The Christian Origins of Islam
10th December 2012
Near the bottom of the pit of hell, Dante encounters a man walking with his torso split from chin to groin, his guts and other organs spilling out. “See how I tear myself!” the man shrieks. “See how Mahomet is deformed and torn!” For us, the scene is not only gruesome but surprising, for Dante is not in a circle of false religion but in a circle reserved for those who tear the body of Christ. Like many medieval Christians, Dante views Islam less as a rival religion than as a schismatic form of Christianity.
St John of Damascus, in his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, also classified Islam as an heretical Christian sect. Since he lived in the 8th century and his grandfather worked for the Omayyad caliph, his opinion would appear to be respectable.
The year 622-which Muslims mark as the year Mohammed and his followers made the Hijira, a fateful journey from Mecca to Medina-was not originally connected with Mohammed at all. Before there is any record of Muslims dating time from the Hijra, Arabic Christians dated the beginning of the Arabic era to 622, when they gained independence from Persias Sassanian empire.
Hmmm.
Other early Islamic texts support the notion that Islam emerged not as a new religion but as a novel development within a Syriac Christian milieu. In his contribution to Hidden Origins, Luxenberg applies his method to the inscription on the Dome of the Rock, which seems to contain a straightforward Islamic confession: “There is no god but God alone . . . Mohammed the servant of God and messenger.” Luxenberg points out that Mohammed, usually understood as a proper name, means “exalted be” or “praised be,” and also notes that Syriac Christians, who were skeptical of the Nicene doctrine of Jesus divine sonship, preferred Isaiahs title “Servant” for Jesus. He contends that the inscription should read: “There is no god but God alone . . . Praised be the servant of God and his messenger.” This makes better sense of the sequel, which explicitly identifies “Messiah Jesus, son of Mary” as “the messenger of God and his Word.” An inscription about Jesus was later reinterpreted as a confession of a different faith entirely.
That’ll get your head cut off in the Dar al-Islam. Robert Spencer looks at this in greater detail in his recent book, Did Mohammed Exist?, which I highly recommend.