robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)
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encountering some mention of Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur'<strong>an</strong>. The shahada, the Islamic confession of<br />
faith, is featured on the Saudi flag. Coins all over the Islamic world carry inscriptions containing some<br />
Islamic element. The most obvious <strong>an</strong>d proudly held aspect of the Islamic world is that it is Islamic. But<br />
in the earliest days of Islam, that is the one element most conspicuously lacking.<br />
The earliest known coins that the conquerors produced bore the inscription bism Allah, “in the name of<br />
Allah.” Allah is simply the Arabic word for God, used by Arabic-speaking Jews <strong>an</strong>d Christi<strong>an</strong>s as well<br />
as by Muslims. Yet coins minted in the 650s <strong>an</strong>d possibly as late as the 670s bore this inscription alone,<br />
without making <strong>an</strong>y reference to Muhammad as Allah's prophet or to <strong>an</strong>y other distinctive element of<br />
Islam. This is the period of the first flush of Arabi<strong>an</strong> conquest, when one would most expect the Arabi<strong>an</strong>s<br />
to stress the particular features of their religion, which they considered to have been made victorious over<br />
other, competing religions in the region.<br />
Other coins dating from the same period feature inscriptions such as bism Allah rabbi (“In the name of<br />
Allah my Lord”), rabbi Allah (“my Lord is Allah”), <strong>an</strong>d bism Allah al-malik (“in the name of Allah the<br />
King”). 5 Conspicuously absent is coinage bearing <strong>an</strong>y reference to Muhammad rasul Allah (“Muhammad<br />
is the messenger of Allah”).<br />
One coin that the Arabi<strong>an</strong> conquerors apparently struck in Palestine between 647 <strong>an</strong>d 658 does bear the<br />
inscription <strong>muhammad</strong>. And yet there is no way it c<strong>an</strong> be taken as a product of pious, informed, believing<br />
Muslims: It depicts a figure, apparently of a ruler—in violation of Islam's prohibition of images. Even<br />
odder is the fact that the figure is carrying a cross, a symbol that is <strong>an</strong>athema to Islam. 6<br />
Numismatist Clive Foss explains this coin's obverse (shown at left) as depicting a “crude st<strong>an</strong>ding<br />
figure with detached crown, fl<strong>an</strong>ked by long cross r., , muh[ammad].” 7<br />
Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, is supposed to have been the principal agent of a new civilizational<br />
order based on a holy book that admonished Christi<strong>an</strong>s that Jesus was neither killed nor crucified: “They<br />
<strong>did</strong> not slay him, neither crucified him” (Qur'<strong>an</strong> 4:157). Would the caliph, the leader of a religious group<br />
that claimed it a blasphemy for a rival religion to regard Jesus as the Son of God, really place the<br />
crowning symbol of that rival religion on his public inscriptions? Would the leader of a religious group<br />
whose founding prophet claimed that Jesus would return at the end of the world <strong>an</strong>d “break all crosses”—<br />
as <strong>an</strong> insult to himself <strong>an</strong>d a testament to the tr<strong>an</strong>scendent majesty of Allah—really allow a cross to be<br />
featured on <strong>an</strong>y inscription carved <strong>an</strong>ywhere in his domains? 8