Roots of Islam 1 . . .

I’VE BEEN READING – OR RATHER LISTENING TO—a book. It’s called In the Shadow of the Sword by the
populist historian Tom Holland. And it deals with the geopolitical background of the Koran and the birth of
Islam in 7th century Arabia. It attempts some answers to questions like,

-        Where did Muhammad get his ideas from?  
-        All those bits of the Koran that essentially recapitulate bits of the bible – how did they get in there? and,
-        How and why did Islam spread so far and so fast in those early years?

It’s fascinating reading (listening). It’s shown up in me a huge well of ignorance about the world’s second
most prevalent religion, one that I’m now trying to fill. That’s why I’m right now listening through for the
third time, making detailed notes as I go, as well as reading through the Koran and studying other early
Islam documents.

Islam is an important issue in the world right now—religiously, politically, whatever. That’s not going to
cease in our lifetimes—if anything the opposite, it’s more likely to grow. So, we need to understand it. We
need to be able to debate with Moslems from a position of knowledge. I’ve been learning a lot, and I want
to share what I’ve been finding out.

There’s a popular myth that’s been propagated about early Islam This myth has now become so widespread
as to be almost universally and uncritically accepted even among people (like myself) who should know
better. It goes like this:

    ‘Islam is a faith that is based on firm bedrock of established historical fact. We know a vast amount
    about Muhammad, his life, the cultural background and ambience in which he lived, the
    circumstances in which his community developed, and the way in which that community expanded
    out into the surrounding countries. More so in fact than for Christianity, where our historical sources
    are really a bit limited and we need quite a bit of footwork—or even faith—just to establish the
    historical realities.’

Ever heard that one? It’s quite widespread, and I’ve fallen for it at times. Sometimes I’ve found myself a bit
on the defensive on this, almost apologizing for it. Saying things like . . .

    ‘Well of course, Muhammad did live 600 years after Christ. The farther back in history you go, the
    less documentation you are going to find on any historical event. That’s obvious. All this really tells us
    is that Jesus lived earlier and Mohammed lived later. Hardly a revolutionary insight!’

Reasonable as far as it goes. But it’s presupposing a basic assumption—that the documentation of
Mohamed’s life and the history of early Islam really are well documented, and that is just what I’d never
(until now) taken the trouble to verify. Now that I’m doing so, I'm finding some real surprises . . .

There are various aspects of Islam that I want to touch on in a series of posts. I’m going to start with that
fundamental question—Just how much do we really know, historically, about Muhammad and early Islam?
We need to look at the source documents on which the history is based. Then we need to look at the
political and cultural biases that may have influenced the recording of that history. We look at the origins of
the Koranic material. Finally we will look briefly at another question. What is the underlying moral stance of
Islam in its original form? What does it really say about right and wrong? Bear with me—it’s important!

    Before we start on that, Why this on a website dedicated to unmasking the ‘Pharisee Church’?
    Well . . . here’s a quote from a rather obscure lecture given by CS Lewis in 1945:

    Islam is only the greatest of the Christian heresies, (as) Buddhism only the greatest of the Hindu
    heresies. (from ‘God in the Dock’,  a collection of obscure CS Lewis writings)

    I’m not sure who would be brave enough to stand up in public and say that now! But that really is
    really the bottom line of this whole study (certainly for Islam—I know little of Buddhism). Islam is a
    Christian (or more precisely Jewish-Christian) heresy. That is inescapable. And like most heresies it
    reverts heavily to Pharisee principles—denial of the atoning work of Christ, substitution of works for
    free grace as the ground for our salvation—for its central dogma. So that’s my justification, if any
    were needed, for discussing it here.

Now let’s start with some basic history. . .

The Islamic calendar starts in our year 622 AD. This is Islamic year 0 AH (anno hegirae), based on the
traditionally accepted date of the hijra, when Muhammad left Mecca and travelled north to Medina. In this
he switched from being a maverick and persecuted lone preacher to being the leader of a close-knit and
sharply defined community. Later he was a able to return victoriously to Mecca, and a little while later (632
AD) he died.

What biographical sources do we have for Muhammad’s life?

The earliest biographical account still in existence was written by a man called Ibn Hisham. He died in 833
AD—almost exactly 200 years after the death of Mohamed. Ibn Hisham’s biography is based extensively on
a previous biography, which is now lost in its original from, written by one Ibn Ishaq. Ibn Ishaq lived and
wrote in Baghdad, and died in around 760 to 770 AD. Ibn Hisham quotes extensively from Ibn Ishaq, long
chunks of text, and some people think that it’s possible to more or less reconstruct Ibn Ishaq’s biography
from these quotes. The truth of this is difficult to judge, technical, and certainly way beyond me. In any case
it doesn’t really matter too much. Either way, the point is that we’ve got a very long time gap between the
death of Muhammad and the earliest account of his life that raises (or should raise!) some disturbing
questions

So what do we have to fill this time gap?

The short answer is, virtually nothing. Prior to these accounts there are practically no written records of any
kind to tell us anything about Muhammad as a person, or about events and happenings in his life and the
development of the community. Even when Islamic armies were invading the surrounding countries and
laying the foundations of a massive empire, nothing was being written. The outsiders—Christian monks, and
so forth—have left a few records; but from within Islam itself, there’s virtually nothing for well over a
hundred years. This is truly extraordinary. I suppose we have to say that it just wasn’t a writing culture!
Whatever the reason, the fact remains—the years of Islam are shrouded in huge darkness as far as
contemporary records go.

There’s the Koran of course—and the evidence for this being a genuine document dating from Mohamed’s
lifetime and little changed from then is actually very good. But the Koran tells almost nothing of historical
fact about Islam or about Muhammad—it’s all religious dogma and nothing else. There’s one other
interesting document that can be reconstructed fairly reliably. It’s called the Constitution of Medina, and
dates back to the early ummah, the Medina community that Muhammad founded and developed. It lays
down rules for that community, particularly in their dealings with outsiders but again gives no historical
detail. And that’s it. Everything historical was written well over a hundred years later, by which time Islam
had changed vastly from how it had started out, as we’ll be seeing.

In that case, where did Ibn Ishaq and the others get their information from to write their story? What were
their sources?

The answer is, they relied almost entirely on what are called the hadiths. These are little snippets of
information relating to the life of Muhammad, of which there are many thousand known, and are said to
represent the verbal tradition handed down in initially unwritten form from the earliest days.
The problem with these is that most of them are clearly not historical at all. They may tell us no more about
Muhammad than the 3rd century ‘gnostic gospels’ tell us about the life of Christ—that is, nothing. Some
may indeed be reliable, but who knows? The best known collector of the hadiths was Mohammad Al
Bukhari. He is said to have collected about 300,000 hadiths, from which he filtered out all but a core of
about 4,000 which he felt could reasonably claim to be historical. But Al Bukhari also lived 200 years after
Muhammad, so he could only surmise as to what was real and what was not. Really it’s difficult to be sure
whether any at all of these hadiths are truly historical.

So we’ve got a huge dearth of real information about the life of Muhammad. There’s very little we can say
about him at all with any real degree of certainty, simply because of the time gap. All we have is the late
biographies. And when we consider those, we need to consider also the political and social environment at
the time of their writing. This was very changed from when Muhammad was alive, and could scarcely not
have influenced the way they were written. That is what we look at next.
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