Steve Weiss

Every group, clan or tribe wants to have its heroes to give them vicarious pride, and if there are none at hand they often make them up out of pure imagination with a few historical facts thrown in to give an unearned credibility.

Most people are not interested in complex and confusing doctrinal issues and prefer to align themselves with great leaders and myths. If reason were sufficient for most people, they wouldn't fall back on obvious fiction and irrationality manifest in thousands of religions and cults. Many people want to be entertained and enjoy the wooo factor because they prefer a reality malleable to their consciousnesses so that there is the illusion of hope when there really is none.

Toto

Here is a thread on this topic that contains some references: The historical Muhammed

I think there are others. This topic comes up here regularly.

Huon

The existence of pagans, christians (probably monophysite christians) and Jews in Arabia is certain. For instance, one could consult the history of a certain Dhu Nuwas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhu_Nuwas
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/ar...s-ad-abi-karib

Yūsuf Dhū Nuwas, (ruled Circa 517–525) was the last king of the Himyarite kingdom of Yemen and a convert to Judaism.

According to the contemporary sources, after seizing the throne of the Himyarites, in ca. 518 or 523 Dhū Nuwas attacked the Aksumite (mainly monophysite Christian Ethiopians) garrison at Zafar, capturing them and burning their churches. He then moved against Najran, a Christian and Aksumite stronghold. After accepting the city's capitulation, he massacred those inhabitants who would not renounce Christianity.

Jacques Ryckmans discovered an abyssinyan inscription which describes an expedition against Dhū Nuwas. This discovery is described in french...

TruthPrevails

I guess it will be regular for critical thinkers till we have come up with a more rational explanation.

Here is one twist (I read it somewhere) for consideration from the perspective of critical theory that take into account every aspects of the issue.

1. The Arabian peninsula was mainly infertile and 'unproductive' desert 1500 years ago. Alexander, the Romans, the Mongols and no other conquerors gave the sandy Arabian peninsula a second look.
The Arab population was expanding and they sensed a problem then.

2. The Arabs knew there were fertile land surrounding their lands. These lands were occupied by great civilizations (the Persians, Eyptians, Iragians, and others). In addition, imperialism is a common impulse of humans in groups.

3. So how are barbaric Arabs going to conquer these civilized people. What is the best strategies.

4. The strongest motivation for any human being and group then (even today) are sex, food, security (salvation & god) and the barbaric resort to use the fastest means i.e. violence to get what they want. This is a super combination of a religious cult and gangsterism.

5. The Arabs barbarians then did not has any effective religious cults of their own to control the masses to facilitate a strategy based on violence against their neighbouring civilized nations.

6. Their strategy, like the Japanese then and Chinese now on technology, the fastest was to plagiarize via copy and paste a religion. There may be a well known person named Muhammad (small time sort of Robin Hood) somewhere in Mecca or Medina around 500+ AD.

7. What the Arabs did in appx 700+ was to 'dress up' the Arab Robin Hood with the elements of the religion of that time, claimed his is the last prophet, throw in elements of salvation and violence and viola they have a magic formula that went on the conquer their more civilized neighbor and elsewhere.
This was the invention of Muhammad and his Allah plagiarized from the various religious menu of that period.

8. Currently it is the the large number of ignorant moderates and vulnerables cowed by subliminal Terror Management Theory that veiled the root origins of how Islam came to be.

I think the above hypothesis makes sense and there are supporting evidence for it available in the Web. Yes/No?

Duvduv

It's worth noting that there are no Jewish sources from the period of Mohammed attesting to any of the issues related to him or his relationship with the Jews at all. One would presumably expect to see something in the writings of the gaonic period in Baghdad, but this is not the case. For that matter as far as I know there is nothing in the writings of the emerging Karaite Jewish movement in Iraq in the 8th or 9th century attesting to Mohammad.

youngalexander

Here ya go, and only two days to wait!
Did Muhammad Exist? (or via: amazon.co.uk)You might also try:
The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (or via: amazon.co.uk)
Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (or via: amazon.co.uk)

I believe that the answer may be - highly unlikely!!

Pamela Spencer

Required Reading
The Quest for the Historical Muhammad: How the "Third Quest" Era of Historical Jesus Research Can Help Us Understand Muhammad's Islam (or via: amazon.co.uk), by Mikhah Ben David

Product Description:

A NEW MASSIVE study on the Eras of the Quest for the Historical Jesus and how we can apply the Third Quest (Post-Quest) Era methodologies to the Quest for the Historical Muhammad. This study additionally surveys the differences between Traditionalist and Revisionist (Historical-Critical) scholarship in Islamic Studies, and the various approaches of scholars in these schools of thought.

Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (or via: amazon.co.uk), by Martin Lings

youngalexander

Quest for the Historical Jesus and how we can apply the Third Quest (Post-Quest) Era methodologies to the Quest for the Historical Muhammad
Regrettably, since those methodologies have failed Proving History in the case of Jesus, they are unlikely to 'prove' any more efficacious in the case of Mo.
Still I might give your sources a whirl, Ta!

youngalexander

We might as well apply a quick & dirty BT anal to Mo, at least it will give us some degree of orientation.

P(h|e.b) = P(h|b) x P(e|h.b)/[P(h|b) x P(e|h.b) + P(~h|b) x P(e|~h.b)]

where;
h = Mo existed
~h = Mo is a myth
e = the evidence in post#26 above
b = background knowledge

Priors for 7thC Arabian prophets = ??
buggered if I know, so when in doubt = 0.5
Thus P(h|b) = P(~h|b) = 0.5

Consequents for evidence (post#26)
Looks to be rather unlikely that we get such a load of blanks on h, so
P(e|h.b) = 0.2
which looks fairly generous on the face of it.

On the other hand e is pretty much what we expect if ~h, say 95%, but we could be wrong so
P(e|~h.b) = 0.8
These do not have to sum to 1, but in this case they are not going to be too far different from these values I reckon.

Grind the handle

P(h|e.b) = (0.5 x 0.2)/[(0.5 x 0.2) + (0.5 x 0.8)] = 0.1/0.5 = 0.2
or 20%

Consulting the Appendix (pg286) of Carrier's Proving History and the verdict is; The existence of Mo is "Improbable"

Pamela Spencer

What is so 'improbable' about the existence of an illiterate man who performed no miracles?