“Muslims need to write an honest biography of the Prophet that does not shun the truth, least ofall 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’.
