Unmasking Muhammad

“Muslims need to write an honest biography of the Prophet that does not shun the truth, least of
all cover it up with the dishonest subterfuge of condescending the Western scholars”.
------ Ibn Warraq, 2000, p. 21.
Towards the beginning of last century, there was a rising interest among the Western scholars to
investigate the origins of Islam and its founder, i.e., Prophet Muhammad. For this they had used
highest standard of historical scholarship available at that time. Their aim was to collect
authentic information about Muhammad and the rise of early Islam by carefully separating the
facts from fictions. In some ways the research on Muhammad was inspired by a similar type of
investigation of Christianity made famous by Albert Schweitzer’s famous work ‘The Quest of
the Historical Jesus’.

All religions except Islam have their origins covered in mystery. Islam, as Renan used the
famous phrase, “[Islam] was born in the full light of history” (cited Warraq, 2000, p. 15), stands
firm and clear in front of us. Unlike semi-mythological religious figures, example, Christ,
Buddha, Adi Shankara or Mahavira Jain; the founder of Islam is as well known to us as that of
any other social reformer. Several thousand short stories about Muhammad were collected in
Shahih Hadith.
Considering above, though it appears to be comparatively easier to write an analytical history of
Islam and its founder, but actually it is not so. As Spencer (2006, p.19) commented, “Most
Western non-Muslims know virtually nothing about the Prophet of Islam”, but the question is,
how many practicing Muslims know their Prophet well? Has an honest biography of Muhammad
yet been written? There are enough pious and totally un-objective traditions of Muhammad
preserved by the Muslim religious community, but what is lacking in these sources is honesty.
Even today, numerous works in Arabic and other Muslim majority languages appear each year
which try to portray Muhammad as a holy man, a seer, visionary and miracle worker. But in
reality these are far away from truth. The reason no Muslim can write an honest biography of
their Prophet, is that the biography of Muhammad is a subject that is taboo and as Rodinson
(1981, p.24) commented, “… is permitted only when written as apologetic and edifying
literature”. Hence, objective historical research on Muhammad has long been severely
handicapped both by the resistance of the Muslim societies to Western analysis of their sacred
traditions and by the apologetic approaches of many Western scholars, who had compromised
their investigation for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities.

But in recent time, thanks to both Western and ex-Muslim writers; a lot of scholarly work had
been produced ‘which could offend certain readers’. With the help of these scholars, we can
trace Muhammad’s fluctuation of thought year by year, his actions, his achievements, family life,
abnormal sexual behavior, strength and weaknesses. If we compare our findings with that of
modern development of psychological studies, the image of Muhammad that surfaces is far away
from any holy religious figure but that of a person who was suffering from severe mental illness.
And if we probe further deep into the mystery of Allah and carefully make a distinction between
superstition and science, we have hardly any doubt left that it was his mental illness and
hallucinatory experience which was solely responsible for creating Allah, Qur’an and Islam
altogether.

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