Robert Spencer on His New Book, Did Muhammad Exist?

Muhammad: The Man Who Wasn’t There
By Robert Spencer

When I mention the title of my new book Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins, many are startled, as they had no idea that there was any question that such a larger-than-life character might be legendary rather than historical. But in reality, no one who interacted with those who conquered the Middle East in the middle of the seventh century ever seems to have gotten the impression that a prophet named Muhammad, whose followers burst from Arabia bearing a new holy book and a new creed, was behind the conquests.

This may seem to be an odd claim. After all, there are the well-known accounts of the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. Those depict the caliph Umar meeting Sophronius and treating him respectfully, even magnanimously declining to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre so that his followers will not be able to seize the church and convert it into a mosque. Umar and Sophronius conclude a pact that forbids Christians from building new churches, carrying arms, or riding on horses, and that requires them to pay a poll tax, jizya, to the Muslims; but Christians are generally allowed to practice their religion and live in relative peace. This is the foundation of the Islamic legal superstructure of dhimmitude, which denies equality of rights to non-Muslims in the Islamic state and is oppressive in numerous ways by modern standards, but which in the seventh century was comparatively tolerant.

This “Pact of Umar,” however, is of doubtful historical authenticity. The earliest reference to it comes in the work of the Muslim historian Tabari, who died nearly three centuries after these events are supposed to have taken place, in 923. Much earlier, however, are the extant writings of Sophronius himself. The most striking difference is that Tabari’s account is unmistakably written within the Islamic milieu; it begins with the familiar Islamic invocation of Allah the compassionate and merciful, and refers matter-of-factly to Muhammad as the prophet of Allah. By contrast, Sophronius, writing at the time that Umar actually conquered Jerusalem, shows no awareness that the Arabians had a prophet at all or were even Muslims.

Instead, Sophronius lamented the advent of “the Saracens who, on account of our sins, have now risen up against us unexpectedly and ravage all with cruel and feral design, with impious and godless audacity.” In a Christmas sermon in 634, Sophronius declares that “we, however, because of our innumerable sins and serious misdemeanors, are unable to see these things, and are prevented from entering Bethlehem by way of the road. Unwillingly, indeed, contrary to our wishes, we are required to stay at home, not bound closely by bodily bonds, but bound by fear of the Saracens.” He laments that “as once that of the Philistines, so now the army of the godless Saracens has captured the divine Bethlehem and bars our passage there, threatening slaughter and destruction if we leave this holy city and dare to approach our beloved and sacred Bethlehem.”

It is not surprising that a seventh-century Christian like Sophronius would refer to the invaders as “godless.” After all, even if those invaders had come brandishing the holy book of the deity they proclaimed as the sole true creator of all things, Sophronius denied that god’s existence. Still, he makes no mention, even in the heat of the fiercest polemic, of the conquerors’ god, their prophet, or their holy book. In all his discussion of the “Saracens,” Sophronius shows some familiarity with their disdain for the cross and the orthodox Christian doctrines of Christ, but he never calls the invaders “Muslims” and never refers to Muhammad, the Qur’an, or Islam.

It is an extraordinary omission, and a telling one – moreover, it is matched in all the other extant literature. For sixty years after the Arab conquests began in the 630’s, there is no indication either in the existing records of the conquered people or of the conquerors themselves of them coming with a new religion, a new holy book, or a new prophet. Until the 690s, the conquered people refer to the conquerors as Hagarians, Saracens, Taiyaye, or other names, but never as “Muslims,” and give no hint, even in religious polemic, that they came with a new religion. Nor do the Arab conquerors themselves, in their coinage, monuments, or anything else, ever refer to Islam or the Qur’an.

If Muhammad is a figure more of legend than of history, and was constructed to serve a political agenda – as I argue in my book — the implications are enormous for the evaluation of Islam as a political system rather than solely a religious one in the American public square today. It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks whether such questions can even still be discussed in today’s politically correct America.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, Did Muhammad Exist?, is now available.

The Truth Must be Told

Your contribution supports independent journalism

Please take a moment to consider this. Now, more than ever, people are reading Geller Report for news they won't get anywhere else. But advertising revenues have all but disappeared. Google Adsense is the online advertising monopoly and they have banned us. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have blocked and shadow-banned our accounts. But we won't put up a paywall. Because never has the free world needed independent journalism more.

Everyone who reads our reporting knows the Geller Report covers the news the media won't. We cannot do our ground-breaking report without your support. We must continue to report on the global jihad and the left's war on freedom. Our readers’ contributions make that possible.

Geller Report's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our work is critical in the fight for freedom and because it is your fight, too.

Please contribute here.

or

Make a monthly commitment to support The Geller Report – choose the option that suits you best.

• $25.00 here
• $50.00 here
• $75.00 here
• $100.00 here
• $250.00 here

0 0 votes

Article Rating

10 Comments

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

alyn21

11 years ago

Considering how the Arabs like to lie about everything else it should come as no surprise that they lied at Muhammed’s existence as well.

0

John Andrews

11 years ago

Quita a revelation. I have to get this book, I think very highly of Spencer’s work. So, pedophilia, wife beating, boy loving, all the hallmarks of being a good musselman, were jsutified by creating a mythological figure who got his ideas from the moon god directley. Sonds like a Robert Heinleinn book.

0

poetcomic1

11 years ago

How ironic. Fanatic Muslims try to wish away the very existence of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (a central fact beyond dispute to Jews, Christians and even non-believing historians) and they turn out to have built a massive edifice on the ‘sands of Arabia’. Time to blast away with both barrels.

0

TJ

11 years ago

WOW.. I’ve got to get this book and learn more!
I’ve always felt that Mo was a false prophet… but a mythical false prophet.. whose followers think they should take over the world!
That could make Obie the SECOND biggest fraud in the history of the world!

0

Shishka Bob

11 years ago

I have long believed that Islam originated in Babylon. The very name Muhammad was recently proven to be Babylonian in origin.
That said Obama can’t really stop the free flow of ideas–and to be sure he has been the driving force behind recent attempts at curtailing our constitutional freedoms. He can try to stop us from going public with this. But the truth will win. And the evildoers like Odogmeat will LOSE…as they absolutely deserve to.

0

BUTSeriously

11 years ago

Seems the great Galsworthy Spencer erred this time, very surprisingly so. The Jews of Medina were massacred by Mohammed, there are numerous Christian archives of him, one even claiming the Quran was written by a Christian who was captured to do this work. There is more evidence of Mohammed than of Jesus or the Apostles.

0

BUTSeriously

11 years ago

“Islam originated in Babylon”
The pre-Islamic group of Arabs originated in Babylon, after the Greeks conquered Persia. There was no Arab ethnic or identifiable group called Arabs before 600 BCE; the Greeks simply coined this name from the then prevailing name of ARABIA. The new Arab group interacted with the exiled Jews in Babylon and got their first introduction to Judaism and Monotheism at this point; they remained a pagan group till after Judea was destroyed by Rome; both Christianity and Islam saw Israel as dead and the Hebrew bible and open for the usurping. The rest is modern history in diabolical chaos of contradictions.

0

BUTSeriously

11 years ago

“Muslims try to wish away the very existence of the Jewish Temple”
They are attacking the Gospels here, not Judaism. While the Jews have survived w/o their temple, the Gospels cannot as it claims one Jesus visited this temple. Also, a host of Roman archives describes this temple. Its insanity with impudence. Much of the blame must fall on Europe and its clergy who remained silent of these Islamic claims, thereby giving it a form of legitimacy. Europe’s media is also fully guilty as hell – such silence is not free speech or journalism at all. It comes with a cost factor.

0

ApolloSpeaks

11 years ago

ROBERT SPENCER’S PLACE IN HISTORY
If an “Islamophobe” is a realist about Islam who menaces insecure Moslems with the truth about their faith and its founder then Robert Spencer’s courageous and awesome “Did Muhammad Exist” would make him the most menacing “Islamophobic” scholar of our age and perhaps of all time.

0

Witness

11 years ago

I was trying to find an objective point of view about the historicity of Mohammed as part of a research I am doing away from the radical Islamic views. Sadly, I ended up here with other views about Jesus, the Jewish temple and other myths. Very disappointing!

0