The quest for Mohammed

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- waked
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The quest for Mohammed
OP - January 09, 2009, 02:08 PM

Hey

who is mohammed ?
Is he a real person ?
Can we know any thing about the man ?

My position is that Mohammed never walked on this earth ,and it seems that there are scholars which do share the same position .

Any comments ?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122669909279629451.html#printMode
- BerberElla
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #1 - January 09, 2009, 02:17 PM

Interesting, I've only read once something that suggested he never existed, at least not how he is portrayed in the hadiths: http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=226.0 (long article and only a small mention)

Haven't had a chance to look at your link but I will, and will write my thoughts after.

Inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit.
- A_G
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #2 - January 09, 2009, 02:22 PM

Quote
Is he a real person ?

If he is a real person then he is a liar; if he isn't then the people who wrote about him are liars.

oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!"
- waked
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #3 - January 09, 2009, 03:01 PM
- Blas
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #4 - January 09, 2009, 03:22 PM

Quote from: waked on January 09, 2009, 02:08 PM
Hey

who is mohammed ?
Is he a real person ?
Can we know any thing about the man ?

My position is that Mohammed never walked on this earth ,and it seems that there are scholars which do share the same position .

Any comments ?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122669909279629451.html#printMode

Hello waked,

I was just reading about historical Mohammad.

A problem with Mohammad is that the name means Praiseworthy. It is not only a common name, but it is a title/description of anyone who accomplishes anything or is of good character. There were quite a few military and religious leaders called praiseworthy or named Praiseworthy.

Nevertheless Patricia Crone, who is not a friend of Islam at all, writes:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-e...ammed_3866.jsp

"There is no doubt that Mohammed existed, occasional attempts to deny it notwithstanding. His neighbours in Byzantine Syria got to hear of him within two years of his death at the latest; a Greek text written during the Arab invasion of Syria between 632 and 634 mentions that "a false prophet has appeared among the Saracens" and dismisses him as an impostor on the ground that prophets do not come "with sword and chariot". It thus conveys the impression that he was actually leading the invasions."

Also the Doctrina Iacobi (the first Greek text mentioning the Saracen prophet) may be of interest:

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/zimriel/Islam/doctrina.html

You can also read John of Damascus' (Who lived in the 7th century) polemic against Islam. He mentions Muhammed by name there.

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/general/stjohn_islam.aspx

I hope these links help.

Ubi dubium ibi libertas.
- BerberElla
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #5 - January 09, 2009, 03:32 PM

This link:

Quote
http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-e...ammed_3866.jsp

Is not working for me.

Inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit.
- Blas
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #6 - January 09, 2009, 03:52 PM

Sorry, BerberElla,
I must have copied it wrongly, I' ll try again..

http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/mohammed_3866.jsp

Ubi dubium ibi libertas.
- a.ghazali
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #7 - January 09, 2009, 03:54 PM

Quote from: waked on January 09, 2009, 02:08 PM
Hey

who is mohammed ?
Is he a real person ?
Can we know any thing about the man ?

My position is that Mohammed never walked on this earth ,and it seems that there are scholars which do share the same position .

Any comments ?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122669909279629451.html#printMode

I do believe there's more evidence for Muhammad than there is for Jesus.

Some of the histories of Muhammad is quite uncomplimentary and I think could only be written if they were about a real person. Making that stuff up from scratch would not have turned out the way it did.

Knowing Islam is the only true religion we do not allow propagation of any other religion. How can we allow building of churches and temples when their religion is wrong? Thus we will not allow such wrong things in our countries. - Zakir Naik
- cosmicdancer
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #8 - January 09, 2009, 04:54 PM

Quote from: waked on January 09, 2009, 02:08 PM
Hey

who is mohammed ?
Is he a real person ?
Can we know any thing about the man ?

My position is that Mohammed never walked on this earth ,and it seems that there are scholars which do share the same position .

Any comments ?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122669909279629451.html#printMode

Interesting.

It would be quite amazing to think that all the thousands of hadiths, pages and pages of Sira and sayings of the hundreds of companions (those who met Muhammad) as well as references to him in the Qur'an were all forged.

The only evidence mentioned in the article was this:

He was struck, he says, by the fact that the first coins bearing Muhammad's name did not appear until the late 7th century -- six decades after the religion did.

I would need a lot more than that, to be convinced Muhammad never existed.
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #9 - January 09, 2009, 04:56 PM

Hey there,
I have read those testimonies ,but can we judge them as trustworthy piece of evidence?
Take this for example : And they were saying that the prophet had appeared, coming with the Saracens, and that he was proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ who was to come.
Does that apply to Mohammed and Islam as we know it today ?
We can say that someone is claiming to be a prophet and to claim to be a prophet was very common in that troubled area ,what else any agitator can claim?

Quote
Making that stuff up from scratch would not have turned out the way it did.

why not ?

Why not?
We have Moses, Solomon, David and Jesus .
And we have also God.
Humans create all kinds of imaginary agents .

Quote
A problem with Mohammad is that the name means Praiseworthy. It is not only a common name, but it is a title/description of anyone who accomplishes anything or is of good character. There were quite a few military and religious leaders called praiseworthy or named Praiseworthy.

The name was not common .
And if you read Yehuda D. Nevo brillanat book Crossroads to Islam you can see why .
can any one of read Arabic?
- waked
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #10 - January 09, 2009, 05:39 PM

Quote
It would be quite amazing to think that all the thousands of hadiths, pages and pages of Sira and sayings of the hundreds of companions (those who met Muhammad) as well as references to him in the Qur'an were all forged

How many times the Quran did name Mohammed?

Does that satisfy our Quest? Is the Quran a reliable source ?

The most reliable source of the life of Mohammed and early Islam was the sira of Ibn- Ishq and this did not reach us only through Ibn- Hisham .and we know that Ibn-hisham wrote his sira in third hijra century died 833 C.E. so I don?t think that such sources can be trusted as primary even not secondary.

And hadith is not better from Wikipedia : Hadiths were originally oral traditions of Muhammad's actions and customs. From the first Fitna of the 7th century people questioned the sources of hadiths. [7] This resulted in a list of transmitters, for example "A told me that B told him that Muhammad said."
Hadith were eventually written down, evaluated and gathered into large collections mostly during the reign of Umar II (bin Abdul Aziz, grandson of Umar bin Khattab(RAA)2nd Caliph) during 8th century, and also in the 9th century. These works are referred to in matters of Islamic law and History to this day.
Here you find a very good source on Bukhari :
http://www.sunnah.org/history/Scholars/imam_bukhari.htm
- Soren
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #11 - January 10, 2009, 12:46 AM

Hi waked

The amount of evidence that here was a person called Mohammad is quite strong. It does not, however, mean that his name actually was Mohammad. But it seems reasonably, though one could argue that the qur'an states that the prophet in wait was to be a person called Ahmed and not Mohammad. But this opens the doors to a lot of speculations; some would argue that he in fact also was named Ahmed, besides the other names; some would argue that Ahmed is not a name in this context, but that it is telling us that the person would be praised; an so on. The reason for why there's a good reason to consider that Mohammad was a real person is that there's fairly early mentioning of Muhammad in non-muslim sources (his name for instans transliterated for instans into greek, one would think if they knew it was like "Blessed One"/"Praised One" (as by the way was a very common thing to do among syriac christians among others; hence the theory of connecting Mohammad [praised one] with syriac christianity (Christoph Luxenberg, KH Ohlig etc.)).

There's quite a few historians who have doubts about a lot of the tradition about Mohammad, and among them that he ever existed, but the overall consensus is still that the tradition contains a reasonable amount of historical elements. And that Mohammad existed. But of course there's a lot of doubts and questions especially considering the state of the sources; mostly being written more than a hundreds years after the alledged events, containing diverging informations (dates at odds, geography at odds, persons at odds). But what can we conclude from these facts? Are it all fairy tales or could one (or more) of the versions contain some historical element? So far it seems to me that the specialists have been to content with making broad conclusions. Which amounts to facts coming at odds. Let me give you an example. There's a story concerning the Ka'ba. In one version Hubal is the main-caracter (high-god) of the Ka'ba. In another version Allah is the main-caracter (high-god). In the first version Hubal has an idol inside the Ka'ba, being the only idol inside. In the other version Allah has no idols inside the Ka'ba, and there's is no idols at all inside it. A sociologist, I think, Zeitlin wrote this book on the historicity of Mohammad a couple of years ago (2006/2007).

"Rubin also calls our attention to this fact: though the chief pre-Islamic deity in the form of an idol was Hubal, whose statue was the only one inside the Kaaba" p. 61-62

"in the Kabba itself there appears to be no statues at all. Although this may at first seem strange, Rubin reminds us that the Kaaba was considered "the sacred house of Allah." Allah was worshipped by the Meccans... and for him there was no statue. The lesser deities were apparently worshipped outside the Kaaba, in the area of the Hijr, where their statues were located." p. 69

And get was who is Zeitlin telling us who is giving him the information; tada Uri Rubin yet again. So we have within 7-8 pages completely divergent informations being portrayed as something which is reasonable reliable.

The book was The Historical Muhammad by Irving M. Zeitlin.

Go figure. I might have misunderstood something, and I would be glad if one could clear it up. But besides that it's a fairly good book summarizing some of the great different types of scholarly research into the origin of islam and the early history of islam.
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #12 - January 12, 2009, 11:27 AM

Before commenting on what soren said , I would like to tell you a story which really happened to me:
It is the year 1975 and I was doing my military service ,I was stationed in south of Iraq near Nassriya ( UR in History books) . due to my work, I must travel weekly to Baghdad .
One day I noticed that someone is building a small cubical room near by the highway to Baghdad. The car driver told me jokingly that someone is building a shrine to (khatwa ) . khatwa literally means a step .But in the popular religion in Iraq it means that someone has dreamed or had a vision of some holy Imam ordering him to build a shrine. and the Holy spirit had showed him where to built the shrine.
Well it was very convenient for the care taker that the specified place where near the High way to Baghdad. I thought then that the man is wasting his money and time and before long the municipality will demolish this ugly building , but to my astonishment that ugly shrine was still there. I was then transferred to Bagdad and I stayed there till my military service was finished .
After 4 years I visited Nassriya and was really to a very big surprise when I saw that the ugly shrine was still there and more over it was flourishing and business was booming .when I asked the driver about this shrine he told me that the shrine was for Imam Ali Bin Al Hussein(( the Guardian of the road)). when I tried to joke with the driver about this shrine he was a little bit angry but because I am not from Nassriya he tried to enlighten me over the important rule that this shrine has played to minimize car accidents on the high way and that all car drivers ought to give some money so that they will be sure nothing will happen to them during their daily trips to and from Baghdad.
In 1993 I happened to visit Nassriya again and that was the last time and I just couldn?t believe my eyes because now the shrine was rebuilt with a green dome and has his own private car park and a small restaurant and two beautiful houses for the care taker and his family and there was lot of visitors doing their zyara. Zyara means visiting the Holy shrines of al ?al ?bit (the family of the prophet).
All of that happened when the Saddam Hussein was the president of Iraq a brutal dictator who was against Shia Islam . Iwill like to leave it for you to imagine the situation now .

To be continued .
- hupla
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #13 - January 12, 2009, 02:45 PM

Quote from: waked on January 09, 2009, 02:08 PM
My position is that Mohammed never walked on this earth ,and it seems that there are scholars which do share the same position .

Any comments ?

I believe that there is too much self serving stuff in the Hadith and Qur'an to mean that Muhammad did not exist. If he did not exist why invent a Sura which goes something like
"O Believers, when you are at Muhammad's house for dinner don't stay for hours and hours afterwards - Muhammad is too polite to tell you this, but Allah speaks the truth" ?
- Soren
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #14 - January 13, 2009, 01:43 PM

Quote from: hupla on January 12, 2009, 02:45 PM
Quote from: waked on January 09, 2009, 02:08 PM
My position is that Mohammed never walked on this earth ,and it seems that there are scholars which do share the same position .

Any comments ?

I believe that there is too much self serving stuff in the Hadith and Qur'an to mean that Muhammad did not exist. If he did not exist why invent a Sura which goes something like
"O Believers, when you are at Muhammad's house for dinner don't stay for hours and hours afterwards - Muhammad is too polite to tell you this, but Allah speaks the truth" ?

Well as a matter of fact you would be surprised what people through history have accomplished of myths. One should only read the different histories by the contemporary John of Ephesus, Michael the Syrian among others to see what load of 'fairy tales' there was produced. So at least in theory it could very well be that the amount of literature which we have about Muhammad could be contructs of later time; fairy tales, stories about a holy person, about saints etc. It's definitly not impossible, but I would though personally say it's more likely that we have a core-figure which we can call Muhammad. And it's more the question of what there's told about him and his surroundings we can trust. For instans was the high-god of the Ka'ba Hubal or Allah, and was there any idols, or those stories tells us that neither have any valid historical information?
- panoptic
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #15 - January 13, 2009, 02:14 PM

The Constitution of Medina informs us that Muhammed was a real person. Biographical information about him may or may not correspond closely with real events, although I assume a good core of it does.

The thing about his name appearing on manuscripts later seems to be about the Shahada, which until the 690's was certainly just "la ilaha ill allah".

"...every imperfection in man is a bond with heaven..." - Karl Marx
- Soren
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Re: The quest for Mohammed
Reply #16 - January 14, 2009, 12:36 AM

Quote from: panoptic on January 13, 2009, 02:14 PM
The Constitution of Medina informs us that Muhammed was a real person.

well the historians who are sceptical towards there ever being an Muhammad I would assume would count the Constitution of Medina among the spurios sources .

But the constitution is definitly one of the greater difficults the sceptics would have to address. Why should later historiographics (or secterians) create this document? And how did it come to be preserved in a couple of different texts, which does not seem to have borrowed from eachother?
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