Did Muhammad Exist?

by Spencer, Robert

• ISBN13: 9781610170611
• ISBN10: 161017061X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-04-23
• Publisher: Isi Books

Summary

Are jihadists dying for a fiction? Everything you thought you knew about Islam is about to change. In Did Muhammad Exist?best-selling author Robert Spencer meticulously examines historical records, archaeological findings, and pioneering new scholarship to reconstruct what can be known about Muhammad, the Qur'an, and the early days of Islam. He uncovers evidence that calls into question fundamental assumptions made even by non-Muslims. Did Muhammad Exist?reveals: The earliest biographical material about Muhammad dates from 150 years afterthe traditional date of his death. Neither the Arab conquerors of the seventh century nor the people they conquered made any mention of Muhammad, the Qur'an, or Islam for fully six decades. Recent scholarship indicating that the Qur'an was constructed from existing materials-including a pre-Islamic Christian text. Numerous archaeological indications that Islam as a religion was fashioned for political reasons. Far from an anti-Islamic polemic, Did Muhammad Exist?is a sober and 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, astonishingly, never received the same treatment on any significant scale. In bringing to light the latest scholarship on Muhammad and Islam, Robert Spencer raises questions of global consequence.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Chronology of Key Events	p. xiii
Muhammad and His Family, according to Islamic Tradition	p. xvi
Introduction: The Full Light of History?	p. 1
The Man Who Wasn't There	p. 17
Jesus, the Muhammad	p. 41
Inventing Muhammad	p. 63
Switching On the Full Light of History	p. 87
The Embarrassment of Muhammad	p. 107
The Unchanging Qur'an Changes	p. 125
The Non-Arabic Arabic Qur'an	p. 143
What the Qur'an May Have Been	p. 161
Who Collected the Qur'an?	p. 187
Making Sense of It All	p. 203
Notes	p. 219
Further Reading	p. 239
Acknowledgments	p. 241
Index	p. 243
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