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| Olde Tyme Religion |
| Why Invent Mohammed? |
| 2012-05-20 |
| Why invent a new religion? Robert Spencer’s excellent new book Did Mohammed Exist? collates recent historical research questioning the existence of the historical Mohammed, much of it previously not accessible to a lay American audience. This is a dangerous thing to do, and a courageous one. Some years ago I chided Spencer for giving the Koran too much credibility; more important than the nasty things one finds in the Koran, I argued, are two questions: “1) Mohammed may never have existed, and 2) If he existed, he may have had nothing to do with the Koran, which well might be an 8th- or 9th-century compilation.” Spencer’s present book will be translated into major Muslim languages and published on the Internet, according to Daniel Pipes. That is an important and welcome development. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 Illiterate warmonger who pillaged women and raped cattle...a Voltairian may notice if he didn't exist, he would certainly need to be invented. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2012-05-20 19:11 |
| #3 I should add that, in all fairness, the vast majority of those of us who believe pick and choose what we like from our religions and their texts. The key is to convince Muslims to selectively ignore the idiotic portions of their religion as a requirement of joining modern global socieity. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2012-05-20 15:26 |
| #2 I'm inclined to think that Mohammed, like Jesus and Moses, was a real person who has had a body of myth and legend attached to his life - some of it pretty unsavory to the modern mind. But some of what Moses did seems a bit questionable to the modern mind as well... though he doesn't seem to have humped and killed everything in sight(and not necissarily in that order) like Big Moe. OTOH, it may be that the Haditha is simply a bunch of crap that needs to be tossed out when and if Islam has its own version of the Protestant Reformation. My buddy who is Muslim certainly thinks so. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2012-05-20 15:18 |
| #1 This won't have any effect on devout Muslims, but it is exactly the sort of information that the general Western audience needs to be exposed to. Muslim claims to Dome of the Rock are laughable, for example, but if people don't know the history behind it they might be inclined to take those claims seriously. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2012-05-20 12:17 |