robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

Central to Islam, therefore, is the traditional account of how Muhammad, an Arabian merchant,
received the Qur'an through the angel Gabriel from Allah, first in Mecca and then in Medina. According
to the canonical Islamic account, armed with its message, Muhammad had united the entire Arabian
Peninsula under the banner of Islam by the time of his death in 632.
It was not an easy task, according to the standard Islamic sources. The prophet and his new religion
faced stiff resistance from his own tribe, the Quraysh, who were pagans and polytheists. The Quraysh,
according to the Islamic story of the religion's origins, lived in Mecca, which was a center for both trade
and pilgrimage, such that people went there from all over Arabia and from outside Arabia as well. The
Quraysh, say the Muslim sources, profited from those who made pilgrimages to the Ka‘ba (the cubeshaped
shrine in Mecca) to worship its many idols. Mecca, according to Islamic tradition, was central to
both the religion and the commerce of the area.
The canonical account of the origins of Islam holds that the Quraysh initially rejected Muhammad's
prophetic claim for reasons that were economic more than spiritual. Watt notes that “by the end of the
sixth century A.D.,” the Quraysh “had gained control of most of the trade from the Yemen to Syria—an
important route by which the West got Indian luxury goods as well as South Arabian frankincense.” 28
Much of this trade depended on the Arabs who came to Mecca as pilgrims. With pagan Arabs traveling
from all over the Arabian Peninsula to worship their gods at the Ka‘ba, a proclamation that all these gods
did not exist or were demons—exactly what Muhammad preached with his uncompromising monotheism
—would not only cost the Quraysh their pilgrimage business but also cut into their trade interests.
And so for the twelve years he remained in Mecca, Muhammad attracted few followers but aroused the
antagonism of the Quraysh. That antagonism flared up regarding both the idols in the Ka‘ba and the
Quraysh trading caravans. Ibn Ishaq tells us that when Muhammad migrated to Medina twelve years into
his prophetic career, he ordered the Muslims to raid the Quraysh caravans that were returning from Syria
laden with goods. The prophet himself led many of these raids, which kept the Muslim movement solvent.
Though driven by economic need, the raids became the occasion for certain elements of Islamic theology
to take hold, according to Islamic tradition. In one notorious incident, a band of Muslims raided a Quraysh
caravan during one of the four sacred months of the pre-Islamic Arabic calendar. These were the months
during which fighting was forbidden, meaning that the Muslim raiders had violated a sacred principle. But
the Qur'an says that Allah permitted the Muslims to violate the sacred month if they were persecuted—in
other words, to set aside the moral principle for the good of Islam: “They will question thee concerning
the holy month, and fighting in it. Say: ‘Fighting in it is a heinous thing, but to bar from God's way, and
disbelief in Him, and the Holy Mosque, and to expel its people from it—that is more heinous in God's
sight; and persecution is more heinous than slaying’” (2:217). The “Holy Mosque” is, according to
Islamic tradition, a reference to the Ka‘ba.
This was a key incident for the development of Islamic ethics, establishing that good was what
benefited Islam, and evil anything that harmed it. It also set the relations between the Muslims and the
Quraysh on war mode. Their battles, according to the standard Islamic account of the origins of Islam,
became the occasion for Allah to reveal to Muhammad many of the Qur'an's key passages regarding
warfare against unbelievers.
Therefore, the Arabian setting of the Qur'an and the antagonism of the Quraysh to Muhammad's message