Here is the fourth part of my refutation of a 2008 article by Patricia Crone (who died in 2015), who was one of the pioneering scholars of historical revisionism regarding the standard account of Muhammad’s life, and yet in this article seemed to retreat from her previous views. The first part is here, the second part here, and the third part is here.
Order the new revised and expanded version of Did Muhammad Exist? here.
“What do we actually know about Mohammed?,” by Patricia Crone, Open Democracy, June 10, 2008:
The inside story
The Qur’an does not give us an account of the prophet’s life. On the contrary: it does not show us the prophet from the outside at all, but rather takes us inside his head, where God is speaking to him, telling him what to preach, how to react to people who poke fun at him, what to say to his supporters, and so on. We see the world through his eyes, and the allusive style makes it difficult to follow what is going on.
Events are referred to, but not narrated; disagreements are debated without being explained; people and places are mentioned, but rarely named. Supporters are simply referred to as believers; opponents are condemned as unbelievers, polytheists, wrongdoers, hypocrites and the like, with only the barest information on who they were or what they said or did in concrete terms (rather as modern political ideologues will reduce their enemies to abstractions: revisionists, reactionaries, capitalist-roaders, terrorists). It could be, and sometimes seems to be, that the same people now appear under one label and then another.
One thing seems clear, however: all the parties in the Qur’an are monotheists worshipping the God of the Biblical tradition, and all are familiar – if rarely directly from the Bible itself – with Biblical concepts and stories. This is true even of the so-called polytheists, traditionally identified with Mohammed’s tribe in Mecca. The Islamic tradition says that the members of this tribe, known as Quraysh, were believers in the God of Abraham whose monotheism had been corrupted by pagan elements; modern historians would be inclined to reverse the relationship and cast the pagan elements as older than the monotheism; but some kind of combination of Biblical-type monotheism and Arabian paganism is indeed what one encounters in the Qur’an.
The so-called polytheists believed in one creator God who ruled the world and whom one approached through prayer and ritual; in fact, like the anathematised ideological enemies of modern times, they seem to have originated in the same community as the people who denounced them. For a variety of doctrinal reasons, however, the tradition likes to stress the pagan side of the prophet’s opponents, and one highly influential source in particular (Ibn al-Kalbi) casts them as naive worshippers of stones and idols of a type that may very well have existed in other parts of Arabia. For this reason, the secondary literature has tended to depict them as straightforward pagans too.
Some exegetes are considerably more sophisticated than Ibn al-Kalbi, and among modern historians GR Hawting stands out as the first to have shown that the people denounced as polytheists in the Qur’an are anything but straightforward pagans. The fact that the Qur’an seems to record a split in a monotheist community in Arabia can be expected to transform our understanding of how the new religion arose.
In this section, Crone opens the door to doubts about her earlier flat statement: “There is no doubt that Mohammed existed, occasional attempts to deny it notwithstanding.” She notes how in the Qur’an, we see the world through the prophet’s eyes, “and the allusive style makes it difficult to follow what is going on. Events are referred to, but not narrated; disagreements are debated without being explained; people and places are mentioned, but rarely named.” That allows for a great deal more slippage from the canonical Islamic account of Islam’s origins than Crone suggests here. To find out just how much, see Did Muhammad Exist?.
mortimer says
When someone claims to be hearing voices ‘in his head’ as Mohammed claimed, he is thought to be mentally ill or spirit-possessed by those who believe that spiritualism is real.
Mohammed shows many signs of being a spirit-medium and occultist as his mother and grandmother were also spirit-mediums and occultists. These women are called ‘kahinnas’ (female spirit mediums). They passed messages from the beyond through a ‘familiar spirit’ which in occultism is often passed from mother to daughter through the generations. The infant Mohammed upset his wet-nurse with various manifestations of spiritualistic disturbances. Through his life (recorded in the hadiths) Mohammed refers to psychic phenomena and is said at different times to be under spells or possessed.
If Mohammed’s guiding spirit (Jibreel) was actually a familiar spirit, then the Koran was a case of spirit-dictation and ipso facto suspect. There have been many books that the authors claimed were written through this method of spirit dictation. That doesn’t mean they were of divine origin.
gravenimage says
Yes–even at the time, many of his contemporaries thought that Muhammed was insane.
Michael Copeland says
“Indeed, he is mad.”
“Surely he is possessed!”
“He is certainly insane.”
‘Surely he is a man possessed!’
“Verily, he is a madman!”
http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=68&verse=51
gravenimage says
Thank you, Michael. 🙂
gregbeetham says
Not only is the Koran suspect, Robert Spencer’s book demolishes the credibility of the Hadiths as well.
Opposing forces in the Jordan/Iraq/Syria/Persia region manufactured fresh Hadiths containing edicts from Muhammad supportive of their particular view of things many years after he had died (if he actually existed that is). The fabrication of Hadiths became an industry where eventually hundreds of thousands of them had to be destroyed to try to restore some semblance of order but it isn’t known for certain if those that survived are those that contain some historical truth or are just part of the legend.
Rethmann Lett says
Therefore, the Koran should be refined according to the rules of the Arabic language. I mean, as a first stage or as a visual preface, the words should be returned to their Hebrew and Syriac origins, and to other extraneous words. There are extra words and words… The bottom line is that the Koran does not currently work and must therefore be refined and corrected.
gravenimage says
Not sure you can convince Muslims that the Qur’an needs correcting…
Kepha says
Crone’s _Hagarism_ was not presented as a final conclusion, but as an opening of a question and presentation of a plausible alternative. If she later changed her mind, OK.
I’m OK with raising questions about Muhammad’s existence, even if I’m rather convinced he did exist (but was no prophet of God). But I’m not sure that Crone’s description of the Qur’anic sources on Muhammad truy raise doubts about his existence. For another example, how much do we know about the Prophet Ezekiel, save that he was apparently among the exiles taken to Babylon and that he ended up a widower? How much do we know from the Gospel of John about John, the beloved disciple? We can glean that he probably knew his way around Jerusalem, and may have been known to someone or some several ones in the elite.
Here’s what this one non-Muslim (and unlikely to ever be one) figures out about Muhammad from reading the Qur’an:
1. Muhammad was clearly impressed by the Abrahamic religions.
2. He had a beef with the cult followed at the Ka’aba.
3. He was obsessed with the Last Judgment
4. He had bits and pieces of Jewish and Christian lore, which he probably obtained by word of mouth.
5. Even if compiled by Uthman or Abd-al-Malik, the Qur’an has a a “core” that is from Muhammad himself.
Mike Ramirez says
There is an account about Mo placing rabbis under house arrest after the battle of Kayhbar. He ordered them to transcribe teachings from the Torah at which time the rabbis took the opportunity to plant some “false flags” into the work they were doing. That way when Muhammad would recite Jewish teachings the Jewish community would be alerted to the discrepancies, thus putting his prophethood in question. One example in the Quran makes reference to the sacrificial heifer being yellow in color (some say color of taupe). The true color is pure red and unblemished. That is just one example why Jews did not accept Mo as being a true prophet of God but rather a false prophet. Thus, the rejection of Mo by Jews and Christians who were knowledgeable of specific accounts from the Bible, catching Mo in religious deception.
gravenimage says
He tortured and murdered one of the Rabbis–Kinana–for not revealing the tribe’s teasure.
But I have never heard this story you mention–Citations?
Besides, this battle was in 628 AD, and Muhammed supposedly died just a couple of years later. The idea that he was still formulating Islam at this point (as per Islamic texts) is mistaken.
Mike Ramirez says
The Islamic accounts mention that the spirit-being “angel” Jibreel kept appearing to him throughout a period of 23 years plus he was gleaning teachings from Judaism and Christianity.. There is mention that in Mo’s last days he cursed the Jews (Hadith) and also mentioned that he would expel Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula.
Mike Ramirez says
In response to gravenimage, it was several years ago that I had read that account of the rabbis planting false flags in teaching Muhammad about Judaism. Some of the info has changed but I believe that this is the site where I read that information.
http://religionresearchinstitute.org/Mohammad/ishmael.htm
Meanwhile, one example of theological discrepancy between Allah and Yahweh is regarding the specific color of the heifer that is to be offered in the cleansing sacrifice. Islamic theology states that Allah requires a “Yellow” heifer, but in the Torah, Yahweh instructs Moses to offer a pure “Red” heifer. This proves that Mo was given false flag information. Herein are the instructions from both views:
The Qur’an reads:
“They said: Pray for us unto thy Lord that He make clear to us of what colour she is. (Moses) answered: Lo! He saith: Verily she is a yellow cow. Bright is her colour, gladdening beholders.” (Qur’an: 002.069)
The Torah reads:
“And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,
This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke:” (Numbers 19: 1-2)
Here again we have Islamic and Judaic theology conflicting on God’s instructions that were given to Moses. However, the color of the heifer must be of significant importance in that it determines the only one that can be acceptable to God as an offering during the Temple rites. Did God require Moses to acquire a “Yellow” heifer or a “Red” heifer? Another reason why the Jewish people rejected Muhammad as being a false prophet..
Muhammad curses Jews and Christians in his dying breath:
‘A’isha and Abdullah reported: As the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) was about to breathe his last, he drew his sheet upon his face and when he felt uneasy, he uncovered his face and said in that very state: Let there be curse upon the Jews and the Christians that they have taken the graves of their apostles as places of worship. He in fact warned (his men) against what they (the Jews and the Christians) did. (Sahih Muslim 1083)
gravenimage says
Mike, I cannot access that site.
There is no doubt that the Qur’an uses–and misuses–bits and pieces of the Torah and Gospel. But I don’t see that that supports the idea that the Rabbis of Khaybar deliberately mistranslated parts of the Torah for Muhammed.
Mike Ramirez says
Okay, gravenimage, whether proof can or cannot be found about rabbis planting false flags in the translation of the Torah, the fact of the discrepancy in Moses being asked by God to acquire a red heifer conflicts with the Qur’an where Allah asks the “Muslim Moses” to find a yellow heifer. The Jewish and Christian community view this error as a false teaching and enough to determine that Mo is a false prophet. That is only one of several other theological inconsistencies that point to Islam being a false religion when compared to the teachings of the Holy Bible. 1.6 Billion people are praying to the wrong deity Five Times a day.
gravenimage says
Mike, there are *certainly* mistakes in the Qur’an about Jewish and Christian teachings.
Of course, Muslims claim that it is Jews and Christians who “corrupted” their scriptures. (Never mind that there is no evidence for this).