num_pages: 254
description: Are jihadists dying for a fiction? Everything you thought you knew about Islam is about to change.Did Muhammad exist?It is a question that few have thoughtor daredto ask. Virtually everyone Muslim and non-Muslim alike takes for granted that the prophet of Islam lived and led in seventh-century Arabia.But this widely accepted story begins to crumble on close examination as Robert Spencer shows in his eye-opening new book.In his blockbuster bestseller The Truth about Muhammad Spencer revealed the shocking contents of the earliest Islamic biographical material about the prophet of Islam. Now in Did Muhammad Exist? he uncovers that materials surprisingly shaky historical foundations. Spencer meticulously examines historical records archaeological findings and pioneering new scholarship to reconstruct what we can know about Muhammad the Quran and the early days of Islam. The evidence he presents challenges the most fundamental assumptions about Islams origins. Did Muhammad Exist? reveals: How the earliest biographical material about Muhammad dates from at least 125 years after his reported death How six decades passed before the Arabian conquerorsor the people they conqueredeven mentioned Muhammad the Quran or Islam The startling evidence that the Quran was constructed from existing materialsincluding pre-Islamic Christian texts How even Muslim scholars acknowledge that countless reports of Muhammads deeds were fabricated Why a famous mosque inscription may refer not to Muhammad but astonishingly to Jesus How the oldest records referring to a man named Muhammad bear little resemblance to the now-standard Islamic account of the life of the prophet The many indications that Arabian leaders fashioned Islam for political reasons Far from an anti-Islamic polemic Did Muhammad Exist? is a sober but unflinching look at the origins of one of the worlds major religions. While Judaism and Christianity have been subjected to searching historical criticism for more than two centuries Islam has never received the same treatment on any significant scale.The real story of Muhammad and early Islam has long remained in the shadows. Robert Spencer brings it into the light at long last.
language: English
title: Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins
publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute