Muhammad - The Missing Years.

There is a clear gap in ancient evidence between the time of the death of Muhammad (632 AD) and the date at which we know that he was first proclaimed by Arabs as Allah’s special messenger sixty years later. For the truth is that there are no clear references to him in contemporary Arab sources until we come across those found on the walls of the Dome of the Rock (the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem) which may or may not have been placed there when it was built in 692 AD. The supposed history that is often promulgated is based on the Hadith, which are myths and legends, possibly containing a grain of fact in them, promulgated for political purposes by later Caliphs and their story-tellers. The records that we do have, based on coins and inscriptions on rocks in the deserts throughout the Middle East, suggest rather that the belief among Arabs at that time was in ‘the Lord of Moses and Jesus’. Islam apparently arose much later.

What is also interesting is that those citations in the Dome of the Rock which refer to Muhammad were not taken from the Quran as we know it. As the other citations in the Mosque referring to Moses and Jesus do appear to be citing the Quran (although not accurately and not necessarily in written form) this may well indicate that references to Muhammad in the Quran as we know it had not at that time been incorporated into the Quran, otherwise they would surely have been cited.

This is not to deny that Muhammad was seen as a prophet of some kind, even while he was still alive, but it is to assert that it was as a prophet proclaiming Moses and Jesus, rather than as one pointing to himself as ‘the Prophet of Allah’. Indeed the former view is precisely the impression that we gain from the other references in the Dome of the Rock concerning Moses and Jesus, coins and papyri, and from the inscriptions written on rocks throughout the Middle East prior to 692 AD. In the latter praise is given to ‘the Lord of Moses and Jesus’ but not to ‘the Lord of Muhammad’. Significantly it is not until the 8th century AD that reference is made in these inscriptions to ‘the Lord of Moses and Muhammad’.

This in fact ties in with what we discover from much of the material in the Quran itself, and suggests that the exaltation of Muhammad to the status of ‘the true Prophet’ as opposed to simply ‘a prophet’ did not arise until a considerable period (over 60 years) after his death. It was an invention of the Arabs of that time, which had the purpose of undergirding the Arabic conquests. Muhammad himself rather proclaimed the teaching of Moses and Jesus, which explains why he exhorted his hearers to read the Torah and the Gospels.

This is also in conformity with near contemporary evidence from external sources which spoke of him as follows; “At that time a certain man from among those same sons of Ismael, whose name was Mahmet [i.e., Muhammad], a merchant, as if by God's command appeared to them as a preacher [proclaiming] the path of truth. He taught them to recognise the God of Abraham, especially because he was learned and informed in the history of Moses. Now because the command was from on high, at a single order they all came together in unity of religion. Abandoning their vain cults, they turned to the living God who had appeared to their father Abraham.”

The writer of these words was also clearly unaware of the idea of Muhammad as the supreme Prophet. This makes it quite clear that the picture given in the Hadith of the Arabs as proclaiming ‘there is one God and Muhammad is his prophet’ right from the earliest times is quite simply inaccurate.

Thus there are good historical reasons from seeing Muhammad as having been a Judaeo-Christian prophet who was later hijacked by the Arab leadership with a view to forming a new religion in order to combat Jewish Christian influence, indicating that Islam was not the religion of Muhammad.

In this there is an interesting parallel between what happened to the teaching of the early Christian church and the teaching of Muhammad, with both being in the end hijacked for political ends.

For the first three hundred years of the history of the Christian church individual churches were independent and flourishing under persecution. There was no over-all hierarchy. Unity was a matter of agreement fostered by a spirit of love. But then, partly at least for political reasons, the Emperor Constantine began to interfere in its affairs, and he introduced false ideas into the church by the simple means of forcing pagan priests to convert to their own form of so-called Christianity (which was merely paganism in disguise) and by this means introduced pagan elements into the church. From those beginnings would gradually develop the monolithic monster of the Roman Catholic church in the Middle Ages which had virtually dispensed with the Bible and with the Jesus Christ as revealed in the Gospels, and was responsible for large amounts of persecution and violence against its opponents.

A similar thing happened with the prophetic teaching of Muhammad. Muhammad was a visionary who urged the reading of the Bible, which he called ‘The Book’, and to read the Torah (the Law of Moses) and the Injil (the Evangel) i.e. the New Testament. It is clear that in doing so he did not consider that they were distorted in his day, otherwise he would not have urged the people to read them, and indeed without them as background and as providing supplementary information much of the Quran would be virtually unintelligible.

As Muhammad declared, speaking in the name of God (Allah), "It was We who revealed the Taurat (Torah - Law - to Moses); therein was guidance and light ... If any do fail to judge by the light of what Allah hath revealed, they are (no better than) unbelievers. ... We sent Jesus, the son of Mariam, confirming the Taurat (Torah - Law) that had come before him: We sent him the Injeel (Gospel/Evangel): Therein was guidance and light ... a guidance and an admonition to those who fear Allah. Let the people of the Injeel (Gospel/Evangel) judge by what Allah hath revealed therein. If any do fail to judge by the light of what Allah hath revealed, they are (no better than) those who rebel. Judge what Allah hath revealed, and follow not their vain desires." (Surah Ma-ida 5:47,49,50,52). How could an inspired prophet call on them to consult them if he thought them unreliable?

Again he says, "Say ye: We believe in Allah, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses (Musa),and Jesus (Isa), and that given to all prophets from their Lord: we make no difference between one and another of them." (Surah al-Baqara 2:136). If these books were lost, how were they to consult them?

It is clear from this that Muhammad supported the teaching of the Law and the Gospels and was satisfied that accurate copies could be read in his day. As we have copies today of the New Testament, and of parts of the Old Testament, which were written hundred of years prior to Muhammad, there is thus no possible justification at all (apart from political) for modern Muslims to claim that we do not have the very Book, Torah, and Injil of which Muhammad spoke.

In consequence much of what Muhammad taught as a result of his prophetic thinking should be seen in the light of his total acceptance of the Christian Bible, that is, as clarification of Biblical doctrines which had become distorted. For example, Muhammad never denied that the one God (Allah), while one, was also triune in His Being. What he quite correctly denied was that the Trinity was to be bastardised into being seen as composed of God (Allah), Isa (Jesus) and Mariam (Mary the mother of Jesus), a heresy that prevailed in his part of the world in his day, and which he was refuting. He was concerned that God (Allah) should not be intermingled with human beings in some kind of half-divine-half human demi-god, or that God should have been seen as having had a son at a point in time. He was not refuting the fact that God had become man in Jesus Christ through the activity of the Holy Spirit, or that Christ was co-eternal within the triune God. That was rather the position taken by later Muslims for political ends, in order to justify continuing to tax both Christians and Jews.

In fact, if the ancient Muslim records (the Hadith, coming from 150 years and more after the death of Muhammad and based on oral tradition and the stories of story-tellers) are to be believed (and that is doubtful) much of his teaching was lost when for political reasons the third Caliph, Caliph Usman (Uthman), arranged for a committee to refashion the Quran in order that it might say what he wanted it to say, and called for all copies of the Quran produced by Muhammad’s closest disciples to be burned As a result, according to those records, large portions of the original Quran were seen as having been lost, with what remained being fashioned for his ends, something which has suited influential Muslim leaders ever since.

However, we should note that the historical evidence throws doubt on whether the Quran was actually recorded in writing until many years after the death of Muhammad, which would belie the above claims (which may have been for propaganda purposes), for the Quran is not mentioned in any Arabic records, whether papyri, stone, inscription or coinage until 8th century AD. We must remember that initially that part of the Quran which originally existed as genuine taching of Muhammad was in oral form and passed on by Muhammad to others who were called on to recite it to their hearers. This would serve to explain why brief echoes of it, although not often direct citations, are found in rock inscriptions, coinage, and papyri, (but without mentioning Muhammad), prior to the citations found in the Dome of the Rock (the Mosque of Omar) dating around 692 AD. And even these latter differ in many cases from the actual wording of the present Quran, and could, of course, quite easily have been taken from oral teaching.

Whilst we certainly do have fragments of ancient copies of the Quran their actual dating is in dispute and they are probably 8th or 9th century AD, and even then it is interesting that some of them undoubtedly have the Suras in a different order than is found in the current Quran, demonstrating that even at that stage the Quran was not in fixed form.

Meanwhile today different Arabic versions of the written Quran are found in different parts of the world, all of which have been affected by the loss of much Quranic material, whilst, paralleling the Roman Catholic church of the Middle Ages, the Muslim leadership have on the whole ever since persecuted and shown violence towards any Muslims who questioned their position. What is certain is that there is much yet to be discovered about the genuine early history of Muhammad, and about the origins of the Quran both in its original form and in the form in which we now have it.