The Impact of Islam

by Emmet Scott

  We should note also, before continuing, that the Muslim habit of concealing women behind all-encompassing veils probably had more to do, in its origins, with concealment of valuable assets than with modesty.

  Finally, before finishing, there arrives the inevitable question: What if? What if Islam had been triumphant? What if Europe had become Muslim in the seventh and eighth, or even the tenth or eleventh, centuries? As I remarked Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited, no less a person than Edward Gibbon mused on the likely outcome of an Islamic conquest of France in the eighth century, when he noted that, had such an event transpired, then the whole of western Europe must inevitably have fallen, and the Dean of Oxford would likely then have been expounding the truths of the Koran to a circumcised congregation. Against such “calamities,” noted Gibbon, was Christendom rescued by the victory of Charles Martel at Tours in 732. Adolf Hitler also contemplated the outcome of a Muslim conquest at this time, and regretted the failure of Islam to dominate the continent. He reasoned that a Muslim Germany would have bred fierce warriors who might easily have dominated the world.[12]

  However, neither the humorous prognostication of Gibbon nor the vicious one of Hitler are likely to have come anywhere near the truth. From what we have seen of Islam’s record elsewhere, it is likely that the continent would have entered a Dark Age from which it would never have emerged. If we seek the model for Europe as a whole we might look to Albania or the Caucasus of the nineteenth century. These regions, inhabited by semi-Islamicized tribes, were the theaters of perpetual feuding. A Europe under Islam would have been no different: A backward and greatly under-populated wasteland fought over by Muslim tribal chiefs, conditions would have persisted right into the present century.

  Europe of the seventh and eighth centuries was, after centuries of population decline under the Romans (from the second century at least) under-peopled and largely rural. Rome herself, by this time, had probably around 30,000 inhabitants or even less. No other town on the continent had any more. It is highly unlikely that the incoming Muslims would have altered that situation for the better. The whole region would certainly have been plundered for its human resources: white skinned slaves were always prized in the House of Islam. The few small urban centers, in Italy, France and Spain, would probably have survived and been transformed into local power bases of the caliphate. Rome may have emulated tenth century Cordoba and become temporarily prosperous on the plunder accrued from other regions of Europe. Throughout the continent there would probably have survived, for a while, an impoverished and sorely oppressed remnant population of Christians. In Rome the pope would have presided over a miserable and decaying Vatican, whose main monuments, such as the original Saint Peter’s, founded by Constantine, would have been transformed into a mosque almost immediately after the Muslim takeover. All the artwork and statuary of imperial Rome would have been effaced and demolished. In such a Europe the entire heritage of classical civilization would have been forgotten. Of Caesar and his conquests, of Greece with her warriors and philosophers, the modern world would know nothing. The very names would have been lost. No child now would know of Troy or Mycenae, of Marathon or Thermopylae. The history of Egypt too, and all the great civilizations of the Near East, would lie buried in the drifting sands of those lands, forever lost and forgotten.

  There would have been no High Middle Ages, with their Gothic cathedrals, no Renaissance, no Enlightenment, and no Age of Science.

  The fall of Europe would have had consequences far beyond its shores; and the twenty-first century may have dawned with an Islamic (and under-populated and impoverished) India threatening the existence of China, which would then likely be the last significant non-Muslim civilization. The wars waged between the two would be pre-modern, and though the two sides might employ primitive firearms and cannons, the sword and the bow would remain the most important weaponry, and rules of engagement would be savage.

  [1] Lewis, op cit., p. 156.

  [2] According to Ralph A. Austen, around four million black Africans were taken across the Sahara into North Africa between the tenth century and the start of the twentieth. Another six million arrived in the Islamic world via the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. See Austen, Trans-Sharan Africa in World History (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 32.

  [3] Trevor-Roper, op cit., p. 147.

  [4] Bertrand, op cit., p. 160.

  [5] See www.roconsulboston.com/Pages/InfoPages/Culture/Roma150Yrs.html

  [6] The Turks only acceded to the abolition of slavery under intense pressure from Europeans. There was never, at any time, an abolition movement within the Muslim world. Indeed slavery still persists in a more or less clandestine fashion in various parts of the Muslim world to this day.

  [7] Hitler, in planning the murder of Europe’s Jews, is reputed to have quietened the fears of his fellow Nazis by asking “Who now remembers the Armenians [murdered by the Turks]?”

  [8] A BBC documentary of 2010 entitled “Afghanistan’s Dancing Boys” describes the plight of young boys in that region who serve powerful men – usually warlords – as entertainers and catamites. Tank battles have on occasion been fought by Afghan warlords over the attentions some of these boys. See e.g. Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, 12 November 2002, “Was it worth it?”

  [9] Trevor-Roper, op cit., p. 12.

  [10] There are very many of these, though perhaps that of Volney, C. F., Travels through Syria and Egypt 2 Vols. (London, 1787) is best known.

  [11] Lewis, What Went Wrong? p. 158.

  [12] Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (Simon and Schuster, London, 1997), p. 96.

  Appendix

  The Mysterious Origins of Islam

  The story of Islam’s origins is a familiar one and well-known even amongst non-Muslims. We are told how Muhammad, a youthful and pious member of the Hashem clan, who had earlier married a wealthy widow, regularly prayed in a cave outside Mecca. There he received a vision of the Archangel Gabriel, who instructed him to “recite” the words he spoke; which recitations became the book we now call the Qur’an.

  Familiar too is the story of how Muhammad’s revelations were rejected by the people of Mecca, compelling him to escape to Medina, where he found the people more ready to listen. Several years later he is said to have returned to Mecca at the head of a victorious army, overthrowing his most stubborn opponents. Following these events, the Prophet led his followers in numerous campaigns throughout the Arabian Peninsula, conquering and converting the entire country. We are told how, following his death, leadership of the new movement devolved upon a series of caliphs, who led the armies of Islam to victory over the mighty Byzantine and Persian empires.

  That, in a nutshell, is the story that has been told of Islam's origins since the beginning of the eighth century. Unfortunately, there is not a single element of this narrative which can stand up to historical criticism. The past few years have seen a proliferation of studies into the faith’s roots; studies which have begun to subject it to the same critical examination that Christianity has undergone now for a century and a half. And the results of these studies have revealed that almost everything traditionally accepted about Islam’s origins is fictitious. It has been shown, for example, that the Qur’an could not possibly have been written when tradition says it was and that the very existence of a man called Muhammad is called into question.

  Among the numerous titles which have appeared recently we may cite in particular The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran by Christoph Luxenberg (2007) and The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into its Early History, a series of essays edited by Karl-Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin (2009). Upon the publication of Luxenberg’s book, the popular media (perhaps typically) focused on his claim that the 72 virgins promised to Islamic martyrs was a mistranslation, and that
what was actually on offer was 72 raisins, or grapes. Yet this was the very least of what Luxenberg was saying, the full import of which was ignored in the newspapers. In fact, he was claiming that the original language of the Qur’an was not Arabic (where the questionable word is read as “virgins”) but Syriac or Aramaic, where the same word would translate as “grapes.” He was furthermore claiming, sensationally enough, that the Qur’an was originally a Syriac Christian devotional text and had nothing to do with Muhammad or Islam.

  Taking the lead from Luxenberg, several more recent studies have denied the existence of anyone called Muhammad in the first place. Amongst the better known of these are Norbert Pressburg’s Good Bye Mohammed (2009) and Robert Spencer’s Did Muhammad Exist? An Enquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins (2012). Though both Spencer and Pressburg are seen as critics of Islam, their books examine the evidence, both archaeological and textual, in a scholarly fashion, and the conclusions they reach are devastating to the accepted narrative of Islam’s origins and early history.

  Some of the earliest recognizably Muslim artefacts are coins, and the Spencer and Pressburg books consider the evidence of these in detail. There we find that the earliest Islamic coins minted in Syria show a figure holding a cross. Some of these, the earliest of which are from the time of Caliph Muawiya and traditionally dated between 647 and 658, have the name “Muhammad” beside the figure with the cross. Not surprisingly, these artefacts do not figure prominently in popularized accounts of the development of Islamic coinage: They are far too problematic. To begin with, they violate a number of principles which are now regarded as fundamental to the Islamic faith. They display an image – perhaps even that of the prophet Muhammad; and even worse, they have that image holding a cross. Among Muslims the cross is anathema; it is an anti-sign. Islamic tradition denies that Jesus (whom it admits was a prophet) died on the cross and dissociates Jesus entirely from what it considers a symbol of shame.

  Evidently when these coins were minted, in the middle of the seventh century, the Islamic theology with which we are now familiar had not evolved. But there is even worse. It would appear that the figure holding the cross, beside which sometimes appears the name “Muhammad,” may not represent the prophet of Islam at all, but Jesus. As Spencer emphasizes, the word “Muhammad” in Arabic and Syriac implies the “praised one” or “chosen one,” and may be a title or epithet as much as a real name. As a personal name Muhammad is in fact unattested before the seventh century, and indeed, considering the word’s meaning it is unlikely that anyone named Muhammad ever existed in Arabia before this time. Parents do not normally call their child by titles such as “chosen one.” In short, even if an Arab prophet and war-leader called Muhammad existed, it is highly likely that this name was only given to him after his death, or at least late in life. But the fact that the figure on the coins is holding a cross would indicate very strongly that the “praised one” in question was not the prophet of Islam, but Jesus of Nazareth! And this is made all the more likely when we consider the strong links between Jesus and Muhammad in Islamic tradition. According to this, Jesus foretold the coming of Muhammad, who he named Ahmed. The “Muhammad prophecy” of Jesus is referred to by Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad's earliest biographer, who remarked that in the Gospel passage where Jesus refers to the coming of the Comforter [Aramaic Munahhemana], he is actually referring to the coming of Muhammad. Ibn Ishaq explains: “the Munahhemana (God bless and preserve him!) in Syriac is Muhammad; in Greek he is paraclete.” However, Ibn Ishaq's English translator Alfred Guillaume notes that the word Munahhemana “in the Eastern patristic literature … is applied to Our Lord Himself”. The original bearer of the title “praised one,” said Guillaume, was Jesus, and this title and the accompanying prophecy were “skillfully manipulated to provide the reading we have” in Ibn Ishaq's biography.[1]

  What can all this possibly mean? Is it possible that the “prophet Muhammad” was invented several decades after Islam, or the faith we now call Islam, appeared on the world stage? This is a possibility considered by Spencer and he provides very good grounds for doing so.

  As Spencer notes, none of the early texts or inscriptions of the seventh century which refer to Islam mention either Muhammad, the Qur’an or even the word Islam. Indeed, inscriptions – both on coins and elsewhere – of the early Islamic authorities use terms and expressions not found in the Qur’an. This, among other things, has prompted several historians to suggest that the Qur’an did not then exist and would not exist until near the end of the seventh century – or even the early eighth century.

  The evidence, taken together, would suggest that the “Islam” which conquered the Middle East and North Africa during the seventh century was substantially different from the Islam with which we are now familiar. Rules such as that prohibiting images and the cross apparently did not then exist. And there is good reason to believe that the Qur’an, as we now know it, had not yet appeared – and would not appear until the middle of the eighth century.

  That Islam was deeply indebted to Christianity and Judaism has of course always been understood. The whole of the Qur’an is full of references to well-known biblical characters such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims accept all of the Old Testament as divinely revealed scripture and hold Jesus to be a great prophet. Islamic tradition speaks of the “Last Days” when the “Antichrist” will appear and when Jesus will return to judge mankind and destroy evildoers. But the more we investigate the faith the more thoroughly rooted in Judaism or Judeo-Christianity it appears. As Spencer notes, the earliest references to the followers of what we now call Islam by non-Muslims do not use the term “Muslim” or “Islam” at all, but instead speak of “Ishmaelites,” “Hagarians,” “Taiyaye,” or “Saracens.” The first two of these names are derived from the Book of Genesis, and indeed Islamic cultural vocabulary owes little to Arabia: There is scarcely a trace of native Arabian tradition in either the Qur’an or the hadiths. In the words of Arthur Jeffery, “the cultural vocabulary of the Koran is of non-Arabic origin.”[2] He continues, “From the fact that Muhammad was an Arab, brought up in the midst of Arabian paganism and practising its rites himself until well on in manhood, one would naturally have expected to find that Islam had its roots deep down in this old Arabian paganism. It comes, therefore, as no little surprise, to find how little of the religious life of this Arabian paganism is reflected in the pages of the Koran.”[3] Indeed, so little of Islam can be traced to Arabia that Luxenberg and several other commentators have suggested that we should seek its origins in the border regions of Israel and Syria.

  Islam’s cultural roots are in fact entirely biblical. The Torah, the first five books of the Bible, which are said to have been written by Moses, are accepted completely as divine revelation by Muslims. And the laws outlined in the Torah, especially in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, find their precise equivalents in Islamic law. Indeed the Jewish origins of Islamic moral and temporal law are well known and obvious. The strict monotheism of the Torah is matched by that of the Qur’an. The divine injunction to conquer the Promised Land found in the Torah is matched by the divine injunction of the Qur’an to conquer the world for Islam. Laws concerning divorce and adultery are identical in both religions. Both have circumcision. Even laws governing food are the same, with the same foods proscribed and permitted, and the same method of slaughter recommended.

  All of this leads to the suspicion that “Islam” was in origin a sect of Judaism, and this was the position adopted in the mid-twentieth century by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook. However, since Islam also honors Jesus, or Isha, then the purely Judaic origin of the faith seems doubtful. Much more likely is the proposition that it was originally a Jewish sect of Christianity – a line adopted by Gunter Luling and Christoph Luxenberg. We know in fact that several Judaizing sects of Christianity existed from the first century. These basically regarded Jesus as an orthodox Jew and demanded their followers accept the Law
of Moses in its entirety. The best known of such groups was that of the Ebionites or Nazarites. The latter was declared heretical at the Council of Nicea in 325, and thereafter disappeared from history. It is presumed that its adherents moved to the Arabian interior, or at least to that part of Arabia bordering Syria. But this is more than a presumption: We know for a fact that by the fifth century there existed large Christian communities throughout the Arabian Peninsula. None of these held by the doctrines taught in Constantinople or in the other major centres of Christendom: they were all profoundly Judaizing in character – Ebionite in short. Jesus was accepted as the Messiah, but not the Son of God; he was the “messenger” of God, and was portrayed as an orthodox Jew. The Christians of Arabia were all circumcised and devout followers of the Law of Moses. The Gospels were not accepted as accurate accounts of the life of Jesus and other, alternative gospels were used instead.

  In short, centuries before the supposed life of the prophet Muhammad there seems to have existed within Arabia a thriving religious movement which might be described as “proto-Islam.”