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 Audacious thesis, spirited argument, but ultimately it does not compel a verdict, Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins (Hardcover) Robert Spencer's "Did Muhammad Exist?" offers an audacious and seductive thesis, namely, that the Prophet Muhammad never really existed, that Muhammad was just a "back-fill" created to explain some event, person or phenomenon that catalyzed the Arabic peoples into filling the power vacuum that existed after the mutual blood-letting that exhausted the Byzantine and Persian empires during the 7th Century. To cap off this audacious claim, Spencer argues that the Koran originated as a Syriac liturgical document and that Islam started as a heresy offshoot of Christianity.Spencer marshals a variety of oddities and anomalies in support of his thesis. Spencer claims, for example, that the name of Muhammad does not appear in any surviving source of information until approximately 40 to 60 years after the Arab conquest of the near East. In addition, when the early references to Muhammad do appear, they are seemingly ambiguous about the nature of this "Muhammad." "Muhammad" means "the praised one" and the context of the early references to Muhammad imply that it is an office - the Paraclete, perhaps - to which references is made. Likewise, the earliest coinage of the Arab conquerors is surprisingly "un-Islamic" in joining a symbol of the cross to the symbols of Arab power on early coinage (circa 40 years after the conquest.) Further, there are some intriguing references in non-Arab sources to a "prophet" who was apparently still alive at the time of the Arab conquest, although the conventional history contends that Muhammad died before the conquest began. Spencer also argues that the hadiths - the traditions purportedly extending back to Muhammad - are notoriously untrustworthy. Hadiths seems to have been manufactured for political reasons, slandering or supporting one contender for control of the Arab empire. Spencer trains some strong arguments against the Koran itself. He argues that like Muhammad, the Koran is not mentioned until decades after the conquest, and that the internal and external evidence suggests that the conventional narrative is incorrect in claiming that Koran was neatly compiled from a collection of original sources. It seems that it may well have been the case that the Koran was in fact separate texts that were brought together by the process of editing and revision over the course of more than a century rather than over the course of a few decades. Spencer also develops an inference that has developed recently based on the observation that something like 20% of the Koran makes no sense at all in Arabic, but that when the diacritical marks are removed and the text is translated into Syriac, the nonsense phrases make sense as a liturgical work that might have been handed on or maintained by a Christian sect. If true, this last is mind-blowing. It is not, however, original with Spencer. Medieval Christians often viewed Islam as a Christian heresy. Hillaire Belloc famously described Islam as a Christian heresy. It would be fascinating if historical research bore out that particular intuition. I am not persuaded by the "Muhammad was a myth" argument for the same reason that I don't buy into the "Jesus was a myth" argument; it requires too much credulity on my part about the credulity of ancient Christians/Muslims. Do we really have good examples of people simply forgetting that someone who is seminal to their world view had no real existence only 20 to 60 years before? That would be like us being told that there really was no Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy. Does that - can that - really happen? Outside of the founders of religion, has such a claim ever been made? In addition, the constant "special pleading" of the Koran, has the qualia of having been written by the person who was directly benefitting from it as it was being written. Consider Koran 24:4, which is conventionally attributed as a diatribe who would "slander" Muhammad's favorite wife Aisha with claims that she had committed adultery. Although the text is written in the opaque circumlocutions that, as Spencer points out, require knowledge of the Hadiths in order to understand what is going on, it is clear that the author seems to have a particular case to make against a lot of gossip going around which people should have recognized as an "evident falsehood." It seems, well, weird, that the timeless, inlibrated word of God should have time for such ephemera as to the "love life" of one man. And, yet, we have actual evidence of another prophet who convinced his followers that his love life mattered to the almighty. In Doctrines and Covenants Section 132:52, Joseph Smith communicates to Emma Smith that she will be destroyed if she hinders her husband's plan to marry other women. It seems odd that both the Koran and Mormon scriptures have revelations from the infinite God of Creation that are so directed at the nuptial happiness of the person channeling the messages from that infinite God. It's actually rather convenient. No one doubts the real existence of Joseph Smith, not yet anyhow. So, based on that example, it might be a "tell" as to the real existence of real prophets that the Lord of Infinite Time and Space seems to take a particular concern with the subject of whether the prophet is getting "action." We skeptics might suspect that this feature speaks to a real person with a real vested interest which only real people have. In short, the gritty "cheesiness" of these divine messages speak to their creation by a real person who could take advantage of them at the time, rather than an ex post facto invention decades later. A weakness of Spencer's argument - which is typical of books by Jesus-mythers - is that Spencer doesn't take firm positions on what may be important issues. For example, does Spencer believe that there was or was not a prophet at the early stage of Islam, perhaps during the Arab conquest? Spencer's arguments seem to suggest both "yes" and "no." This equivocation is a "myther weakness" because it suggests that the author's objective is to establish a myth even if that requires embracing mutually exclusive fact scenarios. The problem with that approach is that it tends to undercut both counter-arguments. For me, a personal strength of the book was that it affirmed my reading of the Koran. I have attempted to read the Koran several times, and have read approximately half of the Koran. When I came across obtuse passages and nonsense phrases, I assumed that the fault was mine. Well, mirabile dictu, it seems that I was getting it right all along, and, yes, that is the way it reads. Take the Aisha section at Koran 24:4; it would make no real sense without the footnotes in the Koran which provide context. That section would just mean that somebody was unhappy with something that some people were saying when they should have realized that what was being said was a self-evident falsehood for some unspecified reason, all of which is not very helpful. It is the footnotes and the context that allow any message to be derived, rather than the actual text of the Koran, which is supposed to be the Word of God in book form. Until Spencer pointed that out, I wasn't consciously aware of that problem. Although I am skeptical of Spencer's skepticism, I think that he is outlining a worthy project. Obviously, there is much to be learned from a critical look at the Koran. We might learn quite a bit about the early history of Islam and the Arab conquest. Equally obvious, Islam has managed to put itself off limits to such an investigation. Finally obvious, Islam has been weakened by its refusal to engage in such critical self-examination. I note, for example, that for all the negative reviews provided by those who have expressed how offended they are or how hateful they think Spencer is, they do not- except perhaps one - attempt to meet Spencer's challenge as an intellectual exercise. They do not address the facts on which Spencer makes his case. I am not a student of Islamic history. Until I put the time and effort into the project, I am not in a position at this time to know if Spencer's claims are strong or if they are as thin as the claims made by Jesus-mythers. I would benefit from someone in the pro-Islam side actually critiquing the arguments of the book, and the facts on which those arguments are based. The best critique thus far comes from someone who gave the book a four star rating. Obviously, the unwillingness of Muslims to engage in calm, rational intellectual debate is a problem,if only because when I read those overly-emotional one-star reviews which specialize in name-calling, lack content, and markedly fail to engage with the points made by Spencer, I am tempted to judge the debate in Spencer's favor because the responses are so weak. For all I know, Spencer's real intent may have been to make that point. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in what may be a developing debate. The focus on a history that contradicts the accepted narrative is useful in that it teaches the accepted narrative and points out areas for future study. I know that I intend to dig into some of the subjects raised by Spencer to see how strong his points vis a vis the accepted facts of Islamic historical studies. | ||||||||||||||||||
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