The founder of Islam and history

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 16, 2013 at 06:31

Ianus

You are very correct if you read the likes of Ibn Ishaq's sirat rasul Allah and al-Waqidi's al-Maghazi (the word al-maghazi means the invasions!) or al-Tabari's Tarikh what emerges is a vile picture of the prophet of Islam and of an Arabian warlord and caravan raider and child molester and really ugly picture

But if we apply the tools of literary criticism to this massive literature the whole edifice falls apart and we are left with the fact that there is nothing historical about the biographies of Muhammad and it is all pious fiction but nontheless Muslims believe that this is real history that has to be emulated and this is where the disaster lies

As for the question of did Muhammad exist? I still tell you that there are many strange anomalies in the history of early islam that point in the direction that Muhammad did not exist at least in the form we have in his biographies and that these biographies were no more than another form of Quranic exegesis and their clear aim was to explain what this opaque revelation from Allah called the Qur'an is really saying. And more likely than not the ulama 200-300 years later were looking back for for a founder of Islam and who is better than a man with the name of the praiseworthy who lived in very distant Mecca and Medina far away from the very sophisticated and civilized people of the Levants?

As for the Qur'an it is and in the words of Peters "Text with context"

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