--- On Fri, 14/9/12, Abbas Amin <abas_ami...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Abbas Amin <abas_ami...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Did Muhammad ever exist?
To: "Gabriella Rantau" <gkran...@yahoo.com>
Received: Friday, 14 September, 2012, 10:21 PM
Bukti nyata ada kerajaan Islam ! salah satunya adalah Daulah Abbasiyyah; yang
asalnya dari Daulah Umayyah; dan mereka bertempur melawan Byzantium dll. Ini
jelas Bukti Sejarah. Kemudian Baghdaad dihancurkan Hulagu. Ini jelas Fakta.
Berarti eksis.
Selanjutnya mereka muncul karenaa ada 4 Khalifah. Abubakar, Umar, Utsman, Ali.
Dan pemerintahan Umar pernah menaaklukkan Mesir dan Yerusalem. Ini fakta.
Dan mereka muncul kaarena ada satu manusia yang bernama MUhammad.
Kok dianggap tak eksis ?!
Hapus dulu itu Daaulah2 Andalusia dll baru bicaara Muhammad tak eksis.
Dinamakaan siapapun yang jelas fakta2 sejarah berbicara. Kebetulan manusia itu
namanya Muhammad. masa mau dihilangkan ?
Menghilangkaannyaa harus dimulai dari penghilangan KSA dengan Ibnu Su'udnya.
Tapi nyaata ada.
Kerajaan TURKI terpaksa harus dianggap TIDAK ADA
! Tapi nyataanya ADA !
Maka yang menolak Muhammad tidaak eksis benar2 BUTA buta dan BUTA !!!!
Atau pernyataannya dipaksakan !!!
Orang Islam/Ulama Islam males kali ngejawabnya. Kaarena faktanya sudah jelas
kok maau diTIADAKAN ? Yang bener saja.
--- On Fri, 14/9/12, Gabriella Rantau <gkran...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Gabriella Rantau <gkran...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Did Muhammad ever exist?
To: "Abbas Amin" <abas_ami...@yahoo.com>
Received: Friday, 14 September, 2012, 9:23 AM
Bung Amin, just because Muslims say so, it doesn't mean that it is true!
Sampai hari ini belum ada authoritas Islam -
para pakar Al Qur'an, Universitas Al Azhar di Cairo, MUI, apalagi FPI, dst.
tidak ada yg menyangkal dan MENYAJIKAN BUKTI2 yg dipertanyakan oleh Robert
Spencer.
Silakan memberikan sangkalan dan disertai bukti2 yg si penulis tidak berhasil
menemukan sbg bukti bhw Nabi Junjungan itu pernah ada!
Good luck.
Gabriella
From: Abbas Amin <abas_ami...@yahoo.com>
To: Gabriella Rantau <gkran...@yahoo.com>
Sent: Friday, 14 September 2012 3:04 PM
Subject: Re: Did Muhammad ever
exist?
Jelas sekali existnya. Kalau yang menganggap tidak eksis itu benar BUTA , BUTA
dan BUTA !
--- On Fri, 14/9/12, Gabriella Rantau <gkran...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Gabriella Rantau <gkran...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Did Muhammad ever exist?
To: "Abbas" <abas_ami...@yahoo.com>
Received: Friday, 14 September, 2012, 2:56 AM
Did Muhammad Exist?
A Book
Review
What a
strange question. Everybody assumes that Muhammad existed. Does not Islam
affirm his existence? Why would anyone question it? Strangely enough there are
many questions about Muhammad, the Qur’an, and the hadiths (traditions) that
arose about Muhammad that led some scholars and researchers to the conclusion
that Muhammad really did not exist. What is the cause of this doubt?
A recent
book by Robert Spencer has the title, Did Muhammad Exist? The book1 is
well-researched and deals with many
historical issues. He describes the “canonical” story, that is, the common
story told by Muslims, of Muhammad and then deals with the problems of
supporting the story. The conclusion is that there is little to support the
Muslim claims concerning the existence of Muhammad historically.
What are
the sources of information about Muhammad?
First, we
must examine the Qur’an, the sacred book of Muslims. There is little
information about Muhammad in the Qur’an. The word “Muhammad” appears 4 times
in the Qur’an. In three of the cases it could merely refer to a title, “the
praised one,” or “chosen one.” Other names like Abraham appear 79 times, Moses
136 times, Pharaoh 74 times. The title “messenger of Allah” appears 300 times.
Surah 33:40 is certainly a reference to a person, but it tells nothing about
the life of Muhammad. Surah 48:29 also names Muhammad as a messenger of Allah.
Spencer
concludes that “we can glean nothing from these passages about Muhammad’s
biography. Nor is it even certain, on the basis of the Qur’anic text alone,
that these passages refer to Muhammad, or did so originally.” (p.19)
Second, there are the hadiths, traditions, that are
voluminous in quantity, often contradictory in nature, and most of them
fabrications due to the lack of information about Muhammad. The hadiths arose
much later after Muhammad supposedly died in 632.
Third, there is the Sira, an Arabic term for the traditional
biographies of Muhammad. “The earliest biography of Muhammad was written by Ibn
Ishaq (d.773), who wrote in the latter part of the eighth century, at least 125
years after the death of his protagonist, in a setting in which legendary
material about Muhammad was proliferating. And Ibn Ishaq’s biography does not
even exist as such; it comes down to us only in the quite lengthy fragments
reproduced by an even later chronicler, Ibn Hisham, who wrote in the first
quarter of the ninth century, and by other historians who reproduced and
thereby preserved additional sections. Other biographical material about
Muhammad dates from even later.” (p.19)
One of the earliest non-Muslim sources to possibly mention
the prophet of Islam is a document known as the Doctrina Jacobi which was
written by a Christian between 634 and 640. The document mentions the Saracens
coming with an army and the prophet leading them. The writer was stopped by an
old man well versed in Scripture and he inquired, “what can you tell me about
the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens? He replied, groaning deeply:
‘He is false, for the prophets do not come armed with a sword.’ (p.21) This
unnamed prophet mentioned in the Doctrina was travelling with his army.
Muhammad had died already. Moreover the full document speaks with reference to
the anointed one, the Christ who was to come.”
“… there is not a single account of any kind dating from
around the time the Doctrina Jacobi was written that affirms the canonical
Islamic story of Muhammad and Islam’s origins.” (p.22)
The conquest of Jerusalem in 637 is mentioned by Sophronius,
the patriarch of Jerusalem, who turned the city over to Umar, the conquering
leader, but nothing is said about a holy book, or Muhammad, only that they were
Saracens who were “godless.”
One of the earliest non-Muslim sources to possibly mention
the prophet of Islam is a document known as the Doctrina Jacobi which was
written by a Christian between 634 and 640. The document mentions the Saracens
coming with an army and the prophet leading them. The writer was stopped by an
old man well versed in Scripture and he inquired, “what can you tell me about
the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens? He replied, groaning deeply:
‘He is false, for the prophets do not come armed with a sword.’ (p.21) This
unnamed prophet mentioned in the Doctrina was travelling with his army.
Muhammad had died already. Moreover the full document speaks with reference to
the anointed one, the Christ who was to come.”
“… there is not a single account of any kind dating from
around the time the Doctrina Jacobi was written that affirms the canonical
Islamic story of Muhammad and Islam’s origins.” (p.22)
The conquest of Jerusalem in 637 is mentioned by Sophronius,
the patriarch of Jerusalem, who turned the city over to Umar, the conquering
leader, but nothing is said about a holy book, or Muhammad, only that they were
Saracens who were “godless.”
The first reference to the term Muslim comes in 690 by a
Coptic Christian bishop, John of Nikiou. He wrote: “And now many of the
Egyptians who had been false Christians denied the holy orthodox faith and
lifegiving baptism, and embraced the religion of the Muslims, the enemies of
God, and accepted the detestable doctrine of the beast, that is, Muhammad, and
they erred together with those idolaters, and took arms in their hands and
fought against the Christians.”
“There is, however, reason to believe that this text as it
stands is not as John of Nikiou wrote it. It survives only in an Ethiopic
translation from the Arabic, dating from 1602. The Arabic itself was a
translation from the original Greek or some other language. There is no other
record of the terms Muslim and Islam being used either by the Arabians or by
the conquered people in the 690’s, outside of the inscription on the Dome of
the Rock, which itself has numerous questionable features…” (p.36)
After pursuing various issues Spencer sums up what we know
about the traditional account of Muhammad’s life and the early days of Islam.
ammad’s
life and the early days of Islam.
No record of Muhammad’s
reported death in 632 appears until more than a century after that date.
A Christian account
apparently dating from the mid-630s speaks of an Arab prophet “armed with
a sword” who seems to be still alive.
The early accounts written
by the people the Arabs conquered never mention Islam, Muhammad, or the
Qur’an. They call the conquerors “Ishmaelites,” “Saracens,” “Muhajirun,”
and “Hagarians” but never “Muslims.”
The Arab conquerors, in
their coins and inscriptions, don’t mention Islam or the Qur’an for the
first six decades of their conquests. Mentions of “Muhammad” are
non-specific and on at least two occasions are accompanied by a cross. The
word can be used not only as a proper name but also as an honorific.
The Qur’an, even by the
canonical Muslim account, was not distributed in its present form until
the 650’s. Contradicting that standard account is the fact that neither
the Arabian nor the Christians and Jews in the region mention the Qur’an
until the early eighth century.
During the reign of the
caliph Muawiya (661-680), the Arabs constructed at least one public
building whose inscription was headed by a cross.
We begin hearing about
Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and about Islam itself in the 690’s,
during the reign of the caliph Abd al-Malik. Coins and inscriptions
reflecting Islamic beliefs begin to appear at this time also.
Around the same time, Arabic
became the predominant written language of the Arabian Empire, supplanting
Syriac and Greek.
Abd al-Malik claimed, in a
passing remark in one hadith, to have collected the Qur’an, contradicting
Islamic tradition that the collection was the work of the caliph Uthman
forty years earlier.
Multiple hadiths report that
Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, governor of Iraq during the reign of Abd al-Malik,
edited the Qur’an and distributed his new edition to the various
Arab-controlled provinces--- again, something Uthman is supposed to have
done decades earlier.
Even some Islamic traditions
maintain that certain common Islamic practices, such as the recitation of
the Qur’an during mosque prayers, date from orders of Hajjaj ibn Yusuf,
not to the earlier period of Islamic history.
In the middle of the eighth
century, the Abbasid dynastic supplanted the Umayyad line of Abd al-Malik.
The Abbasids charged the Umayyads with impiety on a large scale. In the
Abbasid period, biographical material about Mohammed began to proliferate.
The first complete biography of the prophet of Islam finally appeared
during this era—at least 125 years after the traditional date of his
death.
The biographical material
that emerged situates Muhammad in an area of Arabia that never was the
center for trade and pilgrimage that the canonical Islamic account of
Islam’s origin depend on it to be. (pp.205-206)
Given
these huge problems for the history of Islam, how does Spencer explain the rise
of Islam? He proposes the need for a political theology that would reflect
Arabic culture, Arabic language, and Arabic religion. When warriors from Arabia
encountered the conquered cultures they observed that the Roman empire had a
political theology for the purpose of binding the empire together. “The
earliest Arab rulers appear to have been adherents of Hagarism, a monotheistic
religion centered around Abraham and Ishmael.” (p.208) It was not as
anti-Christian as Islam developed later since there were Arab coins with
crosses on them. This religious model reached its height in 691 and there began
to emerge a defiantly Arabic one.
By the
end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eight, “the Umayyads began
to speak more specifically about Islam, its prophet and eventually its book.”
(The Umayyad dynasty ruled from 661 to 750.) The Dome of the Rock’s inscription
referring to the “praised one” no longer could refer to Jesus, but to Muhammad.
Even if Muhammad did not exist his name would be politically useful since the
Arabs needed an Arab prophet who would also have a scripture in Arabic. Since
much of the Qur’an has been borrowed from Jewish and Christian sources of some
kind it was easy to plagiarize them and change them for their own uses.
The lack of historical documents seems to be blamed on the
Umayyad party who were replaced by the Abbasids in 750. The Umayyads were
regarded as irreligious, failing to appreciate the history of Islam. With the
new Caliph, the Abbasids, there begins a massive attempt to fill in the gaps of
ignorance about the past, about Muhammad, and the manufacture of hadiths
(traditions) began in earnest. Many of the hadiths blame the Umayyads, and the
Umayyads created their own hadiths blaming the Abbasids. There are 600,000
hadiths, all of them forgeries by competing groups. Even the Shia have their
own hadiths affirming the claim of Ali as successor to Muhammad.
Essentially, Spencer maintains that the Arabian empire came
first, the theology came later.
He concludes: “A careful investigation makes at least one
thing clear: The details of Muhammad’s life that have been handed down as
canonical—that he unified Arabia by the force of arms, concluded alliances,
married wives, legislated for his community, and did so much else—are a
creation of political ferment dating from long after the time he is supposed to
have lived. Similarly, the records strongly indicate that the Qur’an did not
exist until long after it was supposed to have been delivered to the prophet of
Islam.”
“Did Muhammad exist? As a prophet of the Arabs who taught a
vaguely defined monotheism, he may have existed. But beyond that, his life
story is lost in the mists of legend, like those of Robin Hood and Macbeth. As
the prophet of Islam, who received (or even claimed to receive) the perfect
copy of the perfect eternal book from the supreme God, Muhammad almost
certainly did not exist. There are too many gaps, too many silences, too many
aspects of the historical record that simply do not accord, and cannot be made
to accord, with the traditional account of the Arabian prophet teaching his
Qur’an, energizing his followers to such an extent that they went out and
conquered a good part of the world.” (pp.214-215)
How will Muslims respond to this book? Some may seek to curse
the author. They may respond in outrage. But that will not disprove the facts
presented here. Islam is supposed to be a religion based in history. It is
supposed to be a religion of reason. But if history will not support the claims
of Islam, is it time for Muslims to rethink the legitimacy of Islam? Blind
commitment to the teachings of the local imam will not be enough in this age of
instant information and verification of facts.
Spencer
makes a compelling argument that Muhammad did not exist. One may view the
debate between Spencer and David Wood, who affirmed that Muhammad did exist.
Wood did not fill in the gaps to make the case for his existence without great
doubt. That debate can be viewed here.
Those who
read Spencer’s book with an open mind may be angry with indignation of being
misled all of one’s life about the origin of Islam. Perhaps many will conclude
that it is time to check out the Gospel story of Jesus who is the Savior with
the promise of forgiveness and everlasting life in the presence of Yahweh that
can be known right now.
Review by
Dallas
M. Roark
Footnotes
1 Robert Spencer, Did Muhammad Exist?
(Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2012)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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