Quote:1. There are mention of him by his friends, family members, caliphs/successors, AND historians.
2. If Muhammad didn't exist, then how did Islam start in the first place? Who did all the Muslims learn from?
3. I think it is more likely to be correct if a person says that Muhammad was not a "prophet" than saying that he was "non-existent."
4. So you believe that Muhammad is a fictional character (if you're being honest).
Rayaan.....( and glad to see you are back to Rayaan...the spider thing was creepy) the xtians use exactly the same line of "reasoning" for their boy.
Oh, there must have been a jesus/mohammad otherwise who would have given us the fucking word? But will you also concede that there was a real Zeus? Osiris?? Jupiter??? Shiva???? Marduk????? etc., etc. or is this going to be more special pleading? You believe in one god but man has invented thousands upon thousands of them? Did they all have a historical person behind them? I'm sorry to have to tell you this but the odds are that your angry desert god is just one more human invention among thousands and thousands of others.
Let's see...jesus comes complete with a whole made up family and circle of friends and "disciples" and "apostles" and miracles and wonders and historians of the time paid absolutely no attention to him at all. In fact, the gap is so fucking glaring that when xtians found themselves on Emperor Constantine's "friends list" they tried to go back and write a few references to their boy into the historical record. They weren't very good at it and scholars have detected the forgeries.
Independent scholars....i.e., those who aren't terribly worried about having a fatwa placed on their head by some fanatic...date the koran to about 100 years after mohammad's supposed death. Coincidentally, roughly the same amount of time it took xtianity to get cracking after the supposed death of its founder. The similarities are intriguing.
I imagine there were thousands of people named "mohammad" so I really don't have a problem with your point #3. It is not mohammad who cleaned up camel shit on the Mecca to Medina route that we are concerned with, after all. You want a specific "mohammad" just like the xtians want a specific "jesus" because that too was a pretty common name.
Again, pointing to your religious texts and shouting "THERE HE IS" at the top of your lungs is not very convincing. A single reference from a Byzantine writer about how mohammad's armies were ripping up commerce would be more impressive than all the phony shit that you and the xtians come up with.
And you don't have that.
#4. Yes. That's what I just said.
