Archive for May, 2015

Monty Python to the rescue against Western Islamic scholars

DID MUHAMMAD REALLY EXIST, OR IS HE A MYTH? Western scholars have taken upon themselves to prove the latter and disprove what 1.5 billion people believe, which is that their prophet was flesh and blood. This is a strange, self-defeating trend in Western Islamic scholarship, and such odd conclusions have been drawn from their work that the only way to deal with it properly is to bring Monty Python into the discussion.

The new scholarship speculates that Muhammad may have been a myth created by Arabs to give an Arab face to a religion that evolved far away from Western Arabia as an offshoot of a Christian sect that rejected the divinity of Jesus. These scholars attempt to put the cart before the horse: Arab followers of this sect conquered wide swathes of territory, then conspired to justify their violent, expansionist practices by creating the character of a warlord founder who communed with the divine and preached the violent imposition of their true religion of God. Read more »

Was Muhammad an Epileptic?

THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES THE POSSIBILITY that Muhammad’s belief he was in communion with the divine was due to epilepsy, a neurological disorder that plagued him throughout his life. This is crucial for understanding the shaky foundation Islam rests on because it is based entirely on his claim that God talked to him through an angel.

This idea forms the foundation of his religion: “There is but one God, and Muhammad is his messenger” is the primary declaration of faith. Allah, the belief goes, transmitted his eternal word to an angel who then conveyed it to Muhammad either in person or through inspirational means. Read more »

Here’s looking at you, Mo

MUSLIMS HAVE A BAN ON “DEPICTING” MUHAMMAD, and they have the cheek to expect everyone to obey the ban, Muslim or not. The general explanation is that images are forbidden because they could become objects of worship and therefore incite idolatry. For a Muslim, idolatry is the chief sin because it means worship of something other than God.

Of course, any non-Muslim with a lick of self respect would tell these folks to take a hike and would “depict” the Muslim holy man if only to show that they are not about to bow down to foreigners and their foreign ideas, particularly foreigners pushing something like Muhammad’s cult. Read more »