robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

Thou Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks
The very fact that the Qur'an asserts so many times that it was handed down in Arabic raises questions.
Why would a clear and easily understandable book need to assert more than once that it was clear and
easy to understand? Why would an Arabic book need to insist again and again that it was in Arabic? The
various authors of the Greek New Testament never feel the need to assert the fact that they're writing in
Greek; they're simply doing so. This is a point that they take for granted.
Of course, the New Testament doesn't make the claims about Greek that the Qur'an makes about Arabic.
Greek in Christianity is not the language of God; it has no more significance than any other language. But
that in itself is part of the mystery of the Qur'anic claims: Why did they need to be made at all? Why was
there such anxiety about the Arabic character of the Qur'an that it had to be repeated so many times? This
peculiar insistence on the Arabic character of the Qur'an even became part of Islamic theology, which
affirms that Arabic is the language of Allah and that the deity who created every human being and
presumably understands every human tongue will not accept prayers or recitations of the Qur'an in any
other language.
When the Qur'an repeatedly insists that it is written in Arabic, it is not unreasonable to conclude that
someone, somewhere was saying that it wasn't in Arabic at all. A point needs emphasis only when it is
controverted. As the nineteenth-century man of letters John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote in a vastly
different context, “No doctrine is defined till it is violated.” 8 In other words, the assertion of a religious
doctrine, in an environment involving a competition of religious ideas, doesn't generally take place except
as a response to the contrary proposition. The Qur'an thus may insist so repeatedly on its Arabic essence
because that was precisely the aspect of it that others challenged.
The Qur'an is highly polemical in nature. It answers the theological claims of Judaism and Christianity
and responds to the arguments of the unbelievers and hypocrites against Muhammad's prophetic claims
and its own divine origins. On practically every page there is a denunciation of the unbelievers; many of
these contain reports of what those unbelievers are saying against Muhammad and Islam, and explanations
of why their charges are false. It would not be unusual if it also took on challenges to its Arabic origins.
Muhammad's Non-Arabic Sources
The Qur'an itself tells us of challenges to claims of the book's Arabic origins. According to the Qur'an,
Muhammad's detractors charged the prophet of Islam with getting material from non-Arabic sources and
then passing off what he received as divine revelation. The Qur'an responds furiously to those who deride
the prophet for listening intently—perhaps to the Jewish and Christian teachers whose teachings ended up
as part of Qur'anic revelation: “And some of them hurt the Prophet, saying, ‘He is an ear!’” Allah tells
Muhammad how to respond to those who make fun of him in this way: “Say: ‘An ear of good for you; he
believes in God, and believes the believers, and he is a mercy to the believers among you. Those who
hurt God's Messenger—for them awaits a painful chastisement’” (9:61).
Muhammad's foes apparently charged him with getting material from a non-Arabic speaker as well: