Get a Book, a Man, & a Place, & Presto! You've got ISLAM

Dr Jay Smith from © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2021

We have always been told that the prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca, and lived there for 52 years before moving to Medina, that he received the Qur'an during his time in those two cities, and that he finally died in 632 AD. Yet, everything we have heard is now suspect, because the sources for everything we have been told come entirely from the Islamic Traditions, which only begins to be created and compiled around 833 AD and later, which is a whopping 200 years after the fact, written by men who never knew Muhammad, and who never did their work anywhere near where Muhammad lived, but 100s of miles away! What's more, almost everything those Islamic Traditions talk about just didn't exist in the 7th century that far south (i.e. in the central part of Arabia, known as the 'Hejaz'). There were no Jews living in the Hejaz at all in the 7th century, nor were there any mosques facing any Kaaba in Mecca until well into the 8th century. There are no references on any coins or on any rock inscriptions to anyone named Muhammad who was a Muslim, living in a city called Mecca, nor even any references to the Caliphs called Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman or Ali. In fact we can't find any references anywhere for any people called Muslims, or a religion called Islam, or a book known as the Qur'an prior to 692 AD, which is 60 years after the time this man who began this religion died! So, then how and why was Islam created? That question we probably won't be able to answer completely for years to come. But we can at least try to make stabs at it even now. What we can say is that the historical record demonstrates that the Arabs of northern Arabia (known by the Romans as Arab Petrea) dominated what is today Jordan, Israel, and parts of Syria, and had their political headquarters in Damascus, Syria, but kept their religious sanctuary in Petra, Jordan. Anything south of that area, including what is today Medina, Taif and Mecca was simply wilderness, filled with desert and wasteland, with very few people living there, because it had little water, and even less vegetation to support large populations. No one really cared about that central area of Arabia, and so virtually nothing is written about it, which confronts the Islamic Traditions account completely. When Muawiya comes to power in 661 AD, he unifies and expands the lands under his Umayyad Caliphate, so that by the time he dies around 20 years later, his kingdom expanded from Tripoli in the West to Afghanistan in the East. Yet, he was never a Muslim, and the coins he minted in the West were Christian, and those in the East were Zoroastrian, while the cities he governed reflected almost entirely these two religions. It was not until abd al-Malik came to power in 685 AD, a full 50 years after Muhammad's supposed demise that we find and Arab ruler who wanted to throw off the mantle of Christianity which was dominant all around him, and confront his greatest threat politically (i.e. Byzantine Christianity). He did this by introducing coins and protocols with Muhammad's name on them, while simultaneously attacking the trinity, the divinity of Jesus, and His sonship, the doctrines which are foundational to Byzantine Christianity. More to be written... © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2021

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