Who was really Ibn Ishaq?

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Sep 17, 2012 at 07:17

Roger wrote

Mr. Pipes, have you read the biography of Mohammed by Ibn Ishaq?

I cannot speak for Dr. Pipes but I'm sure he did

For those who don't know, Ibn Ishaq wrote the biography before Mohammed's youngest wife, Aisha, died, so she was a major source.

Really? Ibn Ishaq died in 767 and he wrote this biography some 125 years after the death of Muhammad and he was indeed very remote from Muhammad or a certain 3A'isha who was quoted via the bogus isnads (quoted by Ibn Ishaq) as saying in response to a question that was posed to her about Muhammad's life and here answer was: But you will find the answers in the Qur'an! Which means that if she indeed existed then she had no clue

Many of Mo's original followers were still alive, too.

Not really! The two major sources of many of these bogus traditions are Ibn Abbas who was supposed to have died in may be 688CE or some 56 years after the death of Muhammad at a time when the life span was no more than 30 years and this means that at best Ibn Abbas was very young when Muhammad died in 632CE as for 3Aisha al-Tabari tells us that Muhammad married her when she was 6 years old and she was 18 when he died in 632CE! She was a child at best and what does a child know or even remember? and for sure she was not a witness to the Mecca period

It is all bogus and the world that Ibn Ishaq lived in was very different from the world of Muhammad just imagine how your great grand parents lived and how you will! Very different worlds

It's a very interesting and detailed account, but most interesting is how it puts the Koran's suras in chronological order and provides the historical background for each.

No not true you need to read Henri Lammens and John Wansbrough and it is very clear that it was the Quranic allusions that made no sense not back then or even now that generated this bogus biography in other words the sira is really no more than another exegesis of the Quranic allusions and it is not an independent historical source that can really answer the question: what really happened

Ishaq was a devout Muslim and honestly thought he was doing Islam a favor with his biography,

Ibn Ishaq was the grand son of a Syrian Christian and for sure (as the Rabbi of Sura in Iraq would have said) "brought his old religion (Christianity) with him to Islam" and to add insult to injury the biography that we have now is the EDITED work of Ibn Ishaq (as his original work does not exit anymore) and the editor was Ibn Hisham who died in distant Egypt around 818CE or almost 200 years after the death of Muhammad

And remember that if you or I try to write the biography of let us say Mahatma Ghandi with out any literary sources or direct eye witnesses the end result would be no more than bogus history or what historians call: salvation history or pious fiction

but it is the most anti-Islam book I have read.

That is your cultural view but to the Arabs back then and now there is nothing wrong with marrying a 6 year old or the killing of a 950 Jews in cold blood

Mo was clearly a greedy, murderous, womanizer. His devoted nephew married a beautiful young girl that Mo lusted after. Miraculously, Mo received a sura from Allah instructing the nephew to divorce the girl so that Mo could marry her.

Well again: this is something that you can view as terrible which it is but not to the Arabs back then or now

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