Shattering the myths of Islam: Muhammad

Shattering the myths of Islam: Mohammed
…and why it is infinitely more reasonable to assume that Mohammed never existed.
Few historical figures have been the subject of so many contradictory descriptions. If we put together all the founding texts of Islam (Koran, Sunnah, Sira, other so-called historical works – that’s several metres of library) describing this character, we can draw just about any type of individual. From the giant soul with dazzling intelligence, inspired directly by divine light, whose history goes back to the beginning of time and will continue beyond the Last Judgement, from the being possessing all the attributes of wisdom, both human and divine, whom even God salutes, and who could satisfy dozens of women, to the worst gargoyle: extremist bigot (4. 52.196), deceitful and cruel murderer (5.59.369, 4.52.270, 271), thief, paedophile and impotent homosexual who curses his enemies during prayer (4.52.183, 184, 185, 5.59.421, 4.52.69) and even in the Koran before insulting their corpses in a ditch (5.59.314, 360).
It should be noted here that, as these few examples show, the hierarchy of the founding texts and the scale of human values do not overlap: the best and the worst can be found in the Koran and the Sahih as well as in today’s less well-regarded works. Praising or denigrating the Prophet of Islam systematically results from a selection of passages or interpretations of the same text, not from a choice of only some of the original works. Only texts by authors with no religious legitimacy paint an unambiguous portrait, either positive or negative, of the prophet. On the other hand, as criticism of the ‘messenger of God’ has almost always been punishable by death in Islam, even the best Muslim minds can be found justifying the worst excesses. And since Islam has practically always promoted hatred of others, even in its daily prayers, as well as holy war against the rest of the world, even the best qualities supposedly possessed by its prophet are denigrated outside Islam.
What’s more, when it comes to historical testimonies, based on the elements of the time, we are faced with an unfathomable void. There is absolutely no object or text dating from the period in question that confirms the Muslim fable, and therefore the existence of Mohammed. On the Muslim side, the first fragments of texts resembling parts of the Koran date from at least several decades after the time when they were supposedly written. The elements of the Sunnah are more than a century removed from that period, to put it mildly (we have no original manuscripts, only copies and syntheses produced centuries later). And the collectors of anecdotes like to boast that they sifted through the mass of material, judging only a few per cent to be valid.
On the non-Muslim side, we have nothing dating from the Prophet’s ‘lifetime’ either, not even the slightest account or archaeological witness of the battles and massacres that are said to have eliminated a strong Jewish presence in the Hijaz. We also know that Mecca must have been a deception and an ever-growing body of scientific work tends to show that the ‘mhmt’ in the earliest historical texts is not a proper name, but a detached epithet that actually refers to the figure of Jesus* – the first ‘Muslims’ would have been unitary Christians who drew their religious material from the Syriac liturgy. Admittedly, there are a few non-Muslim clues to the existence of a Muhammad, but always with bizarre aspects that do not fit in with the generally accepted fable, and none of them are dated to his lifetime.
So, in order to believe in the existence of Mohammed, we have to admit that there is a truth hidden beneath the heaps of lies and fabrications (more than 95% of the anecdotes have been dismissed by the Muslim traditionists themselves) that have not been confirmed by anything concrete. A man who rubbed shoulders with dozens of women would have had no male descendants, no written record of his deeds would have survived the passage of time, his military conquests would have left no archaeological or scriptural trace, his city is a myth, his central message is a bad draft and his history, on the Muslim side, paints a fabulous and contradictory portrait (although without ever calling into question his warlike activities). It takes a certain amount of masochism, an immoderate taste for sterile polemics or some other compelling reason to invest one’s faith in such a fable.
On the other hand, to remain sceptical about the existence of the prophet of Islam, all you have to do is rule out a few rare and rather fragile non-Muslim testimonies, which are neither coherent nor concordant, and which could well have been falsified by copyists (believing they were doing the right thing), a non-contemporary ‘holy book’ which says practically nothing about him, as well as a huge mass of very late hearsay which is so unreliable that no-one, Muslim or non-Muslim, has ever claimed that it accurately reflects the facts as a whole. The choice should be easy.
Alain Jean-Mairet
*Here there is certainly a misunderstanding of who was the praiseworthy person in the story. It is probably Arius.
The character of Arius seems to be completely unknown to specialists in Islamic history. Probably because he is Berber.