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myth believers beware!
On Apr 24, 3:23 pm, Travis <baconl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> **
> New post on *Fellowship of the Minds*
> <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/> Was Islam's
> founder Muhammad a real man or an
> invention?<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/was-islams-founder-...>by
> Dr. Eowyn <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/>
>
> Robert Spencer is an authority on Islam and the author of the* New York
> Times *bestsellers* The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the
> Crusades)<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895260131/ref=ase_robe...>
> and The Truth About
> Muhammad<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596985283/105-1749781-4552435?ie=UT...>
> .* He is also the director of Jihad Watch <http://www.jihadwatch.org/>.
>
> In his new book *Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure
> Origins<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161017061X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&t...>
> *, Spencer asks if Muhammad was a real man or a later invention by those
> who had fashioned an Arab empire via wars and conquer.
>
> Writing <http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/inventing_muhammad.html> in
> *American Thinker*, April 23, 2012, Spencer makes a case for Muhammad being
> more fictive than real:
>
> *Why would it matter if Muhammad never existed? Certainly the accepted
> story of Islam's origins is taken for granted as historically accurate;
> while many don't accept Muhammad's claim to have been a prophet, few doubt
> that there was a man named Muhammad who in the early seventh century began
> to claim that he was receiving messages from Allah through the angel
> Gabriel. [...]*
>
> *Yet the numerous indications that the standard account of Muhammad's life
> is more legend than fact actually have considerable implications for the
> contemporary political scene. These are just a few of the weaknesses in the
> traditional account of Muhammad's life and the early days of Islam:*
>
> - *No record of Muhammad's reported death in 632 appears until more than
> a century after that date.*
> - *The early accounts written by the people the Arabs conquered never
> mention Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur'an. They call the conquerors
> "Ishmaelites," "Saracens," "Muhajirun," and "Hagarians," but never
> "Muslims."*
> - *The Arab conquerors, in their coins and inscriptions, don't mention
> Islam or the Qur'an for the first six decades of their conquests.
> Mentions of "Muhammad" are non-specific and on at least two occasions
> are
> accompanied by a cross. The word can be used not only as a proper name,
> but also as an honorific.*
> - *The Qur'an, even by the canonical Muslim account, was not distributed
> in its present form until the 650s. Casting into serious doubt that
> standard account is the fact that neither the Arabians nor the
> Christians and Jews in the region mention its existence until the early
> eighth century.*
> - *We don't begin to hear about Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and
> about Islam itself until the 690s, during the reign of the caliph Abd
> al-Malik. Coins and inscriptions reflecting Islamic beliefs begin to
> appear at this time also.*
> - *In the middle of the eighth century, the Abbasid dynasty supplanted
> the Umayyad line of Abd al-Malik. In the Abbasid period, biographical
> material about Muhammad began to proliferate. The first complete biography
> of the prophet of Islam finally appeared during this era-at least 125 years
> after the traditional date of his death.*
>
> *The lack of confirming detail in the historical record, the late
> development of biographical material about the Islamic prophet, the
> atmosphere of political and religious factionalism in which that material
> developed, and much more, suggest that the Muhammad of Islamic tradition
> did not exist, or if he did, he was substantially different from how that
> tradition portrays him.*
>
> *How to make sense of all this? If the Arab forces that conquered so much
> territory beginning in the 630s were not energized by the teachings of a
> new prophet and the divine word he delivered, how did the Islamic character
> of their empire arise at all? If Muhammad did not exist, why was it ever
> considered necessary to invent him?*
>
> *Every empire of the day had a civic religion. The Eastern Roman
> (Byzantine) Empire was Christian. Its rival Persia, meanwhile, was
> Zoroastrian. The Arab Empire quickly controlled and needed to unify huge
> expanses of territory where different religions predominated. The empire
> was growing quickly, soon rivaling the Byzantine and Persian Empires in
> size and power. But at first, it did not have a compelling political
> theology to compete with those it supplanted and to solidify its
> conquests. It needed a common religion -- a political theology that would
> provide the foundation for the empire's unity and secure allegiance to the
> state.*
>
> *Toward the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth, the
> leaders of the Muslim world began to speak specifically about Islam, its
> prophet, and eventually its book. Stories about Muhammad began to
> circulate. A warrior-prophet would justify the new empire's aggressive
> expansionism. To give those conquests a theological justification -- as
> Muhammad's teachings and example do -- would place them beyond criticism.*
> *This is why Islam developed as such a profoundly political religion.
> Islam is a political faith: the divine kingdom is very much of this world,
> with God's wrath and judgment to be expected not only in the next life, but
> also in this one, to be delivered by believers. Allah says in the Qur'an:
> "As for those disbelieving infidels, I will punish them with a terrible
> agony in this world and the next. They have no one to help or save them"
> (3:56). Allah also exhorts Muslims to wage war against those infidels,
> apostates, and polytheists (2:191, 4:89, 9:5, 9:29).*
>
> *There is compelling reason to conclude that Muhammad, the messenger of
> Allah came into existence only after the Arab Empire was firmly entrenched
> and casting about for a political theology to anchor and unify it.
> Muhammad and the Qur'an cemented the power of the Umayyad caliphate and
> then that of the Abbasid caliphate.*
>
> *This is not just academic speculation. The non-Muslim world can be aided
> significantly in its understanding of the global jihad threat -- an
> understanding that has been notably lacking even at the highest levels
> since September 11, 2001 -- by a careful, unbiased examination of the
> origins of Islam. There is a great deal of debate today in the United
> States and Western Europe about the nature of Islamic law; anti-sharia
> measures have been proposed in at least twenty states, and one state --
> Oklahoma -- voted to ban sharia in November 2010, although that law was
> quickly overturned as an infringement upon Muslims' religious freedom.
> Others have been successfully resisted on the same grounds.*
>
> *If it is understood that the political aspect of Islam preceded the
> religious aspect, that might change. But that will happen only if a
> sufficient number of people are willing to go wherever the truth my take
> them.*
>
> ~Eowyn
> *Dr. Eowyn <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/eowyn2/>* |
> April 24, 2012 at 9:56 am | Tags: Arab
> Empire<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=arab-empire>,
> jihad <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=jihad>, political
> theology <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=political-theology>,
> Quran <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=quran>, Robert
> Spencer<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=robert-spencer>,
> Sharia law <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=sharia-law> |
> Categories: Culture War <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=20812>,
> God <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=7816>,
> Islam<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=420>,
> Religion <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=4983159>,
> Terrorism<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=35034649>,
> United States <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=5850> | URL:http://wp.me/pKuKY-dRD
>
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