Some sceptical scholars claim that Muhammad did not exist and that Islam is a fabrication made up in later centuries. But Leiden University’s Petra Sijpesteijn has demonstrated from her work on Arabic papyrus manuscripts that their claim is not true.
What was the origin of Islam and what went on at the dawn of Islamic history? In the past, scholars who wanted to research the subject had to rely on the official Islamic version of events which was only written down about 200 years after Muhammad’s death. Only relatively recently has interest grown in more objective but less accessible sources such as coins, inscriptions and texts written on papyrus.
Petra Sijpesteijn, professor of Arabic language and culture at Leiden University, says that this last source is especially important. “The papyri are in fact the only contemporary source for the first 200 years of Islamic history.”
Pioneer
Papyrus manuscripts have been found in their thousands in the sand and at ancient rubbish tips all over the Middle East but especially in Egypt. Dr Sijpesteijn explains that they are often difficult to read because they are partially destroyed, badly written out or in dialect. “But if you can read them, they offer a unique glimpse of ordinary life at the dawn of Islam.”
The study of Arabic papyri is in its infancy. Only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of available manuscripts have been studied. As far as the work done so far is concerned, the Muslim faithful can set their minds at ease: Dr Sijpesteijn says the texts largely confirm the official Islamic version of events.
Disorganised horde
Dr Sijpesteijn distances herself from the small group of polemical colleagues, known as the ‘revisionists’, who assert that the Prophet Muhammad probably did not exist. They say the Arabic conquerors were actually a disorganised horde of Bedouins who gained control of half the known world more or less by chance. Islam is said to have been dreamt up 200 years later in Iraq.
“From the papyri, it appears that the Arab conquests were indeed carefully planned and organised and that the Arabs saw themselves as conquerors with a religious mission. They also appear to have held religious views and followed customs which contain important elements of the behaviour and beliefs of later Muslims.
Dr Sijpesteijn says for example that, shortly after Muhammad’s death, there is already mention of a pilgrimage (hajj) and a tax to collect money for the poor (zakat). She has also come across a papyrus text written around 725 which names both the prophet and Islam.
Even so, her discoveries form a potential threat to the image some modern Muslims have of their history. The papyri contradict the belief held by many of today’s Muslims that Muhammad delivered Islam as a sort of ready-made package. “It looks as though Islam in its first centuries developed a form gradually. There was an awful lot of discussion about precisely what it meant to be a Muslim.”
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What a joke! If Muslims didn't exist then, that would prove that sura's and the rest Koran is a hoax, as war chronical; and Mohammed's wars against 'heathen' Arabs, later his followers against Zoroaster Persians, Christian Byzantium, Hindu India, Buddhist Afghanistan, Christian Spain, Christian Hungary, Servia, Greece, Libanon ...... Jeruzalem conquest took place 'in the first part 7th century from Arabia' :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_Syria.
'Islam didn't exist at the time' is contradicted by historic events from the beginning of Islam. 'Egyptian papyri' - where are the Arabian Peninsula papyri?
Al Razi, of world renown as medical scientist lived in Persia around AD 700 and remarked about Muslims that they 'reacted violently to critique'; and on Quran Razi said:
"You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: "Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one." Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter. ... By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: "Produce something like it"?! (Wikki)
Remarkable is S.A. , called the 'holy land of Muhammed' that doesn't allow archaeological digs in Mekka - nowhere. Unbelievable the Saoedies say that they have 'covered everything with concrete pertaining 'Mohammed' what do the Saoedies want to hide, or is there nothing to hide? Also Muslims do not want Israel's archaeological research underneath (if I am correct) that 'Dome' that covers the old Temple of the Jews.
That Koran is a heresy of Christianity and Judaisme is clear from Koran as the anti-Christ., full of hatred and violence against christians - and Jews.
More suspicious is that in a perfect hot and dry climate, where indeed 'papyri' last for centuries the original (!) Koran is lost. How come that the holiest book in Islam was lost? This at least must mean that those sura's were not important at the time - as is claimed by Muslims. But means there is no evidence of who wrote and spread those thousands of sura's. 200 years later 'they were bundled' but some the blunderende bundelaars (grin) were not sure if they were genuine 'Mohammed', why false sura's must be in Koran, that is also not in chronological order - means the bundelaars didn't know what and when that happened. Koran is besides a HERESY, and an outright theological crime mostly stolen from the New Testament and Old Testament with the contents twisted and dished up as Koran founded on waging war.
That Mohammed wasn't 'holy' can be verified in hadiths that speak of him as a pervert pedophile, a child molester, a rapist of women, and robber of caravans, a mass murderer. Koran is furthermore a disaster and criminal by having brought back stoning to death, child marriages, whipping, cutting off hand and feet of a repeating thief, forbids apostacy, allows multiple 'marriages' for the Muslim man. All of these in Koran were then made law in 'holy sharia' law to gruesome disastrous criminal effect - particularly for Muslims; and Muslim women.
I wish Muhammed had never been born; and Dante Allighieri in canto 28 rightly placed Mohammed in Hell - near the devil himself! Hell is that Mohammed still serves as example for the rape of small muslim girls, also condoned in that 'holy Koran' 'girls can marry from the age of menstruation' - the age of their 'husband' is not stipulated.
Petra Sijpesteijn is digging through piles of unread papyrus fragments from the formative 7th and 8th centuries in Egypt. She finds nothing that supports the painstakingly detailed traditional accounts of Islamic expansion. She speaks plain unambiguous Dutch but the interviewers don't pick it up. They expect her to confirm that the early Muslims were as peaceful as Dutch politics likes them to be. The answer that her findings don't prove that Muslims existed in these early days, and that there were the usual preparations for war, but that there was nothing Islamic about that, is lost in the religiously coloured reporting."
http://www.radio1.nl/contents/21273-islam-op-papyrus
It sounds like all that jesus crap, walking on water, rising from the dead and other bullshit.
It sounds more like you're hearing voices and having hallucinations. Try actually reading the article after you come down.
I read the article and it sounds that all the jesus crap, walking on water, rising from the dead a other bullshit
How so?
Janv, Merry Christmas!
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