It wasn't Mohammed who founded Islam.

[Rayaan]

Disagree with me?
So then tell me where they got their info from?

From oral tradition and early Muslim historians. There are also written records of Muhammad coming from both Muslims and non-Muslims, though they may be posthumous.

You still haven't told me where you got your info from about Abd-Al-Malik being the official founder of Islam.

Anyway, biased does not mean wrong. You should know that. It just means some flourishes must have been added to the tale (and some nasties were removed) in the recounting that eventually settled in the written form.

Well, even if we take bias to mean that some things were added to or omitted from the final written form, that still doesn't the justify the claim (let alone prove) that Abd-Al-Malik and his scribes were behind all of this.

Can you honestly say that all the information regarding Mohammad and his descendants is recorded exactly as it happened for real?

Of course not all the information is accurate, but I believe that a vast majority of it is true.

sigh... religion is different from cult.

How is that helping your argument though? Are you trying to tell me that the first Muslims were members of a cult and not of a religion? If so, then please do explain your answer.

More to the point, exactly how do you differentiate between what is religion and what is cult?

The tribal cult that sprung up after Mohammad's death, became a basis to the religion he instated throughout the empire.

"Religion" is the wrong word. The same Wiki article (which you first linked to) states that Abd-Al-Malik consolidated and extended the Muslim rule, in that particular empire, not the religion.

"Extending the Muslim rule" and "instating/establishing a religion" are not the same thing and you know that.

And, following the best roman practices, he must have incorporated a few elements from each area of the empire, so that all would feel like they belong to this new religion.

Which is, once again, pure conjecture. You haven't yet provided any historical material to support that claim.

And Mo getting godlike intel from an angel, memorizing all of it, recounting it all to this tribe, having those people go on recounting it to their descendents and those to their descendents, all the while they're in an ongoing war for territory, until someone remembers to gather all of them and write it down for posterity.... and what was written was verbatim what the angel told Mo... that makes sense and is in accordance with everything we know of human nature...
Talk about grasping at straws... -.-'

I'm not saying that you have to believe any of this. But the debate here is particularly about which is the most historically consistent account of the origin of Islam as acknowledged in scholarly literature.

You wrote in the previous reply (emphasis mine):

As I said way up there... Abd Al-Malik was the guy who made it the "state religion"... the guy who made arabic the "state language"... the guy, most likely, had his scribes write the qur'an as a political tool, following the best practices of the romans when they took on the bible.

So again, what scholarly materials - or even oral traditions - can you show me which substantiate your claim that Abd-Al-Malik is the guy who ("most likely") had his scribes write the Quran?

Mere guesses and "most likely" do not constitute a historical account, in case you were thinking of using that again.