Robert Spencer, pseudo-scholar, once again gets Arabic 101 lessons from LoonWatch
A few days ago, I published an article entitled Why You Shouldn’t Trust Robert Spencer’s Biography of the Prophet Muhammad (I).
I took issue with Robert Spencer’s opening sentences of his biography of Muhammad (p.5 of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam), in which he wrote:
Muhammad already had experience as a warrior before he assumed the role of the prophet. He had participated in two local wars between his Quraysh tribe and their neighboring rivals Banu Hawazin.
I wrote a response as follows:
What Spencer leaves out from this talking point–“Muhammad already had experience as warrior before he assumed the role of prophet”!–is quite telling.
He is referring to what is known in Islamic history as Harb al-Fijar (the Sacrilegious War), a series of conflicts that took place when Muhammad was a teenager. The spark that ignited the war was the unsettled murder of a member of one tribe, which lead to a blood feud. Due to “entangling alliances,” many different tribes in the area found themselves at war with each other.
Like most of Muhammad’s life, the details of this event are contested. This dispute is not simply one between modern-day Muslim apologists and Islamophobes, but rather one that traces its way back to the earliest biographers of the Prophet.
In specific, Muhammad’s level of participation in these wars is disputed. On the one hand, some Shia biographers reject the idea that Muhammad partook in them at all. Meanwhile, Sunni biographers write that Muhammad simply accompanied his uncle but did not directly fight in these wars. He only took on a very limited support role: picking up enemy arrows from the battlefield. At the most, he fired off a few arrows, but did not kill anyone.
Not only was Muhammad’s role severely limited, but even this he would later express regret over. Muhammad later recounted: “I had witnessed that war with my uncle and shot a few arrows therein. How I wish I had never done so!” [1] Spencer conveniently omits this very important fact, one that mitigates Muhammad’s participation in the war, especially in regards to his views about war and peace.
Spencer replied:
In 2006 I wrote the book on the right, The Truth About Muhammad, a biography of the prophet of Islam based on the earliest Muslim accounts of his life, in order to illustrate what Muslims generally believe that Muhammad said and did. In my forthcoming book, Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins, which will be published April 23 by ISI, I examine the historical value of those early Muslim accounts. It is an attempt to determine whether what Muslims believe Muhammad said and did, as recounted in The Truth About Muhammad, actually corresponds to historical reality.
There are numerous reasons to question the historicity of the early Muslim accounts of Muhammad’s life. Take, for example, an incident I refer to briefly in yet another book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades):
Muhammad already had experience as a warrior before he assumed the role of prophet. He had participated in two local wars between his Quraysh tribe and their neighboring rivals Banu Hawazin.
That he participated in these wars, known collectively as the Fijar War, or Sacrilegious War, is generally agreed upon, but there is no agreement about what he thought later about his role in them. The Egyptian writer Muhammad Hussein Haykal, in his 1933 biography, Hayat Muhammad (translated into English as The Life of Muhammad), quotes Muhammad expressing regret for his participation in this war:
“I had witnessed that war with my uncle and shot a few arrows therein. How I wish I had never done so!” (Pp. 52-3)
However, the ninth-century Muslim historian Ibn Sa’d, in one of the earliest and most important sources for biographical information on Muhammad, Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir, directly contradicts Haykal by quoting Muhammad saying this about the Fijar War:
I attended it with my uncles and shot arrows there and I do not repent it. (I.143)So which is it?
Is Haykal right that he really did express regret, or is Ibn Sa’d right that he explicitly ruled out doing so? Haykal doesn’t give his source, but it is possible that he had access to a hadith or some Islamic tradition that flatly contradicted the one Ibn Sa’d recorded eleven centuries earlier — although this is unlikely, since Ibn Sa’d often records variant and contradictory reports and discusses how they can be harmonized, or why one should be accepted and the other rejected. In this case Ibn Sa’d gives no hint of any variants. Haykal may simply have altered this tradition for apologetic purposes. Those who cite him as their source on this, or try to build an argument upon his quotation, do so at their own risk.
Nonetheless, such contradictions abound in the hadith reports. Muhammad can quite often be found saying contradictory things, as I show in Did Muhammad Exist?. In that book also I discuss how this odd situation came about: opposing factions both invoked Muhammad as an authority, and invented traditions to support their point of view.
Spencer is hawking his new book, which he is pushing as a “scholarly work” about how Muhammad didn’t exist. His home page boasts that Robert Spencer is “[t]he acclaimed scholar of Islam”, “[a] serious scholar”, and “a brilliant scholar.”
I have pointed out in the past that Spencer is not a scholar of any sort–especially not on anything related to Islam. He simply does not have the academic qualifications to claim this. What other “scholar” do you know of that doesn’t even have a master’s or PhD degree on the subject he claims to be a “scholar” of? He only has a one-year master’s degree in “the field of early Christianity”. How does that make him an “acclaimed scholar of Islam”?
Another major problem with Spencer’s claim to scholarship is that he simply does not speak or understand Arabic. This much has been apparent in the past, and it becomes painstakingly obvious in his latest response to me (as I shall show below). I don’t think Spencer needs to know Arabic to criticize Islam (as some Muslim apologists insist), but I do think he needs to know it in order to be considered a “scholar of Islam” (a title he claims)–let alone “[t]he acclaimed scholar of Islam.”
Combine (1) not having any academic qualifications whatsoever with (2) not knowing Arabic and you have a situation like this: imagine some random blogger claiming to be “a world renowned physician” without ever having (1) gone to medical school and (2) without ever having studied or learned anatomy. Such a blogger might be able to bring up good points about the field of medicine, but nobody in their right mind would consider him a “world renowned physician”–and if he claimed any such thing, his credibility would be shattered.
The need to understand Arabic in order to be a “scholar of Islam” cannot become more apparent than it is now with Spencer’s latest reply. And here’s why: Spencer argues (see quote above) that the hadith (saying of the Prophet Muhammad) found in Haykal’s Hayat Muhammad contradicts the one in Ibn Sa’d's Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir. He argues that Haykal may have reproduced another hadith that contradicts the one found in Ibn Sa’d's book, or even that Haykal may have engaged in academic deceit (i.e. “altered this tradition for apologetic purposes”). That’s a serious and bold claim to make against Haykal.
Yet, had Spencer simply been able to read Arabic, he would have realized that the hadith in Haykal’s Hayat Muhammad and Ibn Sa’d's Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir are the exact same! They are word-for-word identical. In other words, Haykal took the hadith from Ibn Sa’d's book. That Spencer couldn’t see this speaks volumes about his “scholarship.” So, Spencer’s blathering on about Haykal finding another contradictory hadith or of manipulating the text is indicative of his sophomoric “scholarship.”
How could Haykal have reproduced another hadith or have manipulated the text when in fact the wording in both Haykal’s book and Ibn Sa’d's is the exact same? Here is what is found in Haykal’s book:
Source: Haykal, Muhammad Husayn, Hayat Muhammad [The Life of Muhammad], 14th ed. (Cairo: Dar al-Ma’arif, n.d.): 134
And here’s the exact same found in Ibn Sa’d's book, which Spencer quoted to “trump” Haykal’s hadith (stupidly not realizing they are the exact same!):
Source: Ibn Sa’d, Tabaqat al-Kabir, edited by Ali Muhammad Umar (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khaniji, 2001) 1:106
To Robert Spencer, who doesn’t read or understand Arabic, that looks like a whole lot of jibberish. One can imagine Spencer saying: “That’s Greek Arabic to me!” But, if we help Spencer out by underlining as we did above, even he should be able to verify that they are the exact same–word-for-word.
So, if the two quotes are the exact same, why does Spencer’s quote seem to say the exact opposite as what I quoted? Why did I translate it as such:
I had witnessed that war with my uncle and shot a few arrows therein. How I wish I had never done so!
Whereas Spencer used the following:
I attended it with my uncles and shot arrows there and I do not repent it.
Why the difference?
Being the “acclaimed scholar of Islam” that he is, Spencer relied on Google search to find this English translation of Ibn Sa’d's book and/or was forced to rely on an English translation of the book (due to his inability to read the source text). In doing so, Spencer didn’t realize that the sentence he reproduced was a faulty translation.
In Arabic, the underlined part is:
وما أحب أني لم أكن فعلت
In transliteration (for Spencer’s sake), it would be:
wa ma uhibb anni lam akun fa’alt
It translates to:
and what I wish is that I had not done it!
Breaking it down, we have:
وما (wa ma) – and what
أحب (uhibb) – I love/wish (See Hans Wehr for the meaning of this verb)
أني (anni) – is that I
لم أكن (lam akun) – had not
فعلت (fa’alt) – done [it]
The translator Spencer used made a mistake with the word ما (ma), which is a participle in Arabic that is modified by the words surrounding it. Hans Wehr lists nine different uses of the word ما (ma), one of which is indeed negation. However, from a linguistic standpoint, the “negative ma” cannot be used in this particular sentence. Indeed, it would render the sentence into a nonsensical “double negative”:
And I do not love that I had not done it.
Huh? If you translated it like so, that would actually mean that Muhammad did not participate in the war. So, even still, this would actually be proof against Spencer’s claim that Muhammad took part in it.
The translator Spencer relied upon saw two negatives and just tried to “simplify” the text to read: “and I do not repent it.” This, even though the word “repent” does not appear anywhere in the text. It is completely imagined. It should be noted that the translator’s native language was neither Arabic nor English. He didn’t know what to do with the nonsensical double-negative–a sentence that would actually mean that Muhammad did not love the fact that he did not participate in the war.
In reality, the word ما (ma) was being used as a “relative ma“:
Source: Ryding, Karin C., A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 326
The translator can be forgiven for making a mistake, but Robert Spencer, being “[t]he acclaimed scholar of Islam” should have known better. The only correct translation of this text would support the translation I used, namely that Muhammad regretted his participation in the war, which was the point of my article. It was this fact that Spencer failed to include in his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Instead, he tried to give the exact opposite (and false) impression, i.e. that Muhammad was already a “warrior” before he became a prophet.
Watch how this hadith from Ibn Sa’d's book–which Spencer is currently using as his strongest proof–will be quickly tossed away by Spencer now that it doesn’t support his argument any more. This is, after all, his methodology for “finding the historical Muhammad”: any hadiths that paint Muhammad in a positive light are jettisoned, whereas those that do the opposite are trumpeted and used as a club to hit Muslims over the head with. With such a biased “methodology”, do you really want to trust Robert Spencer as a source for Muhammad’s biography or for anything related to Islam?
* * * * *
The bottom line is that Spencer relied on an incorrect translation to write a response to my article. This has two implications:
1) Our entire discussion underscores how important it is for a “scholar of Islam” to read, understand and have mastery of the Arabic language. This is what is expected of a scholar at any credible university, and this is what must be expected of Robert Spencer if he wishes to don the mantle of a scholar of Islam. It is exactly because of situations like these where knowing how to read Arabic can make or break the argument.
2) Specifically with the Prophet Muhammad, Spencer’s biography is misleading because it portrays Muhammad as “already [having] had experience as a warrior”, which is meant to purposefully mislead the reader. It is intended to paint a portrait of Muhammad as a fierce warrior–hence, Spencer’s choice of title, “Muhammad: Prophet of War”.
What Spencer leaves out is the fact that, at most, Muhammad’s involvement in the war was menial–mostly just in a support capacity. This is a far cry from the “fierce warrior” image that Spencer is trying to portray.
Muhammad not only expressed regret for participation in the war, but more importantly, after hostilities ceased he supported the League of the Virtuous (Hilf al-Fudul), which was similar to the League of Nations formed after World War I. The goal of the League of the Virtuous was to bring an end to bloodshed, violence, and war. Muhammad’s participation in this–and his ringing endorsement of the League even in his later years of life–tells us a lot about how he viewed the war (and warfare in general). Under the entry of Hilf al-Fudul, Thomas Patrick Hughes’ A Dictionary of Islam says:
A confederacy formed…for the suppression of violence and injustice at the restoration of peace after the Sacrilegious war. Muhammad was then a youth, and Sir William Muir says this confederacy ”aroused an enthusiasm in the mind of Mahomet [Muhammad], which the exploits of the Sacrilegious war failed to kindle.”
The war Muhammad was not too keen of. But, the body designed to bring peace on earth was something he was deeply inspired by.
These are facts that Spencer wouldn’t have the reader know. Yet, whereas there was disagreement among biographers about Muhammad’s participation in the war, there was–as far as I know–no difference of opinion about his participation in and support for the League of the Virtuous. Why is it that Spencer’s biography focuses on contested facts but stays clear from a more accepted occurrence? It is only because one event helps build his case against Muhammad, and the other does the opposite. So, he includes what helps and ignores what doesn’t. Should you really trust Spencer’s biography then?
* * * * *
Spencer also writes in the same article:
Nonetheless, such contradictions abound in the hadith reports. Muhammad can quite often be found saying contradictory things, as I show in Did Muhammad Exist?. In that book also I discuss how this odd situation came about: opposing factions both invoked Muhammad as an authority, and invented traditions to support their point of view.
Robert Spencer has recently argued that Muhammad didn’t in fact exist. The desire to negate Muhammad’s existence altogether is born out of his strongly pro-Catholic, anti-Muslim views.
Yet, Spencer should know that historians have doubted the historicity of Moses and Jesus as well. Almost all of the arguments used against the historicity of Muhammad can be applied to Moses and Jesus. Some scholars have doubted Moses and Jesus’ existences altogether, just as Spencer doubts the existence of Muhammad. Once again, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, but try arguing this point and Spencer will cry “tu quoque, tu quoque!” How dare you apply the same standards to Spencer’s religion and beliefs that he does on a routine basis to others!
However, most scholars don’t believe Muhammad didn’t exist, just as most don’t deny the existence of Jesus. But, the details of Muhammad’s life are far more controversial and up for debate, just as is the case with Jesus. Finding the historical Muhammad is, like finding the historical Moses or Jesus, an important endeavor.
Yes, contradictory hadiths abound, but that’s no different than is the case in Christianity: Bible scholars argue that the Gospels, for example, are highly contradictory to each other, especially with regard to Jesus. I can hear it now already: tu quoque, tu quoque!
The fact that contradictory reports exist just means that scholars need to exert energy to determine what’s more reliable and what’s not–and there will always be a level of guesswork and doubt about it. But the correct way to find the historical Muhammad is not the way Spencer does it: agree with whatever casts Muhammad in a bad light, and dump everything that doesn’t.
Finding the historical Muhammad is an important endeavor that modern scholarship will need to undertake, and you won’t find me disagreeing with that. Yes, it might call into question stories that many Muslims take for granted, but it will also cast doubt on events that Islamophobes like Robert Spencer rely on to bash Muslims over the head with.
Danios was the Brass Crescent Award Honorary Mention for Best Writer in 2010 and the Brass Crescent Award Winner for Best Writer in 2011. For the writing of this article, Dawood (guest contributor) was consulted.
January 29th, 2012 at 7:11 am
Can someone answer the question who TRUSTS this guy
January 29th, 2012 at 7:24 am
Suckers. Spencer’s scholarship is high respected and above suspicion. And that is precisely what’s bothering you. Heh heh.
January 29th, 2012 at 7:25 am
@Danios: Would you consider closing all the other “Spencer flees” threads with a link to this thread, please?
January 29th, 2012 at 7:35 am
That was brilliant – this is an epic fail. I bet Spencer wishes that the parents of Danios had never decided to get intimate 9 months before Danios was born!!!
The theory that Muhammad (pbuh) did not exist has been around before. But as Danios points out, there are those who say Jesus did not exist either. But Spencer, will, as usual use two different criteria.
What is funny is, there are plenty of Muslims who doubt the Hadiths and Seerah – that is why you get Quran-only Muslims. And then there are those Muslims who follow the Hadiths but accept they might not be correct.
Ultimately, this will end up being an own-goal for the Islamophobes. Because if they’re saying that things about Muhammad (pbuh) were made up later, then they can no longer say he (pbuh) is a paedophile*, and they can no longer claim he (pbuh) killed a Jewish tribe!
* The below link shows that Hadith’s are not 100% reliable – as Muslims believe that Allah SWT did not protect them, but only the Quran. So even orthodox Muslims already acknowledge that information about Muhammad’s (pbuh) life is not 100% certain.
http://www.unitedshades.org.uk/at-what-age-did-aisha-marry-the-prophet.aspx
January 29th, 2012 at 7:58 am
A joy to read as always
January 29th, 2012 at 7:58 am
“Spencer is hawking his new book, which he is pushing as a “scholarly work” about how Muhammad didn’t exist.”
Yusuf B Gursey , a non-muslim , wrote about muhammad vs spencers galilean god in flesh.
Let me reiterate just a few actually well-known points about Jesus and the New Testament. The books of the New Testament were composed at different times and contain glaring discrepancies both in their narrative content and in their theological content. …
In the narrative parts of the four canonic Gospels, Jesus is depicted
almost exclusively as a doer of miracles and consequently they cannot be regarded as historical or biographical documents in any meaningful sense of these words, while the teachings that these Gospels put into the mouth of Jesus are, at least in part, theologically dependant on Pauline doctrine. They cannot therefore be seen as records of the actual teachings of Jesus, but reflect certain defined positions in the history of Christian doctrine.
…
Now let us take a look at Muhammad and the Quran. In contrast to the New Testament, the Qur’an is, on the whole, a book of consistent style and consistent theological content. Although the surviving Muslim sects (the Shi’ites, Kharijites, and those who eventually came to be known as Sunnites) separated from each other within a decade of the death of Muhammad, they all agree on the content of the Quranic canon. By contrast, the surviving Christian sects, all of which split off from Roman imperial Christianity at a very late date, not earlier than the fourth century, have different versions of the
biblical canon;
Muhammad would appear, at least in theory, to be a far more apposite
subject for historical inquiry than the founder of Christianity. The most
abiding and forbidding obstacle to approaching the historical Jesus is
undoubtedly the fact that our principal sources, the documents included in the New Testament, were all written on the hither side of Easter; that is, their authors viewed their subject across the absolute conviction that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God, a conviction later rendered explicit in Christian dogma. There is, however, no Resurrection in the career of Muhammad, no Paschal sunrise to cast its divinizing light on the Prophet of Islam. Muhammad is thus a perfectly appropriate subject of history: a man born of woman (and a man), who lived in a known place in a roughly calculable time, who in the end died the death that is the lot of all mortals, and whose career was reported by authorities who share the contemporary historian’s own conviction that the Prophet was nothing more than a man.
Christianity is hard to define, as there are many sects and
interpretations.I would say the Qur’an has more to say on the betterment of the Earthly position of Mankind in this world, while Christianity, as defined by the NT, leaves it up to the Hereafter.
In contrast to the miracle stories that make up virtually the whole of the narrative strand of the Christian gospels, the sirah, the traditional
biography of Muhammad, is realistic in the sense that it contains
virtually no public miracles, that is, miracles supposedly witnessed by
large groups of people. The sirah does, of course, record the private
miracle of Muhammad receiving the Quran from an angel. But from a
positivist, sceptical point of view it is possible to accept that highly
imaginative people in pre-modern times sincerely believed that they
received their knowledge through divine inspiration.
…
My conclusion is thus that Jesus is a biographically intangible figure
located in a very well documented historical milieu, whereas Muhammad is a biographically at least plausible figure located in a historical vacuum.
the title of the article is “New documentary texts and the early Islamic
state” and the idea is that wecould gleen a lot more from the graffito and texts in Arabic that have come to light in recent decades. also there is de Blois’ point that there are radical differences betrween the body of knowledge about early Islam and the body of knowledge about early Christianity. in the case of Islam, one is confronted with a very believable (from the secular point of view) narartivve in a place where historical historical knowledge is scarce, but in the case of
Christianity, one is confronted with a very incredilous story in a place
where historical knowledge is abundant. so different methods of critcism must be used.
I have already suggested elsewhere that the virtual absence of real
textual variants in the Qur’an is the result of a biographically
intangible figure located in a very well documented historical milieu,
whereas Muhammad is a biographically at least plausible figure located in
a historical vacuum.
New documentary texts and the early Islamic state
ROBERT HOYLAND
Bulletin of SOAS, 69, 3 (2006), 395416.
Some scholars would argue that the religion of Islam was indeed very
different in its formative years. Of course most, including many Muslim
thinkers past and present, would accept that the early Muslim conception of their Prophet and their faith evolved over time, and that they therefore held a different conception from that of later Muslims, but a number of revisionist scholars would go much further and posit a
discontinuity between nascent Islam and classical Islam. For example, they have postulated that Mecca was not Muhammads birthplace or the Hijaz Islams home, that the Quran was not compiled in the seventh century or written in Arabic, and even that Muhammad and the Arab conquests were a later invention. Most of the impetus for such radical theories stems from the sense that a major world religion could not have been born in such a remote corner of the Middle East and from a desire to root Islams origins and early development more fully within the world of late antiquity, and so to argue against the traditional Muslim perspective that Islams birth was ontogenetic, untainted by alien wisdom and foreign creeds. While one sympathizes with these aims, one might be wary of such a wholesale rewriting of the later Muslim historical accounts about this period. But if we are not to trust these accounts, as revisionists urge, then we have to fall back on non-Muslim sources and documentary evidence, which are particularly unforthcoming regarding religious matters. They do at least record a new era (starting in 622 CE) and new name for the Arabs (Arabic muhajirun/ Syriac mhaggraye /Greek magaritai or moagaritai), an emphasis on the One God, a sacred place in Arabia, a head of state entitled ‘commander of the believers, and a ‘guide’ and ‘instructor’ called Muhammad, which allows us to infer that the newcomers did possess a distinctive cult.Furthermore, there have been new discoveries and many known texts could fruitfully be milked much harder for insights …
January 29th, 2012 at 8:02 am
“I have pointed out in the past that Spencer is not a scholar of any sort–especially not on anything related to Islam. He simply does not have the academic qualifications to claim this. What other “scholar” do you know of that doesn’t even have a master’s or PhD degree on the subject he claims to be a “scholar” of? He only has a one-year master’s degree in “the field of early Christianity”. How does that make him an “acclaimed scholar of Islam”?”
the guy is a f-king prick. i wonder what DEBLOIS and HOYLAND make of this prick?
January 29th, 2012 at 8:03 am
“Another major problem with Spencer’s claim to scholarship is that he simply does not speak or understand Arabic.”
HOYLAND and DEBLOIS BOTH SPEAK and UNDERSTAND arabic.
January 29th, 2012 at 8:17 am
The claims in the “scholar of Islam”‘s book are being refuted, even before the book comes out. This is why he is running from a debate.
January 29th, 2012 at 8:53 am
Job well done Danios. You smoked Spencer with the facts yet again. Spencer you and I both know if you have a one on one debate with Danios that your career is over!!
January 29th, 2012 at 9:15 am
“Another major problem with Spencer’s claim to scholarship is that he simply does not speak or understand Arabic.”
Not only Arabic, but one also needs to know German, French, Persian and other Middle Eastern languages before enrolling in Islamic studies PhD programme, at least that is what’s required in places like University of Chicago, Yale and elsewhere.
January 29th, 2012 at 9:18 am
Excellent article Danios. Bravo!! Spencer must be crying about now, his world is crumbling faster than you can say “Islamophobe”. The gaping holes in his work and his credentials are becoming exposed.
January 29th, 2012 at 9:47 am
I think “ma” is a word of emphasis here, not “what” but “how” – “Indeed, I attended it with my uncles and slung arrows; and how I wish that I hadn’t done what I had done!”
Similar use is seen in Abu-Ala al-maa’aari’s famous poem…وما اعجب الا … “And how I wonder…”
I don’t see anything about “a few” arrows like the first, more accurate translation indicates and suspect it was added by the translator in an effort to minimize the extent of his involvement in the war – asham (arrows) is simply the plural of sham (an arrow).
So a good neutral conclusion just based on the Arabic here is that Muhammed participated in the war as an archer, and later regretted having done so.
Great article, well done.
January 29th, 2012 at 10:15 am
Danios,
BRILLIANT AND OUTSTANDING,INDEED!!!
YOU ARE A SCHOLAR WITH DISTINCTION.
I HAVE MUCH APPRECIATED READING. THANK YOU.
Another violation of my own decision,because mainly of what you and Garibaldi write. Nothing left for me to do except to get rid of my computer and forget about blogging and the Internet. I just may do that.
January 29th, 2012 at 10:16 am
I personally think Spencer has the wrong thesis in claiming that Muhammad did not exist. As I said in another thread there are at the very LEAST two non-Muslim sources for Muhammad’s existence. The first is Doctrina Jacobi and the second is by the Armenian Bishop Sebeos called “A History of Heraclius.”
Now, as I said before Muhammad may not have existed as the Hadiths and the biographies depict him as existing. I am currently reading a very controversial book by the Islamic scholars Patricia Crone (I believe she is now in Princeton) and Michael Cook called “Hagarism The Making of the Islamic World.”
The entire book has been converted to PDF and can be read for free here: http://www.georgebebawi.com/Bebawi/Hagarism.pdf
This book claims that Muhammad was actually a military leader set out to conquer Jerusalem and hence he and his fellow Hagarenes needed to build a religion to unify the Hagarenes and the Jews in order to conquer the holy land from the Byzantines. That religion was of course soon to become Islam.
The book is very controversial and has been criticized by numerous other Islamic scholars such as John Wansbrough. But nevertheless it is a fascinating read and regardless of what you think of Muhammad (either as prophet or mere man) it will get you all to think.
January 29th, 2012 at 10:18 am
I take issue with Robert Spencer being described as pro Catholic. The Pope has made great efforts towards reaching out to Muslims and Jews for the purposes of understanding, reconciliation and for bringing people together.
In my mind, Spencer’s words and actions are just as abhorantly ant-Catholic/Christian as they are anti-Muslim. The fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center has Robert Spencer on their hate watch website and includes him in their top 10 of anti-Muslim people whom they are tracking, confirms this for me. Hate has no place in any religion and hate towards any group of people is anti-human rights by definition.
Spencer’s constant demonization and disparaging of Muslims and their religion, Islam, is not Christian in any way, shape or form. He is a bigot, plain and simple!
January 29th, 2012 at 10:34 am
@Dave
“Spencer’s constant demonization and disparaging of Muslims and their religion, Islam, is not Christian in any way, shape or form. He is a bigot, plain and simple!”
We certainly agree on this point. Spencer may claim to be Catholic, but the official stance of the Catholic church is against everything he professes:
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
PART ONE
THE PROFESSION OF FAITH
SECTION TWO
THE PROFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
CHAPTER THREE
I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT
841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims.
“The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p3.htm
This comes straight from the Vactican Website:
http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm
January 29th, 2012 at 10:43 am
I know that one of the authors of the Hagarism theory later said he/she does not believe in it any longer.
The bottom line is, there will always be theories about as to exactly what happened 1000s of years ago. I mean, come on, we don’t even know what exactly happened 100 years ago, so how can we expect to know exactly what happened more than a thousand years ago.
But we all know Spencer’s reason for the book. He knows his other lies have been exposed, and so he now wants something else to attack Muslims. By saying we do not know for sure about the life of Muhammad (pbuh), he is trying to say that Muslims are following a religion made up by others. Of course, this is exactly what many people have said about Christians and what Muslims say about Christians.
January 29th, 2012 at 10:44 am
Well said, Dave.
Here at LoonWatch we always make it clear – we have nothing against anyone of any religion, and that Spencer is a disgrace to the good Christians out there.
January 29th, 2012 at 10:51 am
If Spencer is going to now say…the person he has made his fame and fortune condeming and making other people fear never existed…where exaclty does he do with his credibility as a scholar.
So…now…for example Muhammad was a pedophile, but he never existed?
He is undermining himself here. He is more like politician.
January 29th, 2012 at 11:03 am
@ Believing Athiest.
Lets understand that Patricia Crone uses sources OTHER than the Arabi to come to her conclusions about Islam.
Althugh she is studied in Islam, like people are saying here, you have to be able to navigate the Arabi to understand Islam, and claim scholarship.
The sources she uses is from the Armenian, Greek, and some middleastern languages to conclude that Muhammad was a warrior against the Byzintine and Persian empires, and needed to ‘start a religion’ to gather the various tribes under one ideology to help him.
I belive this was called Hagarism, and the plausablity of this notion is rejected by most scholars, Islamic and historical as well. This is not a new idea. It has been around for a long time, and Christians first used this notion to try and discredit the Prophet.
Beliving Athiest, I do enjoy your posts, and belive them to be thought provoking and fair…as most people who belive like you are.
January 29th, 2012 at 11:15 am
MAA AJmala hadhi sayaarah
MAA afqarahaa
MAA ashala hadhaa adras
i am studying arabic
my book says this is fi3lu ata3ajubi
verb of wonder
January 29th, 2012 at 11:27 am
Danios, you are making Spencer’s complete lack of authority crystal clear.
I wonder if Spencer is scrambling with his resident translator (“the translated”) to figure out how to address this.
This–among with countless other evidence–clearly shows that Spencer is not a scholar, carefully researching information and then coming to a position, but rather he is a polemicist, cherry picking data to support his polemic.
January 29th, 2012 at 12:03 pm
@ Kafir Harby
Suckers. Spencer’s scholarship is high respected and above suspicion. And that is precisely what’s bothering you. Heh heh.
The only ones who have a high-regard for Spencer’s self-proclaimed “scholarship”, are either those who haven’t bothered to cross-examine such claims and simply assume they are true, or they are those who have ulterior motives for supporting such claims.
Either way, the fact remains that in spite of how much Spencer’s supporters like to trumpet his claims, they never actually substantiate them. Like his height, Spencer can only ever come out on top when standing on something that artificially elevates him. His expertise is only in snake oil salesmanship and nothing more.
January 29th, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Kafir, Spencer just throws out bogus numbers and words also backed by bogus names with more bullshyt and you dummies believe whatever he says without any fact checking.
January 29th, 2012 at 12:43 pm
@MrT: Excellent, and good luck! I believe maa in the sentence from the article is being used like your first example: maa ajmala hadhi siyyara. How beautiful this car is! Though I have to admit it’s hard to tell with transliteration, because in your example siyarra should be definite. And I’ve never heard maa referred to as the verb of wonder. It’s not a verb, it can’t be conjugated. What book are you using?
January 29th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
“Spencer’s constant demonization and disparaging of Muslims and their religion, Islam, is not Christian in any way, shape or form. He is a bigot, plain and simple!”
agreed
January 29th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
Epic. I was suspicious of this from the start. And his fans still come in here claiming he’s a scholar! It’s truly unbelievable!
January 29th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
@Nadir and MrT: For the “ma” to be the “ma al-ta’ajjubiyya”, the following verb needs to be the past tense 3rd person singular (fi’l mad al-gha’ib), which, if you look at the vowels (harakat) in the Arabic originals, it is not. As MrT’s example above shows: ما أجْمَلَ هذه السيارة – ajmala, whereas the vowels in the case of the hadith indicate that it is uhibb, not ahabb (you can see a kasra in both Haykel and Ibn Sa’d in the Arabic). In this case, it has to be the type of “ma” indicated above (ma al-mawsula), unless the vowel is a misprint (which could happen).
And either way – ta’ajjubiyya (exclamatory) or not – both uses of ma indicate that it is a regret of a past action.
Great article Danios!
January 29th, 2012 at 1:25 pm
i am using dr v abdur rahims book. the good thing is i have book 3 and in book 3 the writer breaks each word in a sentence and explains its function. i didn’t add the important bits (i think) maa ajmala hadhisa yaarah. he says this called fi3lu ata3ajubi (i.e verb of wonder)
AND HAS THE FORM MAA AF3LAHU
IT WAS THE AJMALA WHICH FOLLOWS THE AF3LA PATTERN
I know maa isn’t a verb .
ajmalu — af3alu – ahsana-
these follow the af3alu pattern.
here is something i want to say. there are people who are looking for work and desperately need income. spencer the catholic can ROB people in the evening and day by selling misinformation. is there any way to stop this mofo ‘s book from taking off?
January 29th, 2012 at 1:30 pm
“because in your example siyarra should be definite”
it is definite. my spelling of the arabic was incorrect.
hadhihi asayaarah
January 29th, 2012 at 1:32 pm
“And either way – ta’ajjubiyya (exclamatory) or not – both uses of ma indicate that it is a regret of a past action.”
i know.
January 29th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
@Believing Atheist: It is definitely a fascinating read. If you have access to JSTOR or other journal collections, you should see some of the reviews for it in the field – some very interesting ones out there. I’d also recommend you look at Donner’s Muhammad and the Believers, which is another interesting yet controversial book on Islamic “origins”.
January 29th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
nobody have any plan to bury spencers book?
January 29th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
dawood , excellent explain.
January 29th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
@MrT Good luck with the book – the Medina course is a very interesting syllabus!
January 29th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Slam dunk article.
January 29th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
@Dawud: Thanks! Ma is one of those little words that catches me up a lot and can mean the difference between the right translation and the exact opposite. It seems often overlooked in instruction given its importance.
January 29th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
debate is crap. had the debate been 15 min for each SIDE , and spencer pulled from his back side
“However, the ninth-century Muslim historian Ibn Sa’d, in one of the earliest and most important sources for biographical information on Muhammad, Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir, directly contradicts Haykal by quoting Muhammad saying this about the Fijar War:”
how you gonna have the time to verify? lets say he repeats what he pulled from his backside within the 15 min on another incident, how you gonna have time to bury him?
debate is crap.
“Spencer you and I both know if you have a one on one debate with Danios that your career is over!!”
January 29th, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Danios,
With your all-knowing wisdom of Islam and Mo’s life and your worthy understanding of Arabic, can you now refute all other claims about Islam made by those stricken with Islamonausea?
Islamonausea is especially caused by certain practices and beliefs by Mo’s followers:
[snipped by Danios. Reason: Completely off-topic. Constitutes spamming.]
Instead of answering questions like these, beliefs that are derived from the Quran and Hadiths…you attack Robert Spencer for a linguistic mistake, on the issue of whether or not Mo regretted shooting a few arrows? Give me a break. If you have so much time on your hands and you have such a strong will to discredit Spencer, then why not try to refute some of his findings that I mentioned above? Maybe, since you understand Arabic (youre so special, Danios!) you could correct these “misconceptions” for us Islamonauseas….
Very important note: I am a follower of Prof. Dawkins…your tu quoque arguments against Christianity or any other “faith” will be a waste of your time with me.
January 29th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
@ Delyssandra:
Your comment is purposefully a red herring, and I will not tolerate it.
As for the points you raised, I have already addressed some of them in the past and I will address the others in the future. For now, you will have to stay on topic.
Lastly, it is not just a linguistic error. Rather, it speaks to (1) Robert Spencer’s lack of qualifications altogether; (2) how even the first three lines of his biography are misleading; (3) it is part of my rebuttal of Spencer’s biography, which will go through the entire life of the Prophet Muhammad, hardly something “trivial” as you try to make it out to be.
One more off-topic comment like this and you will be banned.
January 29th, 2012 at 4:49 pm
To whom it may concern.
To refer to Muhammad is ‘Mo’ is a purposeful incitment. I thought it was a bannable offence to be dishonourable to any of the Prophets.
In this instance, it is not a disagreement of Muhammad, or a questioning of his Prophethood, it is disrespect.
January 29th, 2012 at 4:55 pm
“I am a follower of Prof. Dawkins”
A follower? I didn’t realize he was a prophet of atheism.
January 29th, 2012 at 5:07 pm
@Delyssandra,
As a fellow atheist I want to say that we are not suppose to be followers of any man. We are not suppose to deify or prophetize human beings. We are suppose to be free-thinkers, use our own intellect and solve the enigma of the universe through reason and reason alone.
We are not suppose to be followers because we lack faith, be it faith in a God or faith in a man to tell us what to do and how to think.
It seems like you made atheism a religion or a cult and Richard Dawkins your prophet or cult-leader.
Don’t be a mindless sycophant or a sheep amongst a herd following a shephard (in this case Dawkins).
January 29th, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Danios, you should write your own book, to refute spencer’s garbage.
January 29th, 2012 at 5:45 pm
The era of science has led unfortunately to pseudo-scholarly atheists in the same way it’s led to pseudo-scholarly theists. Don’t just buy into the arguments people put across for or against the existence of God- give them a bit of thought. Learning the arguments of a theist or atheist is not synonymous with knowing how to critically analyse them.
January 29th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Another non-Muslim source, which refers to Muhammad. It is a Syriac source by a Christian called Thomas the Presbyter written around 640. It speaks of Muhammad and states that his followers made a raid in what is now Palestine and Syria I would assume.
By 640 however I believe Muhammad died, right? So Thomas the Presbyter must be speaking of early Islam’s proliferation out of Arabia.
This is what he says:
In the year 947 (635—36), indiction 9, the Arabs invaded the whole of Syria and went down to Persia and conquered it. The Arabs climbed the mountain of Mardin and killed many monks there in the monasteries of Qedar and Bnata. There died the blessed man Simon, doorkeeper of Qedar, brother of Thomas the priest.
In January the people of Homs took the word for their lives and many villages were ravaged by the killing of the Arabs of Muhmd and many people were slain and taken prisoner from Galilee as far as Beth.
On the twenty-sixth of May the Saqilara went from the vicinity of Homs and the Romans chased them.
On the tenth of August the Romans fled from the vicinity of Damascus and there were killed many people, some ten thousand. And at the turn of the year the Romans came. On the twentieth of August in the year nine hundred and forty-seven there gathered in Gabitha a multitude of the Romans, and many people of the Romans were killed, some fifty thousand.
January 29th, 2012 at 6:00 pm
@delyssandra
Islamonausea is especially caused by certain practices and beliefs by Mo’s followers:
Do you mean “certain practices” like eating halal meat, jumping up and down, and building minarets? Because according to the luminaries on JihadWatch, that’s what causes “Islamonausea.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Qutub_Minar_(1).jpg
I bet that just makes your blood boil, right?
I do, however, agree that something might be physiologically wrong with clowns such as yourself.
January 29th, 2012 at 6:29 pm
Robber Spunkster;
If you have any scholarly qualifications like a true academician like this Professor below, then we will give you time of the day. Otherwise you can keep wallowing in the filth that you write.
*************************************************************
Mark LeVine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named Mark Levin or Mark Levine, see Mark Levine (disambiguation).
Mark LeVine is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. He is also a musician. He received his B.A. in comparative religion and biblical studies from Hunter College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies. He speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Persian, as well as Italian, French, German and English.[1]
*******************************************************
PS: Just look at the languages Mark LeVine speaks, sheesh! Now that’s a true academician.
January 29th, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Mark LeVine is awesome, for nothing else than he co-edited a book with Viggo!
January 29th, 2012 at 6:43 pm
The product plug tell you every thing you need to know about Robert Spencer and what he is about I think what he and his stooges are trying to do is If they repeat something over over over over over over over over over over over over over again then it will become fact much like there
All muslims helped nazi WW2 and supported them
we need to nip this in the b@tt b4 it get far because I am sure Spencer jr( Spam Geller) will also post it on her site
January 29th, 2012 at 7:11 pm
Robert Spencer- A nobody who wants to be a somebody….
January 29th, 2012 at 7:18 pm
“Delyssandra” has been banned for off-topic spam comments.
January 29th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
@ Nur Ali:
I thought it was a bannable offence to be dishonourable to any of the Prophets.
This is actually not true at all, nor has it ever been. We have no policy regarding being “dishonourable to any of the Prophets.” Just wanted to clarify that.
She was banned due to spam, off-topic comments.
January 29th, 2012 at 7:58 pm
Ilisha
Thank you for posting that link from the Popes website.
In another thread a poster called Proverb was claiming otherwise, and it is unfair when people do not acknoweledge that Catholicism has made great efforts to overcome the intolerance of it’s past and become more pluralistic. Certainly Jewish leaders and Muslim leaders have praised these efforts so they must be doing something right to correct their past wrongs.
It’s worth remembering here, that the Pope opposed and condemned the US led wars, as did senior Catholic figures in the US and UK. So did the Church of England in all fairness. from a religous angle it was only supported by Evangelicals, the right wing, not the left wing Evangelicals, who have parted with the right precisely for this reason.
When even your own flock is leaving you, clearly something is wrong.
January 29th, 2012 at 10:15 pm
Under certain headings if one was to search on google things related to Islam/Muslims, Spencer’s hate site comes up quite often as one of the top sites visited…..very disturbing…..
This pseudo-scholar really needs to be debunked so that he and his Islamophobic empire maintained by his Spencerian troops will collapse…
January 29th, 2012 at 10:26 pm
@Dawood
Thank you Dawood I initially did not see your comments. I will read that book by Professor Donner in the near future. I believe if Muslims or anyone for that matter want an alternative view of Muhammad they should consult the following books. I would like to specify that these books are highly controversial and are counter to the mainstream understanding of the historiography of Muhammad and the historiography of Islam.
Here are my favorites:
1.Hagarism (already mentioned)
2.The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research Into Its Early History by Karl-Heinz Ohlig I believe.
3.The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition Of Islamic Salvation History by John Wansbrough
4.Finally if one does not wish to read all these books, there is a great anthology by Ibn Warraq called The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. It is a collection of 15 essays which includes many of the arguments from Islamic revisionist scholars who contend that Islam did not form the way Muslims believe it did.
I personally don’t like Ibn Warraq. I think he is a pseudo-scholar and a polemicist but he has collected many of the main revisionist writings on Islam within one book, which is helpful for a reader wanting alternative theories on Muhammad and Islam.
Secondly by revisionist I don’t wish to connote a negative term. The New Historians of Israel are historical revisionists but they are closer to the truth. Can I say the same about Islamic revisionists? I don’t know yet.
January 29th, 2012 at 11:27 pm
@Believing Atheist: The problem with the ‘revisionist school’, is that, for all intents and purposes and besides a few corners here and there, their approach is widely discredited in Western academia. This is mostly due to their over-reliance on contemporaneous or near-contemporary non-Muslim sources and outright disqualification or rejection of Muslim sources with little justification or evidence as to why it should be the case. Numerous academics have taken them to task on this point, with even Crone and Cook distancing themselves from their “youthful” work (Hagarism).
If you have access to academic journals, I encourage you to take a look at some reviews of the works you’ve listed above to see how mainstream Western academia views them, in order to contextualise their academic work more fully.
January 30th, 2012 at 12:29 am
“Delyssandra” has been banned for off-topic spam comments.
Unwise in my opinion; they will just run back and say ‘well everything I said was so true they had to ban me’. Let them come out to play so they can be exposed for the fool they are in front of everyone. By all means snip bits of comments that are just the usual junk to keep it on topic, but don’t ban.
Jack
January 30th, 2012 at 1:16 am
yeah.. people like “Kafir Harby” (the second comment)
take Spencer seriously!
January 30th, 2012 at 1:26 am
@delyssandra
he actually did refute a lot of spencer’s bogus lies about Islam and Muslims. this is just one of them.
i hate “atheists” who use atheism as a shield against criticism. even if you don’t believe, we’ll still compare Islam to other Abrahamic faiths because being an atheist does not mean we should tolerate the culturally christian “atheistic” assumption that Islam is more violent than other religions.
those who come from an Islamic background and not looking for their 15 minutes of fame, tend to believe that Zionism and apocalyptic Christianity is far more dangerous than any Salafist nut job shouting “death to America” from a garbage can!
January 30th, 2012 at 4:48 am
One does wonder who proof reads Roberts “work” ?
Pammy AKA Mrs Mac Beth?
January 30th, 2012 at 5:17 am
It is like Christopher Luxembourg (sp?), who claims that the Quran was written in a Syrian language, and has tried to re-translate it. He also claims that Muhammad (pbuh) was part of a Judeo-Christian sect, and was not a “Muslim”. He does not reveal his true identity, but I read a review of his book by a scholar (link is on Wikipedia), and that scholar claims that Luxembourg (sp?) is a Lebanese Christian, and so he has a bias in what he is writing.
The bottom line is, as I said earlier, there will always be things that will allow alternative theories to emerge, particularly as Muhammad (pbuh) lived 1400 years ago. I mean, look at Shakespeare, the guy was around less than 500 years ago in a small island that has never been invaded and had its artifacts destroyed, and there are still gaps in his life that leaves some to query whether or not he was the author of his Collection.
January 30th, 2012 at 5:52 am
@Ahmed: In response to Luxenberg’s position and some of the other ‘readings’ of the Qur’an using Syriac and so on, I’d recommend reading Walid Saleh’s excellent article “The Etymological Fallacy and Quranic Studies: Muhammad, Paradise, and Late Antiquity“, which discusses Luxenberg and his work from p. 27 onwards. It’s also a good survey of the field prior to him as well.
January 30th, 2012 at 6:15 am
@Believing Athiest.
OK, I was thinking about how to say this without angering you, or giving the wrong idea about ‘alternative views’ of Islam.
Understand that my perception of what Spencer is doing is just as the ‘Islamic revisionist’ is doing. He is trying to justify a posistion of ‘eliminating Islam’ by claiming it never existed. Of course an Athiest would cling to such notions as well but for different reasons.
Think of it this way. Some Zionists claim that ‘Palistine never existed’, and therfore there are no such thing as Palistinians. They make up a reason why we call them Palistnians, to justify the oppression of them.
How would you feel if you were a Palistinian, and people justifyed your oppression because ‘you dont exist’.?
I am a Muslimah. I have been so all of my life. My parents, and as far as I can trace my family back, they are mostly Muslim as well.
I take it personally when someone says ‘They made it up, therefore you dont exist’.
January 30th, 2012 at 10:49 am
@Dawood,
Thank you sir, I will.
@Nur Ali,
I agree with you. Spencer is writing a book the thesis of, which is Muhammad never, existed because; he wants to eliminate Islam from the face of the earth. Remember he joined a genocidal facebook group, which sought to ethnically-cleanse Turkey of the Turks.
But Nur not everyone is Spencer. Many of the so-called “Islamic revisionist,” historians either rightly or wrongfully are doing what they are doing to uncover the truth. They’re doing it out of curiosity. They may be wrong and I think they overuse non-Muslim sources to justify their claims as Asad Abu’Khalil said, but I don’t believe (with the exception of Ibn Warraq) that they all have malice intent. There is nothing that can prove that they do.
Spencer is just plain evil. Many of the Islamic revisionist historians are not. They may be wrong, but not evil.
January 30th, 2012 at 4:39 pm
@Dawood, what an interesting read indeed. Maybe I will update Luxenberg’s Wikipedia entry, and also add some information to the amazon page of his book, so that others are aware of this rebuttal.
January 31st, 2012 at 6:46 am
This is the best you got? A minor issue over Muhammads time before he called himself a prophet? Pathetic, really pathetic.
January 31st, 2012 at 7:36 am
@Dana Robertson Says:
January 31st, 2012 at 6:46 am
“This is the best you got? A minor issue over Muhammads time before he called himself a prophet? Pathetic, really pathetic.”
Is this the best you got? No, there’s more.Do you have an issue?
January 31st, 2012 at 8:46 am
Dana, it’s one of many problems with Spencers attrocious “scholarship”.
January 31st, 2012 at 10:20 am
@ Dana Robertson
This is the best you got? A minor issue over Muhammads time before he called himself a prophet? Pathetic, really pathetic.
So it is obvious to even you that Spencer’s claims of scholarship aren’t all that they’re cracked up to be. So how do you react to this example of Spencer’s incompetence/dishonesty?
A sensible person would realize:
“Oh, there are inaccuracies in Spencer’s analysis, which shouldn’t be there if he were as much of a scholar as he claims to be.”
You, however, choose to avoid that part entirely and just assume for no apparent reason, that this example is “all you’ve got”, and therefore “pathetic”. Do you jump to such unfounded conclusions out of some devotion to Robert $$$pencer? Do you love him? Do you want to marry him? Are you so blinded with infatuation that you cannot see his sophistry and crackpot scholarship for what it is?
January 31st, 2012 at 10:47 am
“Do you jump to such unfounded conclusions out of some devotion to Robert $$$pencer? Do you love him? Do you want to marry him? Are you so blinded with infatuation that you cannot see his sophistry and crackpot scholarship for what it is?”
I trust his scholarship over the hysteria being given here over something so minor. I don’t have to want to marry him to see that much of what he says is on the money. I had never heard of him when I came to the realization of the problems of the followers of Islam when they are in power. Blinded? I, like a lot other Americans were blinded until 9/11. That was the day we truly started seeing for the first time. It was only after I started seeing that I even ran against Spencer and his work. You show me one Muslim scholar that isn’t debated by other Muslim scholars and yet are still considered legit scholars without question. Your only problem is that Spencer isn’t kissing Islamic a$$ at the same time.
January 31st, 2012 at 11:12 am
Dana would not have noticed the problem had it not been pointed out- the question is how confident he/she is that there are no other problems that are yet to be pointed out?
January 31st, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Sid Says:
“Dana would not have noticed the problem had it not been pointed out- the question is how confident he/she is that there are no other problems that are yet to be pointed out?”
The real question is, does it matter in viewing the greater picture? The answer to that is no. You people are straining gnats and swallowing camels. You are only proving to me that you are going after minor issues while being willfully blind to major ones. Until given legit reasons not to, I will keep listening to what he has to say. I wonder while loonwatch looks for loons, who is watching loonwatch?
January 31st, 2012 at 12:38 pm
@dana
so you are one of those “everything I learned about islam is from 9-11″ guys yeah screw reading a book about islam from a reliable source I guess, and no he is kissing the asses of paranoid morons like david horowitz after all he gets money for it who’s drunken induced rants of either about liberals, or palastinians can be entertaining or downright disturbing,http://spencerwatch.com/about-david-horowitz-spencers-boss/
January 31st, 2012 at 12:42 pm
@dana
robert spencer and most likely one of his fanboys sheik his mommy of course, but spencer tries his best to make sure his commenters know nothing about it because after all thinking really hurts them and spencer knows this.
January 31st, 2012 at 12:58 pm
@Dana Robertson,
Its a minor thing that Robert Spencer, a man who claims to be an expert on Islam, is often lying, or at the very least even when he maybe being honest, often clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Seriously, you really expect us to believe that that doesn’t matter? This is not a minor thing, but its not even just this, there are countless other instances when he can be shown to have at the very least, totally gotten his facts wrong. He is not the expert on Islam or the objective scholar he claims to be. If he was, he would do far better research than this and he would do a far better job backing up his points. This is not nit picking, and even if it actually looks like nit picking to you, the shear fact that there are countless examples of instances like this, ought to tell you something. When an “expert” is proven wrong, time and time again, why should you continue to trust them and regard them as an expert on the subject, that he keeps getting power owned on?
January 31st, 2012 at 1:38 pm
@Dana Robertson
Let’s talk about something supposedly major that Robert Spencer ‘exposes’. Namely taqiyya, in other words how Muslims are commanded to lievfor the advancement of Islam. What say you about this? Is the Islamic Scholar correct when he says that is the case?
January 31st, 2012 at 1:41 pm
I hope Danios is working on a book. Its a dire necessity to get the whole foundation of the islamophobia campaign exposed. They all have the same pattern of propoganda. A book is a must to expose this whereby people know by noticing the pattern of writing and argument that so and so is bigot fanatic of retarded scholarship cooking up lies. Cut their foundations rather than drag the debate whereby money continues to flow to them and they develop tactical expertise to keep their hate fetish goin. A powerful book would instead completely discredit them as a laughing stock and more serious honest scholarship will take the stage to discuss issues.
January 31st, 2012 at 1:45 pm
@Dana Robertson: This article attacked the premise put forth by Spencer in his Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam that “Muhammad already had experience as a warrior before he assumed the role of the prophet”, based on one of the key points he uses to develop his argument that Muhammad was a warlord and battle-hardened warrior. It is taken from this single source.
As can be seen from the Arabic of this “minor” issue discussed above, it is simply not the case and Muhammad regretted taking part in the whole incident whilst a teen – as much as firing a few arrows and picking up stray arrows counts as “experience as a warrior”, that is.
If he is wrong on this “minor” point, then what else is he wrong on in his generalisation of Muhammad’s life and Islamic religious thought?
January 31st, 2012 at 2:46 pm
@ Dana Robertson
Again, you avoid addressing even my comment on the subject at hand entirely.
I trust his scholarship over the hysteria being given here over something so minor.
- Minor in what context exactly? Certainly not in the context of his self-proclaimed scholarship, since it’s a detail that is part of his thesis. To thoroughly deconstruct a thesis, you need to analyze and cross-examine everything in it.
And “hysteria”? Do you honestly believe that thoroughly refuting details is “hysteria”? It is not. Any work by a self-proclaimed scholar should be subject to cross-examination to authenticate it, and all inaccuracies should be thoroughly noted.
It is one thing to have minor errors, but to have such an error as part of the thesis itself is by no means “minor” if you’re calling yourself a scholar on the subject.
There is this thing called “critical thinking”. If you don’t what that is or how to use it, I suggest you learn.
I don’t have to want to marry him to see that much of what he says is on the money. I had never heard of him when I came to the realization of the problems of the followers of Islam when they are in power.
- What he says isn’t really “on the money”, as it only reinforces the bigoted views you and others already had beforehand. If you didn’t already share the bigotry that he is trying to sell, you wouldn’t have bought it. Your bigoted views about Islam and Muslims are more reflective of yourself than they of are of any reality you think they are based on.
Blinded? I, like a lot other Americans were blinded until 9/11. That was the day we truly started seeing for the first time.
- You still have not seen, as you still gravitate towards the laziest answer possible. Had 9/11 been promoted as being done by a Timothy McVeigh rather than an Osama bin Laden, your attitude towards it would be quite different. Objectively, there would be no difference between the two, but from your subjective perspective there would be, and that is the problem.
It was only after I started seeing that I even ran against Spencer and his work.
- And had you ran into Spencer and his work beforehand, you would probably have rightfully dismissed it, just like if you were to run into some antisemitic nonsense. However, because you have a collectivist mindset, it doesn’t take much for you to stereotype when it involves anyone that doesn’t look like you, think like you or come from the same background as you.
You show me one Muslim scholar that isn’t debated by other Muslim scholars and yet are still considered legit scholars without question.
- They are considered legit scholars because they have credentials. Spencer has no credentials so he is not a legit scholar.
Scholars disagreeing with each other doesn’t mean that they aren’t scholars.
Your only problem is that Spencer isn’t kissing Islamic a$$ at the same time.
- Wrong. The problem is that $$$pencer promotes lies, half-truths and sensationalism to support his thesis, and poses as a $$$cholar on a subject that he is constantly wrong on.
Your problem is that you are only receptive to what agrees with your bigotry, and so you cannot see beyond the travesty of intellectual honesty that is Robert $$$pencer. His expertise is only in snake oil salesmanship and nothing more.
January 31st, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Ugh, ugh. I had no idea that Spencer didn’t have a Masters or PhD…Go figure. You learn something new everyday.
January 31st, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Dana, it does matter in the “greater picture”. If you’re going to claim you’re a scholar, you should investigate things thoroughly. The very first thing you need to be an Islamic scholar is a thorough grasp of Arabic.
Spencer does not have this. The issue of him citing Ibn Saad translations that are completely incorrect supports this.
He cites things, but he either intentionally ignores others or isn’t well read enough to know about the others. I’ll give you just one example- his “scholarship” on the fiction of Gharaniq, or as you probably know it, The Satanic Verses. From pg. 83 “The Truth About Muhammed: Founder of the Worlds most intolerant religion”:
“Here, as in many other areas, the witness of early Islamic sources is compelling. While events may be explained in other ways, those who would wish away the satanic verses cannot get around the fact that these elements of Muhammeds life were not the inventions of his enemies, but were passed along by men who believed he was indeed the Prophet of Allah.”
Such a conclusion is shoddy at best. For one, given all of Spencers “expertise” in Islam, he should know all about the existence of Ummayad and Israelite Hadiths- that is, Hadiths either fabricated by Ummayads or Muslim converts from Judaism to discredit Islam from within. Let’s look at a few of the details he puts forward though. First of all, he references the following incident:
“In the hadith collection of Bukhari, we are told that on one occassion, after reciting Sura 53 of the Qur’an, Muhammed prostrated himself, and all the pagans and unbelievers prostrated themselves.” He references this at Bukhari, Vol. 6, Book 65, Hadith 4863.
The problem is, there is no Book 65 in Vol. 6 of Bukhari, nor is Hadith 4863 present in Vol.6. This is shoddy. The Hadith that he had actually referred to was in Vol. 2, Book 19, Hadith 177, which says the following:
“The Prophet I prostrated while reciting An-Najm and with him prostrated the Muslims, the pagans, the jinns, and all human beings.”
1. What makes Spencer think this is to be taken literally?
2. The prostration in the Surah comes at the end of the Surah. The entire Surah disparages the false Gods of Quraysh. Even with the inclusion of the two apparent “verses” in praise of them, the rest of the Surah makes it clear that the Gods Lat, Uzza and Manat are false Gods.
3. The narration says in Mecca. Is this upon the conquest of Mecca, after all idols were destroyed, or at the beginning of the prophetic mission, just after the emigrants had gone to the kingdom of the Negus?
Secondly, the scholars who merely “wish away” the satanic verses have issued thorough rebuttals to it, not merely brushing them off as nothing, as Spencer insinuates. Had he been thorough in his research on the issue, he would have seen what Ibn Kathir has to say about it- being as Ibn Kathir is seemingly his favourite exegete, you would expect him to have a look. Ibn Kathir merely says on the issue:
“At this point many of the scholars of Tafsir mentioned the story of the Gharaniq and how many of those who had migrated to Ethiopia came back when they thought that the idolators of the Quraysh had become Muslims, but these reports all come through Mursal chains of narration and I do not think that any of them may be regarded as Sahih.”
If they all come through “Mursal” chains, that explains how they found their way into the books, regardless of Spencers idiotic “they’re in the books, therefore they must be true” defence. Ishaaq’s book, nor any other biography for that matter, has been accepted as authentic. To my knowledge, none of the biographers even claim as much regarding their books.
A thorough rebuttal, by which Spencer has no way, or made no attempt, to refute, is found in Jafar Subhani’s “The Message”. Indeed, Subhani dedicates an entire chapter to it- Chapter 19, entitled “The fiction of Gharaniq”. A few excerpts from it:
“The distinguished Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abdoh says: The word ‘Gharaniq’ has never been used for ‘gods’ in the Arabic language and poetry. The words ‘Gharnuq’ and ‘Gharniq’ are found in the lexicon and they mean a particular aquatic bird or a fair and handsome young man, and neither of these conveys the meaning of ‘gods’.”
“It is not known what opinion the inventor of this white lie had formed about those persons, whose mother-tongue was Arabic, who were considered to be the champions in the field of eloquence in the entire Arab society, and who knew the allusions and metaphors (not to speak of explicit things) of their language better than anyone else. Was it proper for them to be satisfied with the two sentences in praise of their gods and ignore the preceding and succeeding sentences? Not to talk of others, it is not possible to deceive even ordinary persons by fascinating sentences which are placed in a context which consists entirely of condemnation of their beliefs and conduct.”
Spencer, had he read all of the arguments refuting it, would not have made such an appalling chapter. Essentially his argument is “it’s in Muslim books, therefore it’s true”. Even someone with such a basic knowledge in Islam can tell you why such a position is not right. His direction to false references is merely another reason why his scholarship is non-existant. That you believe him to be a truth-teller tells me you haven’t explored Islam from an objective position by any stretch of the imagination.
Now, you can believe him if you like, but rest assured, he’s not a scholar.
January 31st, 2012 at 5:18 pm
Danios and LoonWatch I like LoonWatch and what you do and I think you guys need to continue but you guys are giving a free pass to Ezra Levant , Michael Coren , and Tarek Fatah to put out pure Islamophobic propaganda I understand that this is a serious problem in America and must be addressed and challenged but Islamophobia is starting to pick up in Canada and the above three are among those leading the charge you need to call them out on it. Take for example this program with Ezra Levant in which he claimed a Muslim police officer wearing a hijab were Radical Muslims simply because they wore a hijab it was proof enough they were radical . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Es6hgOlnk and we do not have any new media to challenge these views CBC is terrible at it.
February 1st, 2012 at 3:20 am
@Saladin, I concur, I believe that Islamophobes from Canada are getting lots of free passes and much room to spread their poison, first in line being Micheal Coren the radical, Christian Zionist that has been giving a platform as “show” to spew his hate of Muslims, and his partner in hate and regular “guess” the radical, Zionist Jew named Ezra Levant, that “show” is a abhorrent format for hateful rhetoric, which invites the most hate-filled bigots of Canada and some pretending to be Muslim useful idiots to “legitimize” their lucra$$ve hate business. It’s way pass time for LoonWatch to address this topic, I think the Canadian Muslim community are vulnerable, and not very well protected from such hate as American Muslims are, maybe it will be a good idea since Canada is so close to US, to establish a segment for Canadian Islamophobes, perhaps by recruiting some Canadian themselves who will report and write in that segment? I think it will be a good idea.
February 1st, 2012 at 6:41 am
oh dear!
it’s hard to believe that people like “Dana Robertson” actually exist.
i doubt that they take their own “arguments” seriously.. nobody should. just let her babble to expose herself and prove to the world that Spencer and fox news can make you really stupid..
February 1st, 2012 at 10:20 am
I agree with Saladin. Coren and Levant really are pushing their Anti-Islam hate on all of us. They invite Spencer and Geller on their show all the time and agree with all their crap. And Coren tries to act like only Muslims do bad things when we know it’s not true. Yeah we have a lot of problem right now but are you really going to blame everything on us? And he did a show where he talked about Muslim honor killings as if only we do it when there are many proof of Non-Muslims doing the same. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPCYtJhkJ_A&list=UUgXf_LgRVLJHfg7fG7pKYCQ&index=5&feature=plcp
And he has the nerve to say that Non-Muslism have never done this but us. And in his other shows he brings his favourite ‘Muslim’ Tarek Fatah to pretend not to hate us. I think it’s time that Loonwatch does an article exposing Coren. He and Levant are worse then even Fox News and I’m not kidding.
February 1st, 2012 at 10:24 am
@KnowingTheTruth
I’m working on a piece about that very topic…stay tuned.
February 1st, 2012 at 11:11 am
@llisha you should look into the honor killing of the BC woman by her husband few months back she was not Muslim nor was her husband but Coren still tried to make it about Muslims Charles Adler even invited Ayaan Hirsi Ali to talk about how about Muslims even though the case had nothing to do with Muslims I will look for the video with Adler because the YouTube user who uploaded it closed their account
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/07/29/husband-in-custody-after-violent-attack
February 1st, 2012 at 11:37 am
Here is another video is Spencer saying with Michael Coren that there is support in the Qur’an and Sharia for honor killing claiming it is supported by the story of Moses and Khidr this on in January 31
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/right-to-kill/1426263474001
February 1st, 2012 at 11:39 am
^^^ Spencer even goes as far as saying that not single scholar has every in any time period said honor killing are not allowed
February 1st, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Thanks @Saladin,
I knew Tarek Fatah was able to publish his articles in some newspapers, and of course I am aware of Coren and Levant. I think we will focus more on the Islamopohobes and self-hating loons in Canada quite soon.
February 1st, 2012 at 1:44 pm
I will also add @Dana,
The enormity of Spencer’s mistake cannot be underscored enough times. It is not a small mistake or a typo. It goes to prove 1.) His total incomprehension of Arabic on all levels, 2.) His resultant shoddy analysis and conclusions. This is not isolated, several of us have exposed elementary mistakes that Spencer has made in regard to Arabic, Islamic history, etc.
February 1st, 2012 at 1:47 pm
@Dawood,
Good to still see you around, commenting!
February 1st, 2012 at 2:42 pm
Thanks guys for responding to us. I know you guys are Americans but take one look at Sun News in Cananda and it makes Fox News look moderate.
February 1st, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Thanks because they have been peddling the leading Islamophobes as experts and the MCC as the “good Muslims” who are the only ones that are not in a secrete plot of world domination
February 1st, 2012 at 3:29 pm
correction secret not secrete Thanks because they have been peddling the leading Islamophobes as experts and the MCC as the “good Muslims” who are the only ones that are not in a secret plot of world domination
February 1st, 2012 at 9:53 pm
@ Let’s not forget about Salim Mansur, who has featured on the documentary -Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center – … He has a column in the Toronto Sun to spew his nonsense on Canadian Muslims, whom apparently are only known to him as “Islamists”, in my opinion, I think he’s much worse in many ways than Tarek Fatah.
February 2nd, 2012 at 1:40 pm
For Spencer to claim no scholar ever has said it’s forbidden would require him to have learnt every language that a Muslim scholar has written in. Let’s start with Arabic.
Oh wait- all he’s read is a few tranlated books. He doesn’t know Arabic. He has literally no idea what Arabic speaking scholars have or have not said.
February 2nd, 2012 at 1:55 pm
@Sid,
Even than he’d have to read everything written by every single Islamic scholar ever written and remember everything written by them, something that would be next to impossible.
February 3rd, 2012 at 5:28 am
Exactly my point- he doesn’t even have command of the language most Islamic writings are written in, and he claims (if Saladin is correct) that no Islamic scholar has ever condemned it. That’s like a U.S historian who speaks only Arabic claiming no U.S politician ever has ever spoken against persecution of minorities in America. Yet Spencer is considered “a scholar”.
February 5th, 2012 at 5:42 pm
Whats makes it so bad is that news organizations like the CBC are so terrible at taking on Islamophobia they get MCC and people like them to comment constantly to keep a balance but they never ask them any though questions and thus legitimize there position here is Coren again claiming that honor killing are related exclusively to Islam
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/02/03/coren-islam-honour-murder