Muhammad: A Critical Biography by Robert Spencer. Book review.

 

Muhammad: A Critical Biography by Robert Spencer
Americans must read this book

 

Over a year ago, a political figure permitted me to participate in a private discussion site dedicated to the output of a group of prominent journalists, scholars, political operatives, and public servants. Some of the men and women in this group had written bestsellers, managed campaigns, worked in the White House for Republican presidents, or commanded troops. Some were practicing and others were lapsed Catholics; some were proud Jews, dedicated to Israel.

 

At the discussion site, I was just one commentor among thousands, but every now and then one of the celebrities whose work we were commenting on would respond to one of my posts. These "brushes with greatness" delighted me.

 

Over a year later, I received an email that sent a chill through me. The sender was a beautiful young white woman with a great head of hair. Her online bio ironically states, "My passion is helping humans understand one another — and the world around them." In her two-hundred-word reprimand, she quoted and analyzed my posts. She informed me that she had deleted my posts and would not allow me to speak for the next thirty days. If I sinned again, I would be permanently silenced. She accused me of posting thoughts that were not "kind" and not "true."  

 

You think I would have learned.

 

A few years ago, I received, in one night, over one hundred hate emails from an Amazon employee. The card I had used for Amazon purchases was violated; I lost money. Every one of my Amazon reviews, posted over the course of a couple of decades, some for worthy but obscure scholarly books that no one else had ever reviewed, were erased, and I am forbidden from ever reviewing anything on Amazon ever again.

 

And then there's my blog. Google shadow-bans it behind a wall of warnings.

 

What unites the above three stories? Islam and trans extremism. In each case, I had said things that are indeed both "kind" and "true" about Islam and trans extremism. In each case, rather than address anything I said, my words were simply erased, and I was punished.

 

Again, the authors and activists whose discussion group forbids statement of facts – no matter how kindly and truthfully those facts are stated – are not Molotov-cocktail-throwing campus protesters. Their status as church-going Catholics and Israel-supporting Jews, their political conservatism, did not inoculate them against their participation in the culture-wide taboo against saying anything kind or true about Islam or trans extremism.

 

"Hmm. Islam and trans extremism," you may be thinking. "Those two things do not belong together, as Sesame Street used to say. After all, Muslim countries often persecute and actually kill LGBT people."

 

Here's what they have in common. Both Islam and trans extremism are exploited by countercultural forces as levers to overturn big, bad Western Civilization. Trans extremism strikes at one of the most basic of categories: sex. Differentiating between male and female has been essential to the sight, smell, hearing, touch, and cognition of living things for over a billion years. The Judeo-Christian tradition is foundational to the West, and Islam has been at war with, and has defined itself against, the West for the past 1,400 years.

 

Embrace of the Islamization of the West, and of trans extremism, elevates the speaker as the opposite of the worst thing you can be. "I am not racist; I am tolerant," this embrace announces. The speaker can pat herself on the back. "I'm just like John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus bridge." In fact, they are doing comparable work to the Soviet censors who erased knowledge of Stalin's crimes. That so many on the right participate in this charade speaks to the charade's immense, and potentially suicidal, power.

 

Robert Spencer is a hero. He doesn't look like James Bond. He doesn't conduct himself in a flamboyant, "Look at me" manner. He is humble and soft spoken. He is a scholar. He deals with facts. Doing what he does – speaking about Islam in a way that is both kind and true – is one of the riskiest, bravest, most heroic, and most necessary things anyone could do. His work is a gift to every one of us, Muslims included. There's no racism here. Only knowledge that every citizen should command.

 

Bombardier Books published Muhammad: A Critical Biography in 2024. It is 340 pages. Spencer is a popularizer. He synthesizes published scholarship by experts in pertinent fields. He presents that scholarship to the average reader in an accessible way. Muhammad: A Critical Biography makes three important points. One, there is no definitive evidence that Muhammad ever existed; two, the Muhammad described in Islam's foundational documents is a hateful, violent criminal; three, this Muhammad is the perfect example, worthy of emulation, for over a billion Muslims.

 

Spencer reports the simple fact that

 

"Virtually nothing is written about Muhammad in the seventh century when he is supposed to have flourished … In the ninth century, there is a veritable explosion of written material about Muhammad … The ninth-century traditions are too far removed from what they describe, and there is far too much opportunity for additions, deletions and other alterations for them to be taken at face value … The ninth-century literature as we have it today does not date from the ninth century. It only comes to us from later manuscripts, allowing even more possibility for alteration."

 

Even the allegedly ninth-century material we have about Muhammad is unreliable. There are at least "fifty different transmitters" of material that occurs in forms that don't agree with each other.

 

Spencer highlights hideous hadiths, that is, recordings of the words and deeds of Muhammad, that appeared long after his death, in regions remote from his purported life, from speakers of languages other than the one he spoke. Hadiths can be found supporting the violation of children, incest, and necrophilia. The best guess is that some Muslim warlord wanted his own predilections sanctified, so he ordered up a supportive hadith. Muslims themselves have voiced this concern.

 

Spencer finds contradictions between one Muslim text and another, and between Muslim texts and known history. MaCB doesn't just make a strong case that the received biography of Muhammad is partially or completely false, but certainly an exaggeration of a possible kernel of truth, it also demonstrates that the Muhammad who is recorded in canonical sources is not an admirable man. This Muhammad directly commands the rape and indeed the impregnation of war captives. This Muhammad marries a six-year-old girl, and consummates that marriage when she is nine, before she reaches puberty. This Muhammad, obedient to the Qur'an verse that tells men to beat their wives, strikes his child bride. This Muhammad records, in the Qur'an, instructions on how to divorce a pre-pubescent girl child with whom one has had sex. He repeatedly orders torture, including the torture and murder of men and women whose only crime was criticizing Muhammad. This Muhammad accumulates wealth by stealing from Arab tribes, in raids. This Muhammad walks around in semen-stained clothing; he requires others, presumably his wives or sex slaves, to lick his hands. Most importantly, this Muhammad speaks of eternal, relentless warfare against Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims. Non-Muslims must be humiliated, economically fleeced, and killed until they submit to Islam. Remember: this Muhammad, in Islam, is the perfect example, worthy of emulation.

 

Chapter One, "The Prophet Armed with the Sword," mentions "mhmd," a root used to form a few words in the Bible that refer to a desired or praiseworthy individual. Perhaps the name Muhammad evolved from this root. In fact, in the Bible, this root is a reference to "God or Christ."

 

"The absence of Muhammad from all of the earliest texts relating to the seventh-century Arab conquests of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and India is striking … there is likewise no independent attestation of the existence of the Qur'an until nearly a century after Muhammad is supposed to have died." In short, the people being invaded by Arabs do not name Muhammad as the leader of the Arabs, though they do record these conquests. Invaders were not called "Muslims" but "Saracens" or "Hagarians" The Doctrina Jacobi is meant to be an early reference to Muhammad, but Spencer finds several problems with that assumption. It's possible, though, that the "sword bearing" Arab described in Doctrina Jacobi was one of potentially many invading Arabs whose identity was merged into the fiction of Muhammad. In spite of the many problems with these contemporaneous accounts of the Arab Conquest, a Muslim website insists that they are historical evidence for Muhammad.  

 

In the 660s or 670s, Armenian Bishop Sebeos records an account of an "Ishmaelite prophet." But Sebeos' prophet is a great friend of Jews and insists on their ownership of the land of Israel. That's very different from the Muhammad we have from material accepted today. Spencer says, "It may, therefore, be that the Mahmet of Sebeos … represents an earlier stage in the development of the religion that became Islam, while the Qur'an (which, according to Islamic tradition, predates Sebeos's writing by fifty to sixty years) represents a later stage, after there has been a break with the Jews." In Sebeos' account, Jews under the Ishmaelite prophet parlay with Byzantine rulers over possession of Israel.

 

Muawiya, the fifth caliph, wrote a letter to Constans II demanding that Christians abandon the crucified Jesus and worship "the God of our father Abraham." In this letter, Muawiya did not mention Muhammad, the Qur'an, or Islam. Early Arab coins feature a cross, a symbol that is anathema to Islam. There is also a cross topped by a crescent. This is "shocking and inexplicable" for Islam as it is currently understood.

 

Abd al-Malik used a phrase that is close to, but not exactly like, the current Muslim profession of faith. The difference indicates that Islam was still being formulated, decades after it was supposed to be complete.

 

Dome of the Rock inscriptions from 690 obsess on denouncing Jesus' divinity. "Muhammad is the messenger of God" is a frequent translation of some inscriptions. Christoph Luxenberg points out that a better translation is "Praised be the servant of God and His messenger." A text from the 690s mentions Muslims, but the only copy we have of this text is an Ethiopic version from 1602. Various other records suggest that the Qur'an's text was in flux for at least two hundred years.

 

Chapter Two, "Creating Muhammad" quotes John of Damascus. John mentioned Mamed, a false prophet, who used pre-existing material, including Arianism, to create his own heresy. John was familiar with the Qur'an. His comments about the Qur'an's contents suggest that even by 730 AD, the Qur'an had yet to be formalized.

 

Ibn Ishaq (704–767) produced a "massive" and "extraordinarily detailed" portrait of Muhammad. This work is lost. It was passed on to Ibn Hisham, an Egyptian, who died in 833. Ibn Hisham acknowledged that he changed the material he received. Two hundred years after Muhammad's death, very detailed material about his life and sayings began to appear. Al-Bukhari (810–870) produced a large collection of hadiths. Al-Bukhari allegedly collected 600,000 hadiths, 593,000 of which he rejected as inauthentic. Al-Bukhari's native language was Persian, not Arabic, and he was born roughly 2,000 miles from Saudi Arabia; he worked two hundred years after Muhammad's death in 632.

 

Compare this to the New Testament writers, who lived where Jesus lived, wrote decades, not centuries, after Jesus lived, and knew Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. New Testament texts are well supported by thousands of early, original documents.

 

Several other hadith collections appear in the ninth century. From whence these thousands of records of Muhammad's words and deeds? The claim is that these very detailed hadiths had been accurately preserved in oral tradition. Spencer points out that thousands were rejected as fake. Muslims themselves, in the past and today, are quoted as expressing skepticism for the methods used to "authenticate" hadiths. Some even quote other Muslims acknowledging that they invented hadiths to suit their purposes. Hadiths sometimes contradict each other, contradict the Qur'an, or quote different sources meant to authenticate them. One example of contradictory hadiths: one hadith praises Farsi as a divine language and denigrates Arabic; a mirror hadith praises Arabic as divine and denigrates Farsi. Muslims are quoted as despairing over ridiculous hadiths, such as "Allah created the Angels from the hair of His anus and chest," and "Eggplant is a cure for every disease."

 

Chapter Three, "Becoming a Prophet," mentions a key flaw in Muhammad's received biography. The Mecca described in the Islamic canon has no historical existence outside of that canon, and its existence is unlikely. Patricia Crone points out that Greek and Latin authors wrote of trade with Arabia, but not of Mecca. "Considerable attention was paid to Arabian affairs, too; but of Quraysh and their trading center there is no mention at all, be it in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic, or other literature composed outside Arabia before the conquests. This silence is striking and significant," Crone writes.

 

Muhammad's biography was constructed over time, with various factions harmonizing their beliefs with each other, for example, in competing dates for Muhammad's birth. Muhammad also was called by various names, suggesting that perhaps the legends of various Arab warlords were combined.

 

Antisemitism blights biographies of Muhammad. Jews threaten and scheme against the great man and his divine destiny. Spencer writes that antisemitism "runs through the hadith literature … the Jews are constantly depicted as scheming against Allah and his people … Jews and Christians are depicted throughout the entirety of the hadith and sira literature [as] enemies of Allah and the Muslims."

 

The antisemitism here is dark, twisted, manipulative propaganda. It is diabolically composed to warp the mind and soul of the believer, to render him suspicious and contemptuous of every Jew he encounters. It is absolutely comparable to Nazi propaganda. These hadiths, Qur'an quotes, and episodes from Muhammad's official biographies are the backbone of Islam. There is nothing comparable in the Jewish Bible or the New Testament.

 

Throughout chapter three, Spencer highlights the many contradictions regarding key features of Muhammad's prophetic biography in various versions of Islamic canonical literature. One elaborately embroidered set piece, involving perfume, a striped robe, a slaughtered cow and Muhammad's drunken and easily deceived father-in-law, is contradicted by another account in which the father-in-law was dead at the time and couldn't possibly have starred in this story.

 

Various named angels are said to have communicated with Muhammad. In some versions Gabriel gives him the Qur'an. In other versions, other angels do so, including Saraphel and Asrafil, along with an unnamed messenger. Saraphel and Asrafil have since disappeared from tradition, with Gabriel winning out as sole angelic communicator. Sources offer differing quotes of Allah's first revelation to Muhammad. These quotes are as different as "Read: in the name of your Lord who created," and "O you enveloped in your cloak." Spencer writes that in "Islamic accounts of Muhammad’s birth, early life, and call to become a prophet, virtually every detail is controverted … The large number of disagreements on small and large aspects of the story cut against the common assumption that this is historical material that was passed on faithfully with a high degree of accuracy."

 

Chapter Four, "A Difficult Beginning," introduces Ali, whom Shi'ites regard as Muhammad's appropriate successor. Material is "formulated," Spencer theorizes, to explain the split between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Spencer mentions connections between Islam's origins and the Nabateans, who lived in and around Petra, now in Jordan. He quotes linguist Mark Durie. The Qur'an is not written in the dialect of Mecca; rather it is closer to Nabatean Arabic dialect. 

 

Muhammad was saddened that his prophecies alienated his own people, who were Pagans. Muhammad then produced the Satanic verses. These verses allow for worship of popular Pagan goddesses. Muhammad's biographers, again, writing remote from where he allegedly lived and hundreds of years afterward, produced melodramatic set pieces describing Muhammad's quivering internal life that allowed him to fall prey to Satan and include Satanic verses in the Qur'an. Tabari quotes Muhammad saying, "I have fabricated things against God and have imputed to Him words which he has not spoken." When Salman Rushdie's novel brought these verses to light, Muslims murdered his Japanese translator and others, and eventually a Muslim stabbed Rushdie.

 

In Chapter Five, "Getting Married and Going to Paradise," readers learn that Muhammad wanted to divorce his fat wife Sawdah, who avoided ignominy by giving her "day" to Aisha, Muhammad's favorite, his child bride. Muhammad liked to watch Aisha and her friends play with dolls. That Muhammad married a child is cited by Muslim leaders as support for the marriage of little girls today, for example, from Islamonline, "It is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl." Khomeini advised fathers to get their daughters married before they reached puberty.

 

Spencer explains the absurdity of the claim that Jerusalem is sacred to Muslims. Muhammad was supposed to have traveled to a Jerusalem mosque but that mosque had not been built in his lifetime. "Jerusalem" is not mentioned in the Qur'an. Spencer points out many other holes in this claim.

 

Spencer mentions a couple of the many incidences of recycling and repurposing of Bible narratives in Islamic literature, including Abraham bargaining with God and the Transfiguration. Again, Spencer finds contradictions in canonical accounts of key Islamic scriptures; again he cites Muslims who noticed these contradictions and struggled to excuse them.

 

During his magical journeys, Muhammad visits Hell and describes vivid tortures, including sinners eating and defecating fire. He sees women hanging by their breasts.

 

Chapter Six "The Hijrah" cites more instances of Muhammad's biographers plagiarizing from the lives of Biblical figures. Spencer also cites many more instances of contradictions in Muhammad's biography. In at least one case, the same speaker gave two different lengths of time for Muhammad to have lived in Mecca. Versions "flatly contradict other accounts, with no possibility of harmonization … this man’s biography was being formulated by committee, or different committees in different areas, and while there was broad agreement about the overall story, there was no convergence on the details."

 

Various traditions offer contradictory accounts of the command to pray towards Mecca, with other options for prayer direction also described. These ninth-century accounts "suggest that the direction for prayer was still a live controversy at the time that the hadiths were compiled and the inauthentic ones supposedly winnowed out." That there was still controversy suggests that the Qur'an had yet to be standardized at a time when it was later said to have been widely known and memorized.

 

Hadiths reflect a debate about urination or defecation while facing the qibla. A hadith claims that Muhammad relieved himself while facing the qibla. This hadith looks like an invention to settle a dispute about toilet etiquette. Chapter six summarizes some vicious antisemitic material which I will not recount here. Buy the book and read it. You need to know about this, as it is playing out in our contemporary politics, from Israel to New York City to Michigan.  

 

Chapter Seven, "Jews, Christians, Hypocrites, Polytheists" opens with Muhammad's pro-stoning position. As in antisemitic material that positions fictional self-hating Jews as proof that Jews are terrible people, the pro-stoning material uses those about to be stoned as support for their own stoning. This rhetorical ploy is ridiculously transparently manipulative propaganda and infinitely malicious.

 

Again, contradictions arise. Muhammad orders the stoning of men, but then says stoning is only for women. Hadiths say that there is a verse in the Qur'an that does not exist in the Qur'an as we now have it. The Qur'an quotes Jews as saying that Ezra is the son of God; in fact Jews have never said this.

 

Ibn Hisham said that Islam could be found in the Torah. This is of course false. To make this statement true, Muslims insist that Jews and Christians deleted Islam from the Old and New Testaments. The Qur'an says that Mary, Jesus' mother, is the sister of Moses. This silly mistake springs from confusion. Moses' sister was named Miriam. She and Mary are separated by over a thousand years. The Qur'an suggests, and Muslims believe, that the trinity consists of God the Father, Jesus, and Mary.

 

Ibn Hisham threatens Christians with "extermination" for rejecting Muhammad. Muhammad and companions "Kill as many as they could" of a caravan, and "take what they had" for doing so is justifiable as long as you are a Muslim spreading Islam and need funds. "Muslims are allowed to set aside any law or custom if they consider themselves to be suffering persecution."

 

Chapter Eight, "Muhammad Deals with his Enemies" opens with a discussion of the Qur'an's repurposing of Biblical, Talmudic, and folkloric material. Accounts of the Battle of Badr "prove" to the believer that violence in the name of Islam carried out by faithful Muslims will always be successful. "Allah rewards piety with earthly victory … Warfare in Islam is thus not primarily a grim necessity for defense … or even a harsh but indispensable means for expansion … It is an occasion for him to give his blessings and rewards to those who have served him faithfully." Battle of Badr accounts are like a "well-crafted novel" designed to lure men to jihad. Disagreements among various battle accounts "demonstrate that the appearance of careful historical accuracy is illusory." Again, Biblical accounts are ransacked for details.

 

The Qur'an says that Muhammad could not perform miracles, but subsequent Islamic canonical literature depicts Muhammad performing miracles. "It is possible … that the Qur’an they read was not identical to the version that most Muslim believers read today."

 

Spencer cites further antisemitic material. A repeated motif in this material is a person's genitals being publicly exposed, and viewers guffawing at this. This is material of a very low level; it is canonical latrinalia.

 

Spencer cites numerous cases where Muhammad orders the killing and even torture of people who have criticized him. Victims include Ka‘b ibn al-Ashraf, a Jewish poet. His killers present his decapitated head to Muhammad, who blesses them. "Kill any Jew that falls into your power." A Muslim follow this advice and kills a Jew who had benefitted him. His brother reprimanded the murderer. The killer told his brother that if Muhammad had ordered him to kill his brother, he would have. The brother was impressed by this level of fanaticism and converted to Islam.

 

Chapter Nine, "Defeat, Revenge, and Exile" quotes Muhammad saying to a captive, "Convert – if you convert, we will not kill you." Spencer explains, "The only way that non-Muslims could prevent the Muslims from killing them … was by bearing witness to Muhammad's status as a prophet." Spencer quotes Muhammad, "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me."

 

Muslims lost a battle at Mount Uhud. "Muhammad revealed his undying thirst for vengeance." Spencer quotes yet another hadith involving people's private parts being publicly exposed and observers laughing. Muhammad laughed heartily to see an enemy's buttocks exposed, after that enemy exposed someone else's privates. "The motif … [is seen] throughout Islamic history." One wonders if underwear had been invented in Saudi Arabia earlier the world could have been spared the scourge of jihad.

 

These anecdotes of Muhammad laughing when an opponent is publicly exposed and humiliated are just part of the reason Spencer can state that "The Christian idea of 'love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you' (Matthew 5:43), and the Judeo-Christian one of 'do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles' (Proverbs 24:17) is completely foreign" to the mindset of the stories of Muhammad laughing at an enemy's exposure and humiliation.

 

Spencer outlines conflicting Islamic dictates for how to conduct war. One recommends, for example, not cutting down fruit-bearing trees. On the other hand, Muhammad did just that in warfare against a Jewish tribe, the Banu Nadir. Muhammad defeated the Banu Nadir. "They ruined their houses with their own hands," the Qur'an says. This passage is used by the Muslim Brotherhood today. They hope to destroy Western Civilization with the help of Westerners themselves.

 

Chapter Ten "Problems and Solutions" offers further background into the split between Sunni and Shi'a. An anecdote recounts that Aisha got lost and was rescued by a man. Rumors spread that the two had intimate contact. Evidently it's impossible for Muslims to imagine a man helping a woman without having sex with her. Ali made a dismissive comment to Muhammad about Aisha. Muhammad established the rule that no man can be convicted of rape unless there are four witnesses to the rape. This rule obtains today.

 

Chapter Ten also covers the incident where Muhammad took his adopted son's wife as his own wife. This is cited even today as the reason for Islam's disapproval of adoption. The chapter proceeds to a detailed account of yet another of Muhammad's genocidal campaigns against the Jewish tribes that once populated Saudi Arabia. Spencer quotes Al-Waqidi's account. "Aisha used to say that the [Jewish tribe of] Banu Qurayza continued to be killed that day until it was night and that they were killed throughout the night with the help of a torch."

 

Of the same event, Ibn Hisham writes that Muhammad "struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches … There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900." A hadith quotes a putative Jewish survivor of this genocidal massacre. "They [Muslims] examined us [Jews], and those who had begun to grow hair [pubic hair] were killed, and those who had not were not killed. I was among those who had not grown hair." Muslims enslaved those women and children that they did not kill.

 

Chapter Eleven "A Time of Peace" continues the account of the massacre. Muhammad took one fifth of this booty stolen from dead Jews. From Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad took "some of the captive women of Banu Qurayza” and "sold them for horses and weapons." From Al-Waqidi, "Abu al-Shahm al-Yahudi bought two women, with each one of them three male children, for one hundred and fifty dinars." From a hadith, "We used to sell our slave women and the mothers of our children … when the Prophet was still living among us, and we did not see anything wrong with that." Al-Waqidi reports, "Muhammad saw Rayhana among the captive women and 'took her for himself as the leader’s share. She was beautiful.'"

 

Muhammad trades verbal barbs with an enemy Arab tribe. In one version, his companion, Abu Bakr, tells the Pagan Arabs to "Suck al-Lat's nipples," naming a Pagan deity. In another version, Abu Bakr says, "Suck the clitoris of Al-Lat!"

 

Spencer explains why no treaty with Muslims can last, based on accounts from Muhammad's biography. Treaties last only as long as Muslims are in the weaker position. Once they regain strength, they must resume jihad. Spencer describes an alleged correspondence between Muhammad and Emperor Heraclius. Outside of Islamic biographies of Muhammad, no record of this alleged correspondence exists.

 

Chapter Twelve "Triumph" describes the Khaybar Raid. Muhammad achieved victory over remaining Arab Jews. Safiya was a Jewish woman whose male relations were killed by Muslims. Muhammad chose her. Ibn Ishaq reports that she was 'beautified and combed, and got in a fit state for the apostle.'" Muhammad had sex with her immediately, "in the midst," as Spencer says, "of the dead bodies of Safiya’s countrymen." Ibn Ishaq quotes a Muslim who guarded Muhammad's "nuptial" tent that night. "I was afraid for you with this woman for you have killed her father, her husband, and her people," Muhammad's wives refer to Safiya as "O daughter of a Jew." As for her husband Kinana ibn al-Rabi, Muhammad ordered, "Torture him until you extract what he has." One of the Jewish captives poisoned Muhammad, but he survived. In one version, Muhammad had the poisoner crucified.

 

Muhammad takes over the Ka'ba, a Pagan shrine. A Muslim chants,

 

"We will fight you about its interpretation

 

As we have fought you about its revelation

 

With strokes that will remove heads from shoulders

 

And make friend unmindful of friend."

 

Spencer recounts Muhammad ordering the murder of more people whose only crime was criticizing him. Spencer mentions, in passing, an important historical point. Islam was triumphant because of a series of events, including war, that weakened both the Roman, aka Byzantine, and Persian Empires.

 

Chapter Thirteen "The End of the Prophet" addresses the question of succession and the split between Sunnis and Shi'a. Spencer theorizes that since the stories "explaining" the split and Ali's role emerged so long after the events they supposedly describe, these are probably invented to explain the split.

 

Muhammad preaches that "Poetry is from Satan." Muhammad has a mole that proves that he is prophet. To be clear; this is not a blind, subterranean mammal, but a mark on his skin. It would be silly to believe that a little mammal could prove prophetic authenticity, whereas putting faith in a skin defect makes perfect sense.

 

Muhammad's formerly adopted son orders the torture and death of Umm Qirfah, a "very old" female Arab tribal leader. She is tied to two camels that are then driven apart; they tear her body to bits. Her daughter is captured and presented to Muhammad as a war prize; he gives her to his uncle. Muhammad orders the death of Abu Afa, "an elderly poet who had criticized Muhammad." Asma bint Marwan, a female poet who criticized Muhammad, is also killed. A Muslim owner of a pregnant female slave who criticized Muhammad murdered his pregnant slave by axing her in the stomach.

 

A rule is established whereby a non-Muslim killed by a Muslim merits no "blood money;" blood money was a primitive form of justice in the Saudi Arabia of that time. This approach obtains in Islamic jurisprudence today. As a twentieth-century jurist explains, "Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them."

 

Spencer mentions a devastating critique of the alleged "biographies" of Muhammad. There was a reform in time-keeping that is not accounted for in these biographies; this discrepancy casts major doubt on any truth value these documents may have.

 

Muhammad dies, possibly of having been poisoned by a Jewish captive years before. In the Shi'a version, it is perhaps Aisha who poisons him. In another tradition, Aisha rejoices that Muhammad died on the day of "her turn," that is, the day when Muhammad was to have sex with her, rather than any of his other wives or concubines. She is also happy that their saliva mingled before his death.

 

Chapter Fourteen "Muhammad's Character" states what has been obvious to any intelligent reader for all of the previous hundreds of pages. Spencer also points out that Muhammad's biography may be based on Moses or Emperor Heraclius. Spencer highlights some final contradictions. Muhammad, for example, did / did not strike women. Spencer quotes disturbing hadiths sanctioning child sexual abuse, incest, and necrophilia. These hadiths are explicit.

 

Chapter Fifteen "Muhammad's Wisdom," covers the folk beliefs found in some hadiths. Satan inhabits the human nose; "The eyes are the leather strap of the anus;" flies dipped in food prevent disease; water cannot cause disease even if it contains feces; drinking camel urine is medicinal; Jews cause meat to decay; Jews and Christians will replace Muslims in Hell; infant victims of female infanticide go to Hell with their parents who killed them; non-Muslims have seven intestines; Muslims have one intestine.

 

Chapter Sixteen "The Legend Continues" offers a brief survey of scholarship that all but conclusively proves that what we have as "biographies" of Muhammad are in fact embroideries of legendary material; these detailed, novelistic accounts were set down centuries after the events they purport to describe.

 

Inevitably, if Islam apologists were to address Spencer's courageous work, they would advance the following arguments.

 

1.) "But Muslims are very nice people."

 

Yes, many Muslims are wonderful people. Spencer's book is a critique of the biographies of Muhammad. Inevitably, for the past 1,400 years, a critical mass of Muslims have followed the example of Muhammad, the perfect man, worthy of emulation.

 

2.) "But the Gospels were written hundreds of years after Jesus lived; Jesus is a mythological character like Mithra."

 

The above is simply false. New Testament texts were written decades, not centuries, after Jesus' death. There are abundant other reasons why even secular historians confirm that Jesus existed. To acquaint oneself with this scholarship, simply search "The historicity of Jesus."

 

3.) "Bible characters did bad things."

 

Accounts of bad behavior on the part of Biblical characters are descriptive, not prescriptive. When David sent Uriah to his death in order to marry Bathsheba, the Bible makes clear that David is committing a horrible crime. He is called out and punished. When Muslims kill and take victims' widows as their sex slaves, Allah is rewarding them appropriately.

 

4.) "There is some wacky stuff in the Bible."

 

Genesis stories that strain credulity are often meant as teaching texts, not literal history. Few Jews or Christians today take literally the story of Jonah being swallowed by a fish, for example. The Bible and the Koran and hadith are not comparable. I've addressed this in previous Front Page publications; see for example here and here.

 

5.) "Spencer is just cherry-picking, and focusing on the bad stuff."

 

Spencer is a world class expert in Islam's foundational documents. He cites authoritative scholars, both Western and Islamic. He has published a history of jihad, a text of the Qur'an complete with notes from canonical Muslim scholars, and he edits a blog that documents current behavior. Religions create profiles. These profiles are generated from what foundational documents actually say, how powerful commentators interpret those documents, and how believers behave. Islam's profile reflects the material Spencer presents in his works.

 

A PERSONAL NOTE

 

Brilliant colors of fallen leaves remind New Jerseyans that change is the nature of nature. In the future, my work will appear less often in Front Page Magazine.

 

Several years ago, David Horowitz emailed me. He had read something I wrote and liked it. I think it was my essay, "Ten Reasons I Am No Longer a Leftist." Horowitz invited me to write for Front Page. He promised me that I could write about whatever I liked.

 

This invitation amazed me for two reasons. One, back in my young leftist days, senior leftists taught me that David Horowitz was Satan incarnate. Two, no one had voiced as much faith in my writing as David Horowitz, and backed that faith up with an offer of a paying job.

 

Though I am no longer a leftist, I have never come to self-identify as a conservative. I did disagree with David about some matters, and when I did, I told him so. My independence of thought never caused him to withdraw his offer of allowing me to write for him.

 

I am eternally grateful to David Horowitz. Through David, I was able to meet people I have admired from afar, including Heather MacDonald, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer. I have loved writing for Front Page. I am profoundly grateful for my gracious, supportive editors. I have very much enjoyed reading reader comments.

 

I was affiliated with universities, as a student and then as an adjunct professor, for many years. During my years in academia, I was told – explicitly – that my facial expressions were problematical – not worshipful enough of my great man professors. My questions were inflammatory. My answers were unspeakable. My background, as a proud child of Polish and Slovak peasant immigrants, my identity as a working class woman who had performed a variety of blue collar labor, and as a practicing and unapologetic Catholic, all rendered me unfit for funding and unemployable in a tenure-track job. As an adjunct with no job security, I was pressured every semester to record passing grades for students who did virtually no work.

 

I have been repeatedly reprimanded and even kicked off of mainstream websites for comments that don't meet censorship's requirements. Nothing like that has happened to me at Front Page. Front Page has allowed me to think, and to express myself, and I cannot say how much joy that has brought me, and how grateful I am.

 

As mentioned above, I was recently silenced on a discussion board. In one offending comment, I urged those unquestioningly pushing trans extremism to watch Chloe Cole's interview with Jordan Peterson. Chloe was molested by another student at school. She was brainwashed by adults to believe that a double mastectomy would prevent any further molestation. Now an adult herself, she deeply regrets losing her breasts.

 

At that same private discussion site, I also mentioned that Islam mandates the death penalty for those who insult Islam, the Qur'an, or Muhammad. I mentioned that this mandate is regularly carried out by Muslims. Samuel Paty was a French school teacher, a son, a brother, a husband, and a father of a five-year-old boy. A Muslim, obedient to Islam's dictates and Muhammad's example, beheaded Paty in 2020.

 

At that private discussion site, a beautiful young white girl played the role of thought police. She accused me of saying things that were not "kind" and not "true." In fact nothing is less kind or less true than maintaining rigid control over public speech such that the suffering of Chloe Cole and Samuel Paty is pushed down the memory hole.

 

God bless David Horowitz, and God bless and guide readers and authors at Front Page. Please carry on doing what David Horowitz, years ago, invited me to do. Say what is kind; say what is true; what the thought police render unsayable, say exactly that.

 

Danusha V. Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery