Did Muhammad exist? It is a question that few have thought to ask, or dared to ask.
For most of the fourteen hundred years since the prophet of Islam is thought to have walked the earth, almost everyone has taken his existence for granted. After all, his imprint on human history is enormous.
The Encyclopedia Britannica dubbed him “the most successful of all Prophets and religious personalities.” In his 1978 book The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, historian Michael H. Hart put Muhammad in the top spot, explaining: “My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level.”
.... But the more I examined the evidence gathered by scholars who had bothered to apply the historical-critical method to Islam’s origins, the more I recognized how little there was to confirm the canonical story. [Crisis Magazine] Read more
