Mohammed conquered Jerusalem!

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Reply #30 - September 07, 2014, 06:25 PM

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Biblical typologies alone, however, do not seem sufficient to explain the disconnect between the Islamic and non-Islamic sources with respect to Muhammad’s association with the conquest of Palestine. If we are to entertain
the possibility that the non-Islamic sources have preserved an earlier tradition that was subsequently revised by the Islamic tradition, certainly a much more powerful impulse, or set of impulses, seems required to explain this transformation.

Donner is indeed right to raise such a demand in his criticism of the so-called “skeptical school.”188 Although Donner’s critique will be addressed in some detail in the following chapter, he is correct that some sort of a profound ideological rupture within earliest Islam seems necessary to explain the scope of the changes that the skeptical approach envisions.

The remainder of this study thus will focus on several important areas where the Muslims of the early second century ah appear to have come to rather different beliefs from those of Muhammad and his earliest followers, namely, with respect to eschatology, confessional identity, and sacred geography.

Donner himself has made several important contributions to reevaluating the nature of earliest Islamic belief in some of these areas, and despite his protest, it does in fact appear that the evidence of considerable change is sufficient to warrant the skeptic’s position that there is potentially significant discontinuity between the faith and practice of primitive Islam and the later memory of Islamic origins as reflected in the narratives of the mid-eighth and ninth centuries.

The remaining chapters will then argue that some fairly rapid changes to certain fundamental aspects of the early Islamic faith can possibly explain the differences in the source materials regarding the end of Muhammad’s life and his connection with the conquest of Palestine.

One of the most significant areas where the religious orientation of Muhammad’s earliest followers quickly transformed seems to have been eschatology. As will be seen in the following chapter, Muhammad and the earliest Islamic community appear
to have believed that they were living in the final moments of history, expecting to witness the final judgment of the Hour within their own lifetimes.

The radical cognitive reorientation that must have ensued when the eschatological Hour failed to arrive on schedule would have required Muhammad’s original followers to undertake a profound remaking of their
faith.

In the course of this transformation, it would appear that more than just their eschatological timetable was revised.

p117

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Reply #31 - September 07, 2014, 10:40 PM

I see you have a copy of Shoemaker! It's great isn't it? I agree with him on almost everything.
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Reply #32 - September 08, 2014, 10:26 AM

I must say that I am not nearly as impressed with him as I was when I first read it. The evidence that Muhammad believed that the world was coming to an end in his own lifetime is a little flimsy. The strongest piece of evidence he cites is actually a misquote and therefore total bollocks. He cites a hadith from Ibn Sad's Tabaqat, where he says that Muhammad had told his followers to make a simple mosque in Medina, like the booth of Moses, because there was no time to build something complex before the impending day of judgement. However this is entirely projection on the part of Shoemaker, and is an extremely dishonest misquote. The actual hadith simply says to make the mosque simple like the booth of Moses, but makes no mention of judgement day or a need to hurry it up.

Muhammad certainly believed in doomsday, but as to whether he believed it was immediatley imminent, I am not sure there is enough evidence to make that conclusion with any certainty.
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Reply #33 - September 08, 2014, 12:33 PM

My immediate reaction to your comment is, do we not need to look at everything afresh from its actual context?

This requires dumping all the Mecca Medina stuff as part of a not really deliberate change of scene and asking about a warlord in the Samaria Damascus region then, and the influences there, not in the middle of a desert! Tom Holland is very interesting about this.

First, we are looking at Hagarian beliefs, that are very close to Samaritan beliefs, and the other forgotten kingdom.

http://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/9781589839106dwld_txt.pdf

Quote
THE FORGOTTEN KINGDOM
THE ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY OF NORTHERN ISRAEL
By
Israel Finkelstein

If we accept Mohammed did take Jerusalem, he would by that fact, and because of the time and place, as an already successful warlord with a large army, have the clear usp of welcoming the end of days.

A minor reference to something in the Bible does not matter! What does matter is that Mohammed needed rewriting to make him fit the Moses figure, because the entirely fictional Moses did not enter the land of Milk and Honey.

And the rewrite happened because at least a hundred years later the end of days had not happened. Mohammed had to be demoted from welcoming Christ to being the last prophet of another religion!

Quote
Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.

Patton

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

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Reply #34 - September 08, 2014, 12:37 PM

Quote from: Zaotar on September 07, 2014, 10:40 PM
I see you have a copy of Shoemaker! It's great isn't it? I agree with him on almost everything.

Wonders of electronic pdf versions! Oh for common licensing for everything academic! Haven't had the credit card bill yet!

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

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Reply #35 - September 08, 2014, 02:18 PM

Quote from: Tonyt on September 08, 2014, 10:26 AM
I must say that I am not nearly as impressed with him as I was when I first read it. The evidence that Muhammad believed that the world was coming to an end in his own lifetime is a little flimsy. The strongest piece of evidence he cites is actually a misquote and therefore total bollocks. He cites a hadith from Ibn Sad's Tabaqat, where he says that Muhammad had told his followers to make a simple mosque in Medina, like the booth of Moses, because there was no time to build something complex before the impending day of judgement. However this is entirely projection on the part of Shoemaker, and is an extremely dishonest misquote. The actual hadith simply says to make the mosque simple like the booth of Moses, but makes no mention of judgement day or a need to hurry it up.

Muhammad certainly believed in doomsday, but as to whether he believed it was immediatley imminent, I am not sure there is enough evidence to make that conclusion with any certainty.

That's not really the strongest piece of evidence he cites though. Shoemaker himself believes that such biographical hadith are *extremely* dubious. What they show is not what "Mohammed did," but rather when a hadith which is clearly contrary to what later Muslim doctrine taught, it is likely to reflect an early tradition amongst the Believers.

By far the strongest evidence for apocalypticism is the Qur'an itself, in comparison to other religious texts of the Middle East. No other religious text is nearly so concerned with the Day of Judgment and hellfire. But also, general Christian belief at that time (in the wake of the Byzantine/Sassanian wars) was intensely apocalyptic, as was Judaism. The early Believers would actually have to be something of a peculiar exception not to be part of that.

There are many scholars who have taken Mohammed to be apocalyptic. Few have focused on that particular hadith. To my mind, it is a very minor potential part of the argument. David Cook, for example, gives a good recitation from a somewhat different perspective.

http://www.mille.org/publications/winter2001/cook.html

I am interested though in your statement that Shoemaker used a misquote. He is using somebody else's translation, and the translation he cites seems very simple: "Nay, a booth like the booth of Moses, thuman and wood, because the affair [al amr] will happen sooner than that." Do you disagree with that translation? Shoemaker elaborates on what he takes to be the meaning of this hadith, citing an article by Hawting. But that's a different issue.
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Reply #36 - September 08, 2014, 04:16 PM

Ah, well, he cites Ibn Sad's Tabaqat for that hadith. I have the english translation of the Tabaqat that is available on Amazon, in that version the second part of the hadith is not printed. So perhaps it is the translator of the Tabaqat that has been dishonest rather than Shoemaker...

It is true, as Shoemaker points out, that the Quran is obsessed with judgement day, however there is nothing cut and dry in it that says that it is supposed to happen in the lifetime of the author. The only evidence that Shoemaker cites that specifically talks about a date within Muhammad's lifetime was the hadith about the mosque construction, and one other hadith where Muhammad says that "the youngest amongst you will still be alive when the hour is upon us". But two hadiths is hardly sufficient evidence to make any definite conclusions.
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Reply #37 - September 08, 2014, 05:01 PM

The Koran often gets a get out of jail free card in discussions, there is no problem criticising hadith and sira - that has been going on in Islam for centuries!

But put a koran under another book .....

Sorry, the same questions must be asked about everything!

Was the koran really not edited?

Why not have Mohammed successfully taking Jerusalem, believing it is a key sign of Christ's coming, having huge military and political success, because of the idea that he is bringing in a new heaven and earth and he does have a bit better governance because everyone is in a good mood?

And the koran becomes an attempt to tweak the actuality, including a rewrite in a different location, like Romeo and Juliet in Italy becoming West Side Story in New York, or Rome becoming New Rome in Constantinople?

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

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Reply #38 - September 08, 2014, 05:05 PM

I would agree from the start that we know comparatively little about what the Believers actually believed, and what Mohammed himself actually preached. It's a given that it will be very speculative. On this, I think the revisionists (including myself) have to be forthright -- it's a question of probabilities, but the historical Mohammed is nearly as inaccessible as the historical Jesus.

On the other hand, I think you have to look at the evidence as a whole. Part of the problem is that the revisionists generally see Mohammed's life as a huge mystery, with inexplicable blanks in the record, indicating a dramatic shift of perspective. Others may not see the problem so vividly, particularly if they have been accustomed to the traditional Muslim explanations that developed over centuries, and which overlay everything with much later theories and claims. One example I like to bring up -- Mohammed was a prophet, right? So what, exactly, did he prophecy? I think people often get so wrapped up in the traditional theories and claims of Islam that they fail to focus on the strangeness of the Qur'an and the historical record. What was Mohammed's prophecy? What is the message of the Qur'an itself, setting aside later Muslim attempts to interpret it? Why does the Qur'an say virtually nothing about Mohammed or his life? It's a rather amazing blank.

The traditional explanation about why Mohammed was a great prophet is that he was a 'social reformer' who brought monotheism to the pagan jahiliya. But modern scholars have shown that is nonsense; the Qur'an was actually delivered in a context of competing monotheisms (largely Christians), to listeners with a highly literate background in Christian traditions, not addressed to polytheistic pagans deep within the pagan Hijaz. Furthermore, Shariah evolved with astoundingly little reference to the Qur'an or Mohammed; the Qur'an did not reform anything in terms of actual social behavior and law. So what, exactly, did Mohammed 'socially reform'? Again, we are left with astonishing blanks; without recourse to the concept of the jahiliya, it is very difficult to explain what was new about Mohammed's message -- and the Qur'an seems to indicate over and over that it was NOT a new message, it was a REMINDER of a message they had already heard (and this is why Mohammed himself makes remarkably little appearance in the Qur'an ... he was just the latest reminder of the eternal message, it wasn't specific to him).

Blanks do not prove apocalypticism, of course, but if I were to summarize the main messages of the Qur'an without looking at later Muslim tradition, it would be this: (1) God is one, he has no associates; (2) bodily resurrection is real; (3) the day of Judgment is coming, when the unbelievers will pay. That's the core message, and the Qur'an is explicit that this has ALWAYS been the eternal revelation that the prophets bring to successive generations; this Qur'an is just a reminder AND A WARNING (of what? one might ask). Later Islam attempted to superimpose a colossal mythology of an Arabian prophet, and differentiate itself from Christianity/Judaism by recourse to the Sunnah. That is because the Qur'an itself seems to be rather ecumenical, and only really distinguished from other monotheisms insofar as it (a) denies the divinity of Christ (like Judaism and many unorthodox Eastern Christian sects); and (b) is unusually adamant about bodily resurrection and the critical importance of the day of Judgment with its attendant hellfire.
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Reply #39 - September 11, 2014, 11:18 AM

Is it possible to look at Muhammad's background and early Islamic history from a strictly historical viewpoint, by looking at texts from surrounding regions e.g. the Byzantine empire, Sassanian empire, Egypt etc.? It looks almost impossible to glean any historical fact from the Quran because it was written, revised and revised again long after the initial events.

The Byzantine Empire under Heraclius whacked the Persians, only for both to be overrun by Arab tribes fighting under the banner of Islam. Surely there would be some writings from the mid-600's on the Arabs that talk about their leadership, their motivations and political/social/religious structures. Then again, if the muddled history of Jesus is anything to go by, I'm not too optimistic.

I'm not a Quranic scholar, I only have an intense dislike towards Islam and religion in general () but I've been enlightened by the sharp minds on this forum. Maybe I could summarize my own limited knowledge about the history of early Islam as these points:

1. The Quran contains ideas from early Christian and Jewish sects present in Arabia
2. The language of the Quran shows familiarity with languages of many groups present in Arabia, although some borrowed words have totally different meanings in the original language
3. Muhammad's hijra story could have had a totally different origin before being finalized as the exile from Mecca to Medina
4. Muhammad's interactions with the Romans could have some element of truth to them
5. Most of Muhammad's later life story in the Quran and hadith are - to put it mildly - a steaming load of bullshit
6. Muhammad could have been a single person or an amalgam of various prophets and leaders
7. Whoever revised the Quranic narrative to jump from the Levant to Mecca/Medina must have made some mistakes, can we find these?
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Reply #40 - September 30, 2014, 03:16 PM

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As Michael Cook effectively summarizes, based on the Qurʾān alone, “we could probably infer that the protagonist of the Koran was Muhammad, that the scene of his life was in western Arabia, and that he bitterly resented the frequent dismissal of his claims to prophecy by his contemporaries. But we could not tell that the sanctuary was in Mecca, nor that Muhammad himself came from there, and we could only guess that he established himself in Yathrib.”5

At the most general level, the Qurʾān reveals a monotheist religious movement grounded in the biblical and extra-biblical traditions of Judaism and Christianity, to which certain uniquely “Arab” traditions have been added. These traditions, however, are often related in an allusive style, which seems to presuppose knowledge of the larger narrative on the part of its audience.

There is clear emphasis on articulating the boundaries of this new religious community, particularly in relation to other Arab “polytheists,” but also with regard to Jews and Christians. The Qurʾān also regulates social practices and boundaries within the community, proclaiming God’s divine law in a fashion reminiscent of the Jewish scriptures. Likewise, there
is pressing concern with the impending arrival of the Hour, or “God’s command (amr),” terms that designate the Final Judgment: Muhammad and his earliest followers seem to have believed that this eschatological event was about to take place or indeed had already begun.

Muhammad thus appears as a monotheist prophet within the Abrahamic tradition who called his followers
to renounce polytheism, to submit to the divine laws, and to prepare themselves for the impending doom: altogether, it is a portrait rather familiar from the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

shoemaker p 119

And showing a context that is far more likely to be the Syrian area than the middle of the Arabian desert!

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

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Reply #41 - September 30, 2014, 03:22 PM

Doesn't the koran mention olives, which I understand do not grow at Mecca and Medina?

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Reply #42 - September 30, 2014, 03:29 PM

Quote
Nevertheless, much recent scholarship on Islamic origins, particularly in English, has often failed to give the eschatological aspect of Muhammad’s message the proper emphasis that it deserves.

From the beginnings of Western study of Islam, scholars have generally recognized the importance of the Hour in Muhammad’s preaching: the coming judgment is in fact the second most common theme of the Qurʾān, preceded only by the call to monotheism.6

Yet despite the Qurʾān’s frequent focus on the impending eschaton, many modern experts have sought to minimize the significance of this belief within the early community. In presenting Muhammad and his message to a modern audience,
these scholars have often aimed to portray him as a great social reformer and preacher of ethical monotheism. Admittedly, neither of these qualities is inherently contradictory with belief in the world’s imminent destruction: Jesus, for
example, seems to have combined a message of eschatological urgency with a call to social justice and a critique of wealth.

There is little question that the Qurʾān evidences much concern with social justice, yet as Donner observes, these elements, while not insignificant, “are incidental to the central notions of the Qurʾan, which are religious.”7 Nonetheless, time and again for most of the last century, Muhammad’s biographers have repeatedly cast him primarily in the mold of a great social reformer whose pragmatic mission was to challenge the social and economic inequities of this world rather than to issue an urgent warning before the world’s impending judgment and destruction in the Hour.

These modern scholars would not have Muhammad appear, as Richard Bell explains, as “a crack-brained enthusiast” ranting about impending doom, but instead as a great leader whose religious message was “from the very start quite a rational and practical one.”8 Yet in diminishing Muhammad’s eschatological fervor, these studies efface what is perhaps one of the most clearly identifiable features of both the historical figure of Muhammad and the religious community that he founded.

Moreover, the rapid transformation of Islam from an eschatological faith to the religion of an expanding empire provides an important context of change within which to situate the differences between the Islamic and non-Islamic sources concerning the end of Muhammad’s life.

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Reply #43 - September 30, 2014, 03:34 PM

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The first Western scholar to propose that an impending doom lay at the heart of Muhammad’s preaching seems to have been Snouck Hurgronje. In an early publication on Mahdism (written in the context of the contemporary Mahdi revolt in the Sudan), Hurgronje observes that Muhammad “apparently always believed that the end of the world was quite close,” to the effect that in the earliest Islamic tradition Muhammad’s appearance itself was reckoned as one of “the signs of the imminent end of the world.”

So long as Muhammad remained alive, Hurgronje writes, it was unthinkable to his followers that he would die, and when he in fact died before the Hour’s arrival, the community at first refused to believe it and was eventually persuaded only with great difficulty by Abū Bakr.10

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Reply #44 - September 30, 2014, 03:37 PM

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Other dogmas of Muhammad’s preaching were “more or less accessories” to the doctrine of impending divine judgment, which always remained “the essential element of Muhammad’s preaching.”

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Reply #45 - September 30, 2014, 03:41 PM

Quote from: moi on September 07, 2014, 06:25 PM
p117 ( ~~Mohammed conquered~~ Jerusalem! )

when there was NO Muhammad in early Islam, how can he/she conquer Jerusalem?

It is all nonsense and cock & bull stories of rascals who did/doing all atrocious criminal activities in the name of "Muhammad"

Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything
I renounced my faith to become a kafir,
the beloved betrayed me and turned in to a Muslim
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Reply #46 - September 30, 2014, 03:49 PM

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Since Bell believed that Muhammad’s enterprise was “from the very start quite a rational and practical one,” it would not do to have him ranting about an impending doom that never came, as Hurgronje and Casanova in essence portray him.41

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

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Reply #47 - September 30, 2014, 03:54 PM

Quote from: yeezevee on September 30, 2014, 03:41 PM
when there was NO Muhammad in early Islam, how can he/she conquer Jerusalem?

It is all nonsense and cock & bull stories of rascals who did/doing all atrocious criminal activities in the name of "Muhammad"

Quote
The first chapter of this study examines the various sources from the seventh and eighth centuries that attest to Muhammad’s survival and leadership at the time of the initial assault on the Roman Near East, circa 634–65. Although later sources, particularly from the Christian tradition, continue to repeat this tradition, this chapter focuses on witnesses from the first century and a half after Muhammad’s death.

Sources from this period hold special value as potential bearers of early traditions that may subsequently have been
displaced once the canonical narratives of Islamic origins came to be established during the later eighth century.44

At that time, Ibn Isḥāq’s officially sanctioned biography of Muhammad, as well as the teachings of other contemporary
Medinan traditionists, began to be widely known. From this point onward, the life of Muhammad as remembered by Muslims and non- Muslims alike was largely governed by the contents of these canonical biographies.

Early evidence of their influence outside of the Islamic tradition can be seen already in the early ninth-century Chronicle of Theophanes, which, owing to direct influence from Islamic sources, is the first non-Islamic source to “correctly” relate Muhammad’s decease prior to the invasion of Palestine.

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Reply #48 - September 30, 2014, 04:59 PM

Quote from: moi on September 30, 2014, 03:49 PM
The first chapter of this study examines the various sources from the seventh and eighth centuries that attest to Muhammad’s survival and leadership at the time of the initial assault on the Roman Near East, circa 634–65. Although later sources, particularly from the Christian tradition, continue to repeat this tradition, this chapter focuses on witnesses from the first century and a half after Muhammad’s death.

Sources from this period hold special value as potential bearers of early traditions that may subsequently have been
displaced once the canonical narratives of Islamic origins came to be established during the later eighth century.44

At that time, Ibn Isḥāq’s officially sanctioned biography of Muhammad, as well as the teachings of other contemporary
Medinan traditionists, began to be widely known. From this point onward, the life of Muhammad as remembered by Muslims and non- Muslims alike was largely governed by the contents of these canonical biographies.

Early evidence of their influence outside of the Islamic tradition can be seen already in the early ninth-century Chronicle of Theophanes, which, owing to direct influence from Islamic sources, is the first non-Islamic source to “correctly” relate Muhammad’s decease prior to the invasion of Palestine.

I have problem with all that early history and I have a problem with the story of Ibn Isḥāq and Ibn Ishaq's - Sirat Rasul Allah -

So I question that view of Muhammad of Islam as one single guy and his story is what is said in hadith..

Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything
I renounced my faith to become a kafir,
the beloved betrayed me and turned in to a Muslim
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