Here is a report on the January 15 webinar I did for Middle East Forum on Islam’s obscure origins. Preorder the revised and expanded edition of Did Muhammad Exist? here.
“Robert Spencer: ‘Did Muhammad Exist?'” by Marilyn Stern, Middle East Forum, March 1, 2021
Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, spoke to participants in a January 15 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about the scarcity of historical evidence that Muhammad, Islam’s prophet, actually existed.
Spencer noted that Muhammad is mentioned only four times in the Quran, and those few mentions are vague and devoid of any specifics. Most of the details about Muhammad’s life are found in the Hadith, reports about Muhammad’s “words and deeds.” The Hadith are the foundation for Islamic law followed today and the basis for imitating Muhammad, “most notably by jihadis.” The Hadith date primarily from the 9th century, whereas Muhammad, according to Islamic tradition, died in the year 632. For two centuries, “you have this massive empire stretching from Spain to India, and there’s virtually no mention of the person who is supposed to be the guiding figure that made those conquests happen.”
Islamic apologists typically explain the absence of contemporaneous Arabic accounts of Muhammad by pointing to the fact that the Arabs relied on oral tradition to pass knowledge from generation to generation. But written accounts by various people conquered by the Arabs from the 7th century on are quite voluminous, yet there is little mention of Muhammad in them.
For example, Sophronius, the Christian patriarch of Jerusalem who surrendered the city to Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab in 637 described the invaders as followers of Abraham who came out of Arabia, but did not describe them as Muslims or record them as making claims about Muhammad or a new religion. Other conquered peoples, such as the Persians and the Indians, also wrote of their ordeals, but omitted mention of Muhammad. What early references to Muhammad can be found do not line up with the Hadith canon….
There is more. Read the rest here.
gravenimage says
Robert Spencer Webinar: Did Muhammad Exist?
……………..
Good stuff. Glad this book still has “legs”.
revereridesagain says
Truth is indeed “the daughter of Time”.
mortimer says
Robert Spencer is really onto something. He bases his summary on the latest academic research. The Koran barely refers to Mohammed, so we can say Mohammed’s official biography DID NOT EXIST until after the Koran was written. The nascent Muslims pieced the Koran together from various disparate writings in Syria and Mesopotamia, and only thereafter did they try to account for the Koranic chapters and attribute them to someone important … but there was no biography, so one had to be invented.
It appears that the biography of Mohammed was also pieced together from disparate sources and possibly refers to different people cobbled together in the manner that a novelist constructs the characters in a novel.
b.a. freeman says
indeed, mortimer; ibn ishaq’s “Sirat Rasul Allah,” the definitive biography of muhammed, was written around 750 or so, around 130 years after muhammed supposedly died. nobody was alive at that time who had been alive when he supposedly lived, so it would be relatively easy to invent a biography of a fake person, as nobody could challenge such a story. apparently, arabia was filled with cottage industries at the time that churned out ahadith, so one who was constructing such a story would have no dearth of material with which to work.
James Lincoln says
So if mohammed did not actually ever exist, then muslims have been killing people all these years for NOTHING…
Westman says
You can be certain that it was for something of value like jizya and booty. There is no other “holy” book with an entire chapter devoted to, and named, “Booty” – just the Quran. Islam was born as a parasite and conquerer upon those not belonging to the warlord gang. The religious aspect was invented to keep men active in warfare and justify it as the will of their god.
How else, but conquest, does a 7th century ME tribe become wealthy in an environment of limited resources so severe that they were burying their live female babies in the sand? Islam’s scriptures don’t attempt to hide Islam’s history, they only try to justify it.
Modern “moderate” Muslims ignore the reality of Islam’s beginnings while the orthodox ardent believers become the physical jihadis. The Quran will never stop giving Islam a “black eye” in the form of the violence it creates.
gregbeetham says
Exactly, anyone only has to look at the Barbary Pirates to get an idea of what Islam is all about, it’s all about taking something that belongs to someone else by force including taking slaves but only they ones they desired, like fair skinned young females, and murdering all of the others if they can’t see a way of holding some of them for ransom. Pure evil conducted by the cult of Satan and the West still hasn’t learnt after all this time of never ending evil from this demonic plague.
Michael Copeland says
Thomas Jefferson in Paris enquired of the Ambassador of the Bey of Tunis why they were doing this. He reported back:
“it was written in their Koran … that it was their right and duty to make war …
and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners.”
Special message to the West today:
The Koran’s instructions remain, and are forbidden from being changed.
mortimer says
Reply to James Lincoln: The standard NARRATIVE HAS HOLES … HAS HOLES …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LknbK8fkAkM
James Lincoln says
Westman, gregbeetham, and Michael Copeland:
Your points are well taken.
I guess that I was looking at it from a different perspective…
b.a. freeman says
not really, James; keep in mind that the first muslims were THUGS, just like pious muslims today, and they were looking for things to steal as well as women and children to rape. the religion, if it was invented (a pretty good chance, from what i have read), *had* to include those things, and it didn’t hurt that the good times would continue in jannah. all in all, whoever invented this cult was an evil genius; he justified turning to the darkest, most evil parts of human nature.
gravenimage says
Good exchanges above.
Walter Sieruk says
Yes other Christian scholars on Islam such a Jay Smith, raised the question the Muhammad ever really exist and have good valid evidence that he have not actually lived at all.
Nevertheless , in some ways that might even be large “Red Herring ” question because a this now are in this twenty -first century , what matter now is that the religion of Islam does exist and besides the violent and stealth jihad Islam is a false religion with false teachings that lead many people astray.
Let’s view Islam as if Muhammad really has existed , after he might had lived !
Therefore, a test to see if a claim made by a man to “Be a prophet of God.” is trure or false the Bible instructs in Isaiah 8:20. ” To the the law and to the testimony . If they speak not according to this word . it is because there is no light in them. [N.K.J.V.]
The prophet of Islam,Muhammad had denied that Jesus is God.
For the “jesus” of Islam is not the Jesus of the Bible and Christianity. For the “jesus ” of Islam and the Qu ‘ran is not the Bible based Jesus.
The Jesus of Christianity and the Bible is God. Meaning God the Son of God the Father. Matthew 3:16. Hebrews 1:6-8.
That Jesus is God many be seen in John 1:1-3. 20:28 Romans 9:6. First John 5:20.
Furthermore by comparing John 5:25,26 with Romans 14:12. Reveals that Jesus is God.
.In addition, by comparing the Old Testament with the New Testament shows that Jesus is God. As in comparing Psalm 89:8,9 .with Matthew 8:23-27. Proves Jesus is God.
Likewise by comparing Isaiah 46:22,23. With Philippians 2::5-11. Also by comparing First kings with Mark 2;8 further shows Jesus to be God.
Daniel 7:13,14. Compared with John 5:25, 26 clearly reveals Jesus to be God.
Therefore , in the light and information of the Bible is clear and obvious that the prophet of Islam , Muhammad is a false prophet.
As the kind of which Jesus had predicted and warned about .
For Jesus taught “Beware of false prophets ,who come to you in sheep’s clothing , but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.” Matthew 7:15 .
In addition the Bible further warns that “many false prophets have gone out into the world.” First John 4:1.
Rarely says
So what you are saying is that because you believe in Christianity and the literal word of the New Testament mohammed didn’t exist and allah is a false god and the devil. Proof of nothing.
Every religion falls apart when measured by the “holy” book of any other religion.
Walter Sieruk says
To Rarely , thank you for taking the time to reply to my posting. Your comment starts off with the four words “So what are you saying…” If that was meant to a question the answer is the according to the Bible the”acid test” to discover if a prophet is a true prophet or a false prophet .Likewise to discover if a religion is true or if its a false religion , if does that prophet or a relogion have teaching to are in accord with what is written in the Bible or not .
For such instructions are found in Isaiah 8:20 which informs the reader “To the law and the testimony : if they speak not according to this word ,it is because there is no light in them.” [N.K.J.V.]
Rarely says
Walter.
All you’re saying is that islam doesn’t agree with Christianity. Duh. The 80% of the World that is not Christian couldn’t care less.
gravenimage says
Rarely, Islam doesn’t agree with any other faith–or with Atheism or Agnosticism, either. Islam is a threat to *all* non-Muslims.
Rarely says
GI
I’m not defending islam. Rather I’m saying it makes absolutely no sense to argue that allah is really the devil, that mohammed never lived, etc because it disagrees with Christianity and that the proof is in the Gospels.
To do so is simply using playground arguments: “Nyah, nyah. MY religion is better than your religion. Nyah, nyah.”
Facts, or the lack thereof, are required.
revereridesagain says
Bravo!
We must learn to cease treating legendary and imaginary figures as real beings in the name of whom their followers pontificate, hate, persecute, conquer, and kill.
Please.
SJ says
It’s possible that he lived. But he was just a bloodthirsty warlord
gregbeetham says
In my mind Muhammad, the Koran and the Hadiths were already just invented fable after listening and watching Jay Smith and his researchers discredit the existence of Muhammad based on archaeological evidence, the rock inscriptions, the conflicting literature of the time and the coins distributed throughout the region during the period when Muhammad was supposed to exist and the complete absence of solid archaeological evidence that he existed in Mecca or Medina so I think this book by Robert Spencer will be a valuable continuation which will provide theological historical context on the origin and gradual development of the Muhammad myth long after he was supposed to exist.
Battle says
Been waiting years for a certain replying person to write out the quotes he cites.
I mean, you’ve got to be kidding me?
When the cited verse does not back up the claim who would know without looking each one up.
If you want me to believe you, cite it and write it or don’t bother to cite it.
gravenimage says
Battle, what quotes do you want cited?
Dr. Bukk says
Polygamy causes extra men. What better way to handle that than send them off as mercenaries, instruct them loot, burn villages and crops, kill everyone but boys for their military, women for sex slaves and then share the booty? Until polygamy is defeated there will be inbreeding and the need for men to immigrate (or conquer). 80% migrating into Europe are young men. The Koran was cobbled to justify this. Islam is the Religion of Gonads.
Dude says
The dude in Medina was not the dude in Mecca.
tim gallagher says
I suspect that Muhammad didn’t exist.I think he was made up by a bunch of evil creatures later on who made up the fantasy that some evil version of god, allah, thought that their invention, Muhammad, was a wonderful type of man. It gave all the evil that they wanted to carry out some nonsensical approval by a phony, evil version of god. It seems appropriate to me that this vile religious ideology, islam, which is so barbaric and evil in its attitude to all aspects of human life, should have a gigantic lie right there at its heart, in that its “prophet” didn’t even exist at all. Ditto for the god, allah, that “talked” to Muhammad – this god never existed but was invented by the evil men who invented Muhammad. Anyway, if Muhammad did exist, then he was a disgusting human specimen and his evil outlook on life has led to all the atrocities that islam has carried out for 1400 years – 1400 years too long.
gregbeetham says
Well, Muhammad kind of existed except he wasn’t actually the one depicted in the Koran; the studied closest real life individual discovered so far was Ilyas ibn Qabisah who had the nickname of Muhammad but he wasn’t an orphan he was a powerful ruler, a king or warlord and rebel against the Umayyad sultanate who were aligned with the Persians (afaik).
The Koranic mythmakers had to reconfigure him and transport him to remote Mecca (where they had never heard of him and probably didn’t for a long time) but that was ok because he was invented primarily in the area where Ilyas ibn Qabisah had travelled, roughly between Baghdad and Damascus and possibly Petra in Jordan and by that time most of the people who would have been able to connect Ilyas Ibn Qabisah with the new Prophet figure were dead and none of them lived in the area where the Muhammad figure was supposed to have conducted his Prophesying and the Meccans were probably still unaware they had been assigned a shiny new prophet at the time either.
Storytelling abounded in those times so once the Muhammad theme took off those who wanted to invent a new religion capable of controlling the factions had lots of material to choose from. They cleverly included segments of already existing religions and pagan beliefs and made it impossible to leave the new religion as well, you could still leave of course, feet first, and there were some examples of this…briefly.
What I’m not sure of so far is when it was that Muhammad got assigned to Mecca by the mythmakers, was it before the time the Abbasids (ostensibly) stole the black stone from Petra and took it to Mecca or was it afterwards.
tim gallagher says
Thanks for the information, gregbeetham. You certainly are very knowledgeable on the subject. I don’t have that much knowledge about whether Muhammad did exist or not. I feel that it would be appropriate if, at the very core of Islam, there is this gigantic lie in that their wondrous prophet was a complete fabrication. Probably wishful thinking on my part. Islam definitely has a horrible, vicious notion of what god might be like, and Muhammad is a pretty revolting type of person, a murdering bandit and a fairly degenerate type of human being, what with his marrying and having sex with the very young, Aisha, that is for sure.
gregbeetham says
Thanks but I have to say I’m not in the same league as people like Robert Spencer or Jay Smith and Co. All I’ve done is assemble a likely outline from evidence diligently gathered by specialists such as them.
The origin of the Koran and the credibility of the existence of Muhammad is still a work in progress but it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the entire thing is a story without substance. Story telling was an art form back in those days because there wasn’t any other form of entertainment to speak of so story tellers who were good at their trade were acclaimed, even slaves could achieve notoriety if they could spin a decent yarn.
Also opioid use was endemic throughout the region, it probably helped numb the senses against the squalid conditions most people endured without relief, and the average life span was short so a span of 1 or 2 hundred years enveloped more generations than they do today.
I would guess that once the people of Mecca became aware of the growing force of Islam and its fake prophet centred on their squalid village they enthusiastically embraced it because it stood to transform their forgotten outpost and it did just that once the black stone arrived as well.
tim gallagher says
Thanks for the reply, All that you say there sounds very plausible, gregbeetham. You have built up some detailed knowledge, that’s for sure. Robert Spencer is certainly extraordinarily knowledgeable and is my favourite of the fighters against islam. I watched a few of David Wood’s videos and enjoyed them. I’ve heard of Jay Smith but haven’t read anything by him. Here at Jihad Watch, the knowledge that mortimer shows amazes me. He seems to know almost as much about islam as Robert Spencer. I’m probably too lazy to build up a detailed knowledge of Islam, but I see Islam as an evil, violent and completely barbaric ideology, with all those calls to hate and to kill non-believers, the marrying off very young girls, the thinking that raping non-Muslims is fine and dandy, and so on, so I am always going to be trying to contribute to Islam’s decline. I can’t see any redeeming features to islam, though there are obviously some OK Muslims, so it has to be fought against. If only more people would wake up to Islam’s nature, we’d make a lot more progress. All those people who tell us Islam deserves to be respected make no sense to me.
gregbeetham says
Pfander films is the name of Jay Smith’s channel and Mel is one of his best researchers and his discoveries are usually published in cahoots with Jay in a new video. (I’ve been a big fan of these two for a while and of course David Wood)
They have been engaged in an argument with David Wood for a while concerning the existence of Muhammad, David calls Jay and Mel the mythmakers because he believes the Koranic version of Muhammad while of course Jay and Mel have all but destroyed that myth with evidence to the contrary, David has the Koran as his evidence but Jay and Mel have truckloads of real evidence that the Muhammad in the Koran is as fake as the proverbial 3 dollar bill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poKbGVr4hZA&feature=emb_rel_pause
Ps. I think Islam was created to be the way it is so that it had a chance of keeping the various murderous warlike Arab tribes and factions under one unified structure, there wasn’t much likelihood of a more benevolent system ever achieving it and it had to appeal to the cultural norms of the time as well.
The trouble is, we are still stuck with it today.
tim gallagher says
Thanks for the information, gregbeetham. I will check Jay Smith out. I have watched a bit of Bill Warner in the past as well. I agree with what you say in your last sentence. The problem is that the human race is still stuck with islam, a barbaric, vicious left over from more primitive times. It should have gone the way of other evil religious ideologies such as the old Aztec religion and other such vicious belief systems (probably another example would be the old Germanic pagan gods that Christianity replaced, etc)
gregbeetham says
That particular video I gave the link too has lots of references to Robert Spencer’s work and it questions of the validity of Islam quite well by pointing out that the Hadiths were written by people who never knew Muhammad and couldn’t possibly have ever known him if you take the Koran at face value.
I was looking for the video they have on the rock inscriptions and coins of the period but I didn’t notice it in the search results, that one is definitely worthwhile.
Kepha says
There are anomalies between the canonical sources of Islam and the archaeology, but Muhammad probably did exist. There’s enough said and preserved to make the idea of a unifier of the Arabs a likely historical reality. But this doesn’t change my conviction that Muhammad was no prophet of God.
Few references to Muhammad in the Qur’an? There are few references to Charles Krauthammer in the body of columns he left behind. Krauthammer had politics and culture to discuss apart from a few references to himself; Muhammad was more interested in ranting about the horrible unbelievers who didn’t buy his messge and the fearful judgment thay deserved.
Since people will probably compare Muhammad and Jesus, Jesus as a person has a bigger place in Christianity that Muhammad has in Islam. To Christians, Jesus is God incarnate rather than a mere messenger. The Gospel is not a set of rules, but the news that God ha visited us, worked righteousness took our sins on him on the cross, and rose from the dead to bring us salvation. The teachings of the New Testament are not separable from the person of Jesus Christ. The Qur’an, on the other hand, might be an expansion of a sermon by many a ranter.
gravenimage says
The “Prophet” Muhammed is such as bizarre figure, even for the standards of his time, that I think he probably did exist (or he may be an amalgam of several figures).
That being said, he like any other figure can be investigated and his historicity questioned. This is true of every other figure–it should be true of Islam as well.
Walter Sieruk says
The American President Abraham Lincoln had said “History isn’t history unless it’s truth.”
Ecosse1314 says
Fact remains that the huge trading city of Mecca was never mentioned in any extant documents from Roman Arabic Greek Ethiopian Persian or Jewish writers before the 8th century.
Suspicious or what. ????
gregbeetham says
That aspect was researched by Jay Smith and Co. They found that Mecca wasn’t on any trade routes; it wasn’t a focus for any trading hub because the traditional trade routes bypassed it prior to the advent of Islam.
Ecosse1314 says
So true…it was so far away from a recognised trade route..it had to be fallacios