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

The realm of political theology, then, 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. Arabia, Syria, and other lands the Arabs first conquered were
home to many of the Christian groups, such as Nestorians and Jacobites, that had fled the Byzantine
Empire after the ecumenical councils judged their views heretical. Persia, meanwhile, was home to
Zoroastrians. These monotheists had an imperial theology—that is, a conviction that a common religion
would unify an empire of diverse nationalities—akin to that of the Romans and to some degree even
based on it. This influence was understandable, given that the Persian emperor Chosroes had spent time in
Constantinople and was married to two Christian women. 4
But at first, the Arab Empire did not have a compelling political theology to compete with those it
supplanted and to solidify its conquests. The earliest Arab rulers appear to have been adherents of
Hagarism, a monotheistic religion centered around Abraham and Ishmael. 5 They frowned upon the
Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ—hence Muawiya's letter to the Byzantine
emperor Constantine, calling on him to “renounce this Jesus and convert to the great God whom I serve,
the God of our father Abraham.”
This umbrella monotheistic movement saw itself as encompassing the true forms of the two great
previous monotheistic movements, Judaism and Christianity. Traces of this perspective appear in the
Qur'an, such as when Allah scolds the Jews and Christians for fighting over Abraham, who was neither a
Jew nor a Christian but a Muslim hanif—in the Qur'anic usage, a pre-Islamic monotheist (3:64–67). In its
earliest form, Islam was probably much more positive toward both Christianity and Judaism than it later
came to be. Evidence of this openness can be found in the crosses on the early Arab coinage and caliphs'
inscriptions, and also in the indications from adversarial literature that the Arabian prophet was making
common cause with the Jews. An early Islam that counted Jews and Christians as within the fold could
help account for the Qur'an passage promising salvation to various groups: “Lo! Those who believe, and
those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans—whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does
right—surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they
grieve” (2:62). 6
From Monotheism to Muhammad
This Abrahamic monotheism, conceiving of Christ as the servant of Allah and his messenger, probably
reached its apotheosis in 691 in Abd al-Malik's Dome of the Rock inscriptions, which could well refer to
Jesus. During the same period, the nascent religion began to take shape as an entity in its own right—a
forthrightly, even defiantly, Arabic one. The specific features that emerged revolved around the person of
the “praised one,” Muhammad, an Arabian prophet who may have lived decades before and whose
words and works were already shrouded in the mists of history.
The historical data about this Muhammad was sparse and contradictory, but there were certain raw
materials around which a legend could be constructed. There was the mysterious Arabian prophet to
whom the Doctrina Jacobi refers, whose words and deeds somewhat resemble those of the prophet of
Islam and differ sharply from them in important ways. There was the Mhmt to whom Thomas the Christian