Islam Islamic history Mohamed

ROBERT SPENCER: DID MOHAMED EXIST……?

Are jihadists dying for a fiction? Everything you thought you knew about Islam is about to change.

Did Muhammad exist?

It is a question that few have thought—or dared—to ask. Virtually everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, takes for granted that the prophet of Islam lived and led in seventh-century Arabia.

But this widely accepted story begins to crumble on close examination, as Robert Spencer shows in his eye-opening new book.

In his blockbuster bestseller The Truth about Muhammad, Spencer revealed the shocking contents of the earliest Islamic biographical material about the prophet of Islam. Now, in Did Muhammad Exist?, he uncovers that material’s surprisingly shaky historical foundations. Spencer meticulously examines historical records, archaeological findings, and pioneering new scholarship to reconstruct what we can know about Muhammad, the Qur’an, and the early days of Islam. The evidence he presents challenges the most fundamental assumptions about Islam’s origins.

Did Muhammad Exist? reveals:

  • How the earliest biographical material about Muhammad dates from at least 125 years after his reported death
  • How six decades passed before the Arabian conquerors—or the people they conquered—even mentioned Muhammad, the Qur’an, or Islam
  • The startling evidence that the Qur’an was constructed from existing materials—including pre-Islamic Christian texts
  • How even Muslim scholars acknowledge that countless reports of Muhammad’s deeds were fabricated
  • Why a famous mosque inscription may refer not to Muhammad but, astonishingly, to Jesus
  • How the oldest records referring to a man named Muhammad bear little resemblance to the now-standard Islamic account of the life of the prophet
  • The many indications that Arabian leaders fashioned Islam for political reasons

Far from an anti-Islamic polemic, Did Muhammad Exist? is a sober but unflinching look at the origins of one of the world’s major religions. While Judaism and Christianity have been subjected to searching historical criticism for more than two centuries, Islam has never received the same treatment on any significant scale.

7 Responses

  1. That’s fine with me, but something tells me believers will not be swayed.

  2. Much as I admire Robert Spencer, I’m not entirely convinced. The character of Mohammed with all his psychiatric abnormalities is too realistic to be fictional. He fits the definition of a cult leader. The similarities between him and other cult leaders such as Jim Jones are uncanny. Unless you have had experience of narcissistic personality disorder, either personal experience or simply hearing about it, you couldn’t make it up!
    If Mohammed didn’t exist then I believe he was based on someone that did. Maybe one of the Caliphs was the first ‘Mohammed’ and they changed the dates and the name later, adding extra attributes, or maybe Mohammed was based on several characters that were merged together.

  3. According to other scholars, it’s true that many pieces of Xtianity and pagan arab traditions were included when they assembled their cult (look up Arian Heresy for that), which makes Islam the largest christian sect in the world, or the second largest, I dunno how many catholics there are. Now, unfortunately Muhammad turning out to maybe have never existed is not going to have a great impact, just like the books dealing with his mental and bodily sicknesses. On the other hand there is this story of an early muslim visiting a guy, who then calls the prophet a “dwarf and fat”, which causes the muslim to respond, that he won’t stay with a man, who talks like that about the prophet, then he leaves. If Muhammad had been a tall, slim dude, the muslim would have laughed it off, wouldn’t he? Just wondering..

  4. I think Robert Spencer has gone too far this time and lost the plot he so masterfully guided us along before. I agree with the opening commenter here that “The character of Muhammad with all his psychiatric abnormalities is too realistic to be fictional.”

    Muhammad lived in a non-literate, literature-destroying society with strong oral memory. You really couldn’t just make up such a telling account of how a self-serving thug tricked and forced his way to local dominance and thereafter to international dominance. And you couldn’t make up such an extraordinary pile of insane ranting as that certain book. The Muslims’ “holy” books’ unwitting revelation of Islam as a self-serving scam hoax created by Muhammad is too coherent and credible to be dismissed merely on the basis of lack of proper contemporary certification and the existence of a lot of associated falsehoods.

    The one positive I see in the forthcoming book on this theme is that denying the existence of Muhammad does not constitute a head-chopping offence in the way that telling the ugly truth about him does, and consequently is a notion that can be more freely raised in public. And would then attract attention to the more damning questions of what Muhammad was really like.

  5. It is easy to accept that Muhammad may be a mythical character, given the madness that surrounds him. Then again, it is difficult to believe that Jesus was born of immaculate conception, resurrected after descending into hell , and levitated up into heaven. The old testament stories of a talking snake, the Jewish passover and the parting of the Red Sea, etc. seem equally far fetched to critical thinkers in the age of the internet. Robert Spencer has made a great contribution with his book by opening up the question: are all the Abrahamic cult/religions mere mythology? If so, then maybe we can all stop fighting each other over what we know not.

  6. To the people who are arguing that the apparent Muhammad was too much of a sicko to be made up: Get some intellectual integrity! You need to stop worrying about looking sophisticated to other morons whose cognitive method consists of worrying about looking sophisticated to other morons. The facts – FACTS – which Spencer has listed are undeniable. There is no valid evidence whatsoever for the existence of Muhammad. There are no records from Muhammad, his supposed relatives, associates, or anyone in the Arab world. There are no mentions of Muhammad by anyone outside the Arab world anywhere near the time he supposedly lived. There are no monuments, inscriptions, coins, or any other archaeological evidence of his existence. Bear in mind we have thousands of such writings and bits of evidence. They are all empty of the merest mention of historical Muhammad for the first six decades after he “died,” and there should be a mention of him by somebody somewhere. If Muhammad existed, there would be no need to come up with phony evidence (i.e., Muhammad’s “grave,” known interpolations into historical records, and phony suras and hadiths). No honest person could conclude that Muhammad existed, which explains why Europe’s premier Islamic scholar came to reject his historical existence and leave the religion. Get some courage and heel to the power of truth, no matter who you offend, who sneers at you for it, or what you think the consequences will be. What really looks bad is people directing their attacks at Spencer because they don’t want to be hassled with this issue. I have got news for you. This issue is not going away, so you may as well face the music.

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