlier period of Islamic history.
- In the middle of the eighth century, the Abbasid dynastic supplanted the Umayyad line of Abd al-Malik. The Abbasids charged the Umayyads with impiety on a large scale. In the Abbasid period, biographical material about Mohammed began to proliferate. The first complete biography of the prophet of Islam finally appeared during this era—at least 125 years after the traditional date of his death.
- The biographical material that emerged situates Muhammad in an area of Arabia that never was the center for trade and pilgrimage that the canonical Islamic account of Islam’s origin depend on it to be. (pp.205-206)
Given these huge problems for the history of Islam, how does Spencer explain the rise of Islam? He proposes the need for a political theology that would reflect Arabic culture, Arabic language, and Arabic religion. When warriors from Arabia encountered the conquered cultures they observed that the Roman empire had a political theology for the purpose of binding the empire together. “The earliest Arab rulers appear to have been adherents of Hagarism, a monotheistic religion centered around Abraham and Ishmael.” (p.208) It was not as anti-Christian as Islam developed later since there were Arab coins with crosses on them. This religious model reached its height in 691 and there began to emerge a defiantly Arabic one....
How will Muslims respond to this book? Some may seek to curse the author. They may respond in outrage. But that will not disprove the facts presented here. Islam is supposed to be a religion based in history. It is supposed to be a religion of reason. But if history will not support the claims of Islam, is it time for Muslims to rethink the legitimacy of Islam? Blind commitment to the teachings of the local imam will not be enough in this age of instant information and verification of facts.
Spencer makes a compelling argument that Muhammad did not exist. One may view the debate between Spencer and David Wood, who affirmed that Muhammad did exist. Wood did not fill in the gaps to make the case for his existence without great doubt. That debate can be viewed here....
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Blind commitment to the teachings of the local imam will not be enough in this age of instant information and verification of facts.
Correct! Infidel technology will trump Islam's dogmatism. The Internet and other instant communication technologies will do for Islam what The Enlightenment did for Christianity and Judaism!
The clowns' days are numbered!