I just make some comments :
"Muḥammad’s first messages seem to announce the imminent end of the world (as is evident from many Quranic passages and several very early ḥadiths)"
Disagree.
Evidence :
"so Muḥammad cannot but announce the coming of the Messiah as the
Savior of the End of the world. On this last point, the Qurʾān remains curiously
silent"
Hahaha !
but according to a large number of ancient ḥadiths, Muḥammad actually
announces the imminent coming of the Messiah and the latter is none other than
Jesus.
Does 100 years of external sources attests that? Nope... (I already set aside the Doctrina Jacobi about this topic)
At the same time, for some followers of the Prophet, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib seems
to have been the Second Jesus, Christ and Messiah of the apocalyptic times.
Logical. As nobody knew an Arabic "prophet" because it has never existed, and the interpretation of the Quran as an eschatological text... they look at the NT... to try to understand...
The Quranic corpus insists heavily on the impending end of the world
Yes. But does not announce it
right now.
The examples taken from the Qurʾān can thus be multiplied on many other
pages. Those passages, as well as the many similar data in the ḥadith corpus (on
which I shall come back), have lead some scholars, from the 19th century to this
day, to consider the Qurʾān, the milieu that saw it originate as well as the very
first times of Islam as phenomena belonging to a certain time and space (in other
words to a history and a geography) strongly steeped in apocalyptic beliefs.
Shoemaker is the last (yawn)...
if Muḥammad had come to announce the end of the world, as an important part of the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth prove, why would he found a new religion?
Hahaha !
Therefore it is no apocalyptic... then, what's the point? Hahaha !
To which religious milieu(s) did he belong? What part did the great religions
of the time such as Judaism, Christianity or Manicheism have in its formation
and message? How should we understand the other, non-apocalyptic, parts
of the two scriptural sources of Islam? What relations tied the first Muslims, the
men of power and knowledge in particular, to their prophet? How much trust can
be invested into the Islamic sources that are abundant and at the same time contradictory,full of improbabilities and often patently apologetic and/or ideological?
Yes, good questions. Research is questions, nothing else.
Edouard-Marie Gallez whose voluminous work Le Messie et Son Prophète, constitutes a veritable mine of information and that despite ideological stands and
methods that sometimes spark off reservations
Yes. Gallez is great.
Topic: Qur'anic studies today