Adnan Abyat is an imam in Canada who recently preached a rousing sermon designed to get his congregation all fired up for jihad. As Muslim leaders all over the world speak of Hamas’ conflict with Israel as a jihad, it’s understandable that this kind of sermon would be common in the Islamic world these days. Abyat, like many others, attributed the jihad impulse to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Yet there is abundant reason to believe that Muhammad was not exactly what Adnan Abyat and so many others think he was.
In his sermon, which should have, but almost certainly didn’t, raise eyebrows among Canadian law enforcement and intelligence officials, Abyat said: “I attest that Muhammad is Allah's servant and His prophet who awakened the desire for Jihad and incited the believers, who made Jihad for the sake of Allah the pinnacle of Islam, and the one who said that Paradise is underneath the shades of the swords.”
This was a statement of faith, but it was also a claim that was rooted in history. Without any doubt, Abyat believes that Muhammad was a real man who walked this earth and made statements that can be known today among his multitudes of followers. As the man whom Allah chose to deliver his eternal message to mankind and whom he designated as the “excellent example” for the believers (Qur’an 33:21), Muhammad’s words carry special weight for Muslims. In fact, Muhammad’s words are why jihadis take up the sword.
Abyat himself went on to explain this: “His shari'a [law] elevated the status of the mujahideen [warriors of jihad] and he said that Jihad for the sake of Allah raises a man a hundred levels in Paradise and the distance between levels is like the distance between heaven and earth.”
All this raises the question once again: what if Muhammad really said none of this? What if the stories Islamic tradition tells us about what he said and did are more myth and legend than sober historical fact? Then Hamas and other jihadis all over the world are killing and dying for a fiction. It would be the cruelest of cruel jokes on the jihadis, but if this idea became widely known in the Islamic world, the result could be transformational.
I explored this question several years ago in a book entitled "Did Muhammad Exist?", which, you might be surprised to learn, was controversial. In it, I demonstrated that the earliest available biographical data about Muhammad dates from two centuries after the traditional date of his death. There are a few mentions of “Muhammad” here and there before then, but none of them match what we know, or think we know, about the prophet of Islam.
Islamic apologists attempt to explain away the long gap between Muhammad’s life and the appearance of written records about that life by asserting that this material was preserved as oral tradition in a time when memories were long and writing materials were scarce. That’s plausible, but if the early Muslims were carrying around elaborately detailed accounts of Muhammad’s words and deeds in their minds for two centuries, they were remarkably reticent about doing so.
The first six decades of the seventh-century Arab conquest contain no mention anywhere of the existence of the religion of Islam, or of the Qur’an, or of Muhammad as the prophet of Islam. The Arab conquerors had extensive contact with the people they conquered, many of whom wrote about these conquests. Yet Islam, the Qur’an, and Muhammad just don’t seem to come up.
Another problem is that the Islamic traditions themselves are full of contradictions on even the most basic points. In a new book, "Muhammad: A Critical Biography," I examine those stories in detail and show all the contradictions and inconsistencies within what academics still present as sober, meticulously recorded history. Most Islamic traditions say that Muhammad was always the name of the prophet; others, however, assert that he was originally named Qutham and that his name was changed to Muhammad later. Most Islamic traditions state that the angel Gabriel appeared to Qutham/Muhammad and delivered the Qur’anic revelations to him; some, however, maintain that initially an angel named Saraphel visited the new prophet, and was only later replaced by Gabriel.
Those who defend the historical value of the early Islamic material may dismiss these as erroneous traditions and point to the preponderance of support for the mainstream versions, but this doesn’t answer the question of why such traditions began circulating in the first place. If Muhammad had always been known as Muhammad and the angel who appeared to him always as Gabriel, why would anyone make up stories renaming the central characters Qutham and Saraphel?
Related: Khamenei Ups the Ante, Says Iran Has to Strike Israel or Face a Bigger Foe (Not the U.S.)
These variant traditions, however, also could indicate that Muhammad as we know him is a composite figure whose story is made up of many earlier traditions. It could be that stories of Qutham and Saraphel were incorporated into the Muhammad myth, as were traditions that were originally about others as the figure of the prophet of Islam was being constructed.
That’s just two of the many strange and anomalous aspects of Islamic tradition regarding Muhammad. The fact that I am bringing them to light in "Muhammad: A Critical Biography" may be why a Pakistani Muslim leader just offered a $10 billion bounty for my head and that of Dutch parliamentarian and freedom fighter Geert Wilders.
Whether or not jihadis get my head and strike it rich, however, the problems of this most problematic of prophets will remain. We can all hope, for the sake of the peace of the world, that one day Adnan Abyat and others like him will realize that the whole enterprise of jihad was a bizarre waste of time and turn to more positive activities.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member