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

Muhammad's virtues, or a combination of such motives? In fact, this process of legendary elaboration was
already taking place when Ibn Ishaq compiled his account.
The clearest evidence of this comes from the Qur'an's repeated assumption that the messenger who
received its revelations was not a miracle worker. The unbelievers demand a miracle: “And they that
know not say: Why does God not speak to us? Why does a sign not come to us?” (2:118; cf. 6:37, 10:20,
13:7, 13:27). Allah tells his messenger that even if the prophet did come to the unbelievers with a
miracle, they would reject him anyway: “Indeed, We have struck for the people in this Koran every
manner of similitude; and if thou bringest them a sign, those who are unbelievers will certainly say, ‘You
do nothing but follow falsehood’” (30:58). Elsewhere in the Qur'an, Allah delivers a similar message:
“Yet if thou shouldst bring to those that have been given the Book every sign, they will not follow thy
direction [qibla, “direction for prayer”]; thou art not a follower of their direction; neither are they
followers of one another's direction. If thou followest their caprices, after the knowledge that has come to
thee, then thou wilt surely be among the evildoers” (2:145). The repetition of this theme suggests that one
of the primary criticisms the unbelievers brought against the prophet was that he had no miracles to
perform; the Qur'an was intended to be sufficient sign in itself: “What, is it not sufficient for them that We
have sent down upon thee the Book that is recited to them? Surely in that is a mercy, and a reminder to a
people who believe” (29:51).
Yet the Muhammad of Ibn Ishaq's biography is an accomplished miracle worker. Ibn Ishaq relates that
during the digging of the trench that ultimately thwarted the Meccans' siege of the Muslims in Medina, one
of Muhammad's companions prepared “a little ewe not fully fattened” and invited the prophet to dinner.
Muhammad, however, surprised his host by inviting all of those who were working on the trench to dine
at the man's home. The prophet of Islam solved the problem just as Jesus in the Gospels multiplied bread
and fish: “When we had sat down we produced the food and he blessed it and invoked the name of God
over it. Then he ate as did all the others. As soon as one lot had finished another lot came until the diggers
turned from it.” 17 On another occasion, Ibn Ishaq writes, one of the companions seriously injured his eye,
so that it actually hung from its socket; Muhammad “restored it to its place with his hand and it became his
best and keenest eye afterwards.” 18 In other stories, Muhammad drew water from a dry waterhole and
called down the rain with a prayer. 19
There are many, many such stories in Ibn Ishaq. If any of them had been known at the time the Qur'an
was written, it is inexplicable that Muhammad would have been portrayed in his own holy book as a
prophet with a book alone and no supporting miracles. It is remarkable that a man who could heal the
sick, multiply food, draw water from dry ground, and shoot out lightning from the strike of a pickax would
nonetheless be portrayed as a prophet whose message was unsupported by miraculous signs.
Ibn Ishaq also includes stories of how Muhammad was repeatedly identified as a future prophet when
he was a mere child. In one, Muhammad was taken as a child to Syria, where a Christian monk named
Bahira studied him, “looking at his body and finding traces of his description (in the Christian books).”
Ibn Ishaq affirms that Bahira found the boy to be a stout monotheist, although his people were polytheists;
young Muhammad told the monk that “by Allah nothing is more hateful to me” than al-Lat and al-Uzza, two
goddesses of the Quraysh. Bahira also “looked at his back and saw the seal of prophethood between his
shoulders in the very place described in his book.” Accordingly, the monk gave Muhammad's uncle a
warning that foreshadowed, or echoed, the later demonization of the Jews in Islamic tradition: “Take your