Is It Still Possible to Question Islam?
By Robert Spencer
Is it “Islamophobic” to question whether or not the standard picture of Muhammad as depicted in Muslim texts is historically accurate?
Certainly many people think so, notably the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC is a fifty-six nation body (plus the Palestinian Authority) that, since the demise of the Soviet Union, comprises the largest voting bloc at the United Nations. It has been working for years to compel the UN to criminalize “Islamophobia.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a closed-door meeting with the OIC in December 2011, apparently to facilitate just that and figure out ways to circumvent the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of speech.
Journalist Claire Berlinski notes [1] that “the neologism ‘Islamophobia’ did not simply emerge ex nihilo”:
In broad outline, the accepted story of Islam’s origins is well known. It begins with an Arabian merchant of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca, known to the world as Muhammad, a name that means the “praised one.” He rejected the polytheism of his tribe and was given to frequent prayer in the hills and caves outside Mecca. In the year 610, when he was forty, he was praying in a cave on Mount Hira, about two miles from Mecca, when he was suddenly confronted by the angel Gabriel, who commanded him to recite.
For the next twenty-three years, until his death in 632, Muhammad did just that: He recited the messages he received from Gabriel, presenting them to his followers as the pure and unadulterated word of the supreme and only God. Many of his followers memorized portions. The Arabia in which Islam was born was an oral culture that respected poetic achievement, and thus the prodigious feats of memory required to memorize lengthy suras were not so unusual. After Muhammad’s death, the revelations he had received were collected together into the Qur’an, or “Recitation,” from the accounts of those who had memorized them or written them down.
Muslims around the globe are not the only ones who take this account for granted; even non-Muslims generally accept the broad contours of this narrative, which has been told and retold for centuries. However, virtually none of that standard account stands up to historical scrutiny, for several key reasons:
Unmistakably historical, however, are the Arab conquests and the empire they produced. Every empire of the day was anchored in a political theology. The Eastern Roman Empire was Christian; the Persian Empire was Zoroastrian. The realm of political theology offers the most plausible explanation for the creation of Islam, Muhammad, and the Qur’an. The Arab Empire controlled and needed to unify huge expanses of territory where different religions predominated. Islam began as an umbrella monotheistic movement that presented itself as encompassing the true forms of the two great previous monotheistic movements, Judaism and Christianity.
Historical records make clear that toward the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth, the Umayyad leaders of the Arab domains began to speak much more specifically than anyone had before about Islam, its prophet, and eventually its book. Muhammad, if he did not exist, or if his actual deeds were not known, would certainly have been politically useful to the new Arab Empire as a legendary hero. The empire was growing quickly, soon rivaling the Byzantine and Persian Empires in size and power. It needed a common religion—a political theology that would provide the foundation for the empire’s unity and would secure allegiance to the state.
In any case, the late appearance of the biographical material about Muhammad, the fact that no one had heard of or spoken of Muhammad for decades after the Arab conquests began, the changes in the religion of the Arab Empire, the inconsistencies in the Qur’an—all of this needed to be explained. But is attempting to do so “Islamophobic?” Or can disinterested historical investigation still be carried out in the free West?
It is most interesting that the book Did Muhammad Exist? has been greeted with silence or opprobrium. Yet now, more than ever before, historical investigators have the opportunity—in fact, the responsibility—to usher Islam’s origins out of the shadows and into the light, and the responsibility not to be cowed by Islamic supremacist intimidation in doing so. Were they not to discharge that responsibility fully or properly, we will all be the poorer.
Should critically discussing Islam be a form of hate speech?
By Benjamin Bull
Several days ago, I noted with interest that Danish journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard has been acquitted by a unanimous Dutch Supreme Court of charges that he violated Holland's notorious "hate speech" laws. His crime? He made a public utterance that state prosecutors concluded was "denigrating" of Islam.
Hedegaard dared say that Islam should be criticized for referencing a Norwegian book concerning the high frequency of sexual abuse in Muslim families, stating, "We hear about that all the time." The prosecutor never alleged that anything Hedegaard stated was untrue. Truth under the Dutch hate speech law is largely irrelevant.
The acquittal follows on the heels of the more widely publicized dismissal of charges against flamboyant Dutch politician Geert Wilders for violating the very same law. Wilders' crime was the production of the film Fitna, which had the audacity to draw a connection between certain passages of the Koran and Islamist jihad. Like the Hedegaard prosecution, Wilders' prosecutor never alleged that anything in the film was untrue.
While the ultimate acquittals were encouraging, the fact that these men were forced to spend years in court fighting such frivolous charges is more than a travesty. And this doesn't begin to take into account the small fortune such legal disputes cost both the state and the defendants.
The irresponsible willingness of governments to promulgate and encourage the prosecution of truthful but critical comments on Islam needs to be closely scrutinized.
In the U.S., voices have been heard calling for Muslim communities to circumvent the federal Constitution and govern themselves using the socio-political component of Islam called sharia. Sharia itself may fairly be characterized as hatching the monster of all "hate speech" laws. It calls for capital punishment of anyone who utters criticism of Muhammad or the religion he founded. The U.K. already is allowing several Islamic communities to govern themselves according to sharia.
For the last several years, Pakistan and its friends have attempted to push a U.N. resolution through the Human Rights Council calling for an international ban on any criticism of Muhammad or Islam. Such criticism, truthful or otherwise, would fall within the gambit of a new kind of "hate speech" regulation called "Islamophobia." What is perhaps most frightening is that this effort is taken quite seriously and backed by almost a dozen U.N. member-nations.
In another startlingly shocking application of such laws, Daniel Scot and Danny Nalliah, both pastors in Melbourne, Australia, were sued for their alleged "hate speech" violations. In March 2002, they held a religious seminar that factually critiqued Islam. Three Muslims attending the seminar reported what they heard to the local Islamic Council. Soon afterward, it brought suit against Scot and Nalliah under the state's then-new "hate speech" law. The court ruled that the pastors, in criticizing Islam, had violated the law, ordered them to apologize publicly, and banned them from making similar comments anywhere in Australia. Most notably, as in the cases mentioned earlier, it was never alleged that anything the pastors said was false.
Several years ago, a complaint was filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission related to an article titled "The Future Belongs to Islam," written by commentator Mark Steyn and published inMaclean's magazine. In a straightforward and factual way, the article outlines the growing influence of Islam in Europe and the West. In a typical knee-jerk reaction, an Islamic group filed a complaint alleging that Steyn's work was "hate speech." While the commission properly declined to pursue an action against Steyn, it issued a purely gratuitous public statement that condemned the article and characterized it as "hate speech." Once again, there was never an allegation that anything contained in the article was factually incorrect. Sensing a pattern here?
And, of course, we are familiar with well-publicized Islamic groups in America, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which routinely classify true statements about Islam, sharia law, and jihad as "hateful."
Several years ago, CAIR began a campaign against National Review magazine because of a biography of Muhammad the magazine was then advertising. CAIR did not assert that anything in the book orNational Review's advertisement was in any way inaccurate. Accuracy and truth were seemingly irrelevant. What was important to CAIR was that Muhammad was being subjected to unflattering criticism and critical analysis.
Prominent Canadian lawyer Roger D. McConchie, speaking out against British Columbia's hate speech laws, sums up the problem. When it comes to hate speech laws:
Certainly many people think so, notably the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC is a fifty-six nation body (plus the Palestinian Authority) that, since the demise of the Soviet Union, comprises the largest voting bloc at the United Nations. It has been working for years to compel the UN to criminalize “Islamophobia.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a closed-door meeting with the OIC in December 2011, apparently to facilitate just that and figure out ways to circumvent the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of speech.
Journalist Claire Berlinski notes [1] that “the neologism ‘Islamophobia’ did not simply emerge ex nihilo”:
It was invented, deliberately, by a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which is based in Northern Virginia. … Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, a former member of the IIIT who has renounced the group in disgust, was an eyewitness to the creation of the word. “This loathsome term,” he writes, “is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.”Yet the mainstream media has for the most part bought into this perspective, treating all investigation of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism as “Islamophobic,” however useful it might be to understand the motives and goals of those who have vowed to destroy the U.S. and Western civilization. Into this atmosphere comes my book Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins [2], which doesn’t touch directly on terror issues at all, but does demonstrate that Islam was political, supremacist, and violent before it was religious — a fact with considerable implications for today’s political scene.
In broad outline, the accepted story of Islam’s origins is well known. It begins with an Arabian merchant of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca, known to the world as Muhammad, a name that means the “praised one.” He rejected the polytheism of his tribe and was given to frequent prayer in the hills and caves outside Mecca. In the year 610, when he was forty, he was praying in a cave on Mount Hira, about two miles from Mecca, when he was suddenly confronted by the angel Gabriel, who commanded him to recite.
For the next twenty-three years, until his death in 632, Muhammad did just that: He recited the messages he received from Gabriel, presenting them to his followers as the pure and unadulterated word of the supreme and only God. Many of his followers memorized portions. The Arabia in which Islam was born was an oral culture that respected poetic achievement, and thus the prodigious feats of memory required to memorize lengthy suras were not so unusual. After Muhammad’s death, the revelations he had received were collected together into the Qur’an, or “Recitation,” from the accounts of those who had memorized them or written them down.
Muslims around the globe are not the only ones who take this account for granted; even non-Muslims generally accept the broad contours of this narrative, which has been told and retold for centuries. However, virtually none of that standard account stands up to historical scrutiny, for several key reasons:
- No record of Muhammad’s reported death in 632 appears until more than a century after that date.
- The early accounts written by the people the Arabs conquered never mention Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an. They call the conquerors “Ishmaelites,” “Saracens,”“Muha- jirun,” and “Hagarians,” but never “Muslims.”
- The Arab conquerors, in their coins and inscriptions, don’t mention Islam or the Qur’an for the first six decades of their conquests. Mentions of “Muhammad” are non-specific and on at least two occasions are accompanied by a cross. The word can be used not only as a proper name but also as an honorific.
- The Qur’an, even by the canonical Muslim account, was not distributed in its present form until the 650s. Contradicting that standard account is the fact that neither the Arabians nor the Christians and Jews in the region mention the Qur’an until the early eighth century.
- During the reign of the caliph Muawiya (661–680), the Arabs constructed at least one public building whose inscription was headed by a cross – a symbol abhorrent to Islam.
Unmistakably historical, however, are the Arab conquests and the empire they produced. Every empire of the day was anchored in a political theology. The Eastern Roman Empire was Christian; the Persian Empire was Zoroastrian. The realm of political theology offers the most plausible explanation for the creation of Islam, Muhammad, and the Qur’an. The Arab Empire controlled and needed to unify huge expanses of territory where different religions predominated. Islam began as an umbrella monotheistic movement that presented itself as encompassing the true forms of the two great previous monotheistic movements, Judaism and Christianity.
Historical records make clear that toward the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth, the Umayyad leaders of the Arab domains began to speak much more specifically than anyone had before about Islam, its prophet, and eventually its book. Muhammad, if he did not exist, or if his actual deeds were not known, would certainly have been politically useful to the new Arab Empire as a legendary hero. The empire was growing quickly, soon rivaling the Byzantine and Persian Empires in size and power. It needed a common religion—a political theology that would provide the foundation for the empire’s unity and would secure allegiance to the state.
In any case, the late appearance of the biographical material about Muhammad, the fact that no one had heard of or spoken of Muhammad for decades after the Arab conquests began, the changes in the religion of the Arab Empire, the inconsistencies in the Qur’an—all of this needed to be explained. But is attempting to do so “Islamophobic?” Or can disinterested historical investigation still be carried out in the free West?
It is most interesting that the book Did Muhammad Exist? has been greeted with silence or opprobrium. Yet now, more than ever before, historical investigators have the opportunity—in fact, the responsibility—to usher Islam’s origins out of the shadows and into the light, and the responsibility not to be cowed by Islamic supremacist intimidation in doing so. Were they not to discharge that responsibility fully or properly, we will all be the poorer.
Should critically discussing Islam be a form of hate speech?
By Benjamin Bull
Several days ago, I noted with interest that Danish journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard has been acquitted by a unanimous Dutch Supreme Court of charges that he violated Holland's notorious "hate speech" laws. His crime? He made a public utterance that state prosecutors concluded was "denigrating" of Islam.
Hedegaard dared say that Islam should be criticized for referencing a Norwegian book concerning the high frequency of sexual abuse in Muslim families, stating, "We hear about that all the time." The prosecutor never alleged that anything Hedegaard stated was untrue. Truth under the Dutch hate speech law is largely irrelevant.
The acquittal follows on the heels of the more widely publicized dismissal of charges against flamboyant Dutch politician Geert Wilders for violating the very same law. Wilders' crime was the production of the film Fitna, which had the audacity to draw a connection between certain passages of the Koran and Islamist jihad. Like the Hedegaard prosecution, Wilders' prosecutor never alleged that anything in the film was untrue.
While the ultimate acquittals were encouraging, the fact that these men were forced to spend years in court fighting such frivolous charges is more than a travesty. And this doesn't begin to take into account the small fortune such legal disputes cost both the state and the defendants.
The irresponsible willingness of governments to promulgate and encourage the prosecution of truthful but critical comments on Islam needs to be closely scrutinized.
In the U.S., voices have been heard calling for Muslim communities to circumvent the federal Constitution and govern themselves using the socio-political component of Islam called sharia. Sharia itself may fairly be characterized as hatching the monster of all "hate speech" laws. It calls for capital punishment of anyone who utters criticism of Muhammad or the religion he founded. The U.K. already is allowing several Islamic communities to govern themselves according to sharia.
For the last several years, Pakistan and its friends have attempted to push a U.N. resolution through the Human Rights Council calling for an international ban on any criticism of Muhammad or Islam. Such criticism, truthful or otherwise, would fall within the gambit of a new kind of "hate speech" regulation called "Islamophobia." What is perhaps most frightening is that this effort is taken quite seriously and backed by almost a dozen U.N. member-nations.
In another startlingly shocking application of such laws, Daniel Scot and Danny Nalliah, both pastors in Melbourne, Australia, were sued for their alleged "hate speech" violations. In March 2002, they held a religious seminar that factually critiqued Islam. Three Muslims attending the seminar reported what they heard to the local Islamic Council. Soon afterward, it brought suit against Scot and Nalliah under the state's then-new "hate speech" law. The court ruled that the pastors, in criticizing Islam, had violated the law, ordered them to apologize publicly, and banned them from making similar comments anywhere in Australia. Most notably, as in the cases mentioned earlier, it was never alleged that anything the pastors said was false.
Several years ago, a complaint was filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission related to an article titled "The Future Belongs to Islam," written by commentator Mark Steyn and published inMaclean's magazine. In a straightforward and factual way, the article outlines the growing influence of Islam in Europe and the West. In a typical knee-jerk reaction, an Islamic group filed a complaint alleging that Steyn's work was "hate speech." While the commission properly declined to pursue an action against Steyn, it issued a purely gratuitous public statement that condemned the article and characterized it as "hate speech." Once again, there was never an allegation that anything contained in the article was factually incorrect. Sensing a pattern here?
And, of course, we are familiar with well-publicized Islamic groups in America, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which routinely classify true statements about Islam, sharia law, and jihad as "hateful."
Several years ago, CAIR began a campaign against National Review magazine because of a biography of Muhammad the magazine was then advertising. CAIR did not assert that anything in the book orNational Review's advertisement was in any way inaccurate. Accuracy and truth were seemingly irrelevant. What was important to CAIR was that Muhammad was being subjected to unflattering criticism and critical analysis.
Prominent Canadian lawyer Roger D. McConchie, speaking out against British Columbia's hate speech laws, sums up the problem. When it comes to hate speech laws:
[I]nnocent intent is not a defense. Nor is truth. Nor is fair comment on true facts. Publication in the public interest and for the public benefit is not a defense. Opinion expressed in good faith is not a defense. Responsible journalism is not a defense.As far as I can observe, he is entirely correct.
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