Could One of the Most Influential Men Who Ever Lived Never Really Have

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The book “The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History” puts him at number one, above Jesus Christ, Buddha, Isaac Newton, Christopher Columbus, Johannes Gutenberg, Albert Einstein, and everyone else you can think of. To this day, multitudes of people the world over strive to follow his example. Many take his words and deeds as a guide for every detail of day-to-day life, no matter how trivial. Some among his followers commit unspeakably violent and savage acts in his name, and think that by doing so they are serving God. But did Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, ever really exist at all? And if he did, what did he really say and do?

These may strike many people as absurd questions. As far back as 1851, the French historian Ernest Renan made his oft-quoted assertion that Islam “was born in the full light of history.” Nearly two centuries later, most historians still take that view for granted, albeit without examining in any depth the issues involved.

The novelist Salman Rushdie, who spent years in hiding and ultimately was critically injured for the crime of mocking Muhammad, much more recently confidently stated his agreement with Renan, saying that “for the life of Muhammad, we know everything more or less. We know where he lived, what his economic situation was, who he fell in love with.”

Rushdie’s statement would have been more accurate if he had said that there are Islamic sources that claim to give us all this information about Muhammad. Renan’s claim, likewise, would be closer to the truth had he said that “the earliest Islamic sources purport to show us Islam being born in the full light of history.” For an oft-overlooked fact is that light of history was not actually switched on until well over a century after Muhammad lived. There was a tremendous proliferation of material about his life in the ninth century, but that was fully two centuries after the traditionally accepted date of his death, 632 AD.

Whether for fear of incurring a death fatwa and a life-threatening attack like Rushdie or the opprobrium of their peers for being “Islamophobic,” however, Western academics have been hesitant to examine the historicity of Muhammad or the reliability of the Islamic accounts of Islam’s origins. This is despite the fact that, as “Muhammad: A Critical Biography” shows in detail, there is no agreement in the earliest Islamic sources about the most fundamental details of this towering figure’s life. There are conflicting accounts of key details of his life, including the circumstances and contents of the first revelation he claimed to have received from Allah; the year of his birth; the length of his prophetic career; the name of the angel who supposedly appeared to him; and even his own name.

This is the sort of work that academics in Western universities should have been doing instead of spending all their time on Critical Race Theory and recruitment for Antifa. If they had bothered to look at the actual sources and dared to report what they saw, they would have seen and would be teaching that the Islamic traditions about Muhammad are actually full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and incoherence.

Competing stories about Muhammad appear to have been invented by competing factions in order to shore up their own positions on controverted issues, which is why Islamic tradition shows Muhammad saying so many contradictory things. Ultimately, contrary to the complacency of establishment historians, the Muhammad of Islam is more legend than history, more fable than fact.

This is not just an academic exercise. The real-world implications couldn’t be more immense. The question of who Muhammad really was, if he was anyone at all, and what he really said and did, has enormous implications for Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide. If he did not say and do what he is depicted as saying and doing in the Islamic literature, the entire jihad against the U.S. and the West is based on false pretenses. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the rest are trying to destroy Israel based on what they think are divine commands, but which actually have no foundation. Millions of women put up with oppression in fidelity to a god who isn’t there.

This question has never been explored in depth. Until now.