Unmasking Islam: How Arabs joined Muhammad only for booty and captured women for sex

Unmasking Islam: How Arabs joined Muhammad only for booty and captured women for sex

At the initial stage, Islam was an absurd truth claim like a practical joke, but when Muhammad was able to draw the sword and successfully used it, the whole thing became serious.

So while estimating the significance of Muhammad, we should not judge him solely as a mystic or religious reformer, though he may have the elements of both, but rather as a ruthless politician and opportunist pressed with peculiar political problems amongst barbarous people and at a critical moment of history.

Therefore the picture that emerges of the Prophet in the above traditional accounts is not at all favorable to Muhammad. The Muslims cannot complain that this representation of their beloved Prophet was drawn by an enemy. The early Arabs did not believe in his Prophetic claim and there is sufficient proof that Muhammad was taken aback when those intellectuals of Mecca pointed to the weaknesses of the Qur’an. They fell heavily on Muhammad and pressed him hard demanding answers and explanations to the irrationalities they spotted in the Qur’an, but Muhammad and Allah stood there wordless and powerless like two ‘Divine fools’.

By seeing the irrationalities, there was apostasy in large scale during Muhammad’s time and after his death. Many early Muslims were just opportunists and not at all religious.

They joined Muhammad only for booty and captured women for sex. Those tribal Arabs lacked any deep religious sense. They only wanted worldly successes. Many confessed their belief but had no inclination towards Islam and its dogma and ritual. It is estimated that at the death of Muhammad the number who really converted to Muhammad’ doctrine did not exceed a thousand (Warraq, 2003, p. 41). Present day cultists perform much better than Muhammad in gaining followers.

The Qur’an itself confirms that there were Arab skeptics in Mecca who did not accept the ‘fables’ recounted by Muhammad. They doubted the ‘Divine’ origin of the revelations and certainly, they had every right to do so. They even accused him of plagiarizing the pagan Arab poets. Some verses of the Qur’an were attributed to al-Qays (a.k.a Imra’ul Qays) a famous pre-Islamic Arabian poet (Warraq, 2003, p. 41). Muhammad had plagiarized several poems from the work of this poet and added them to his Qur’an. It was the custom of the poets’ and the orators to hang up the composition of their literary work upon the Ka’aba. One day, Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad was repeating two passages from Sabaa Mu’allaqat. Suddenly she met the daughter of Imra’ul Qays, who cried out, “O that’s what your father had taken from one of my father’s poems and calls it something that has come down to him out of heaven” (Warraq, 1998, p. 235-6).

Even today this story is told amongst Arabs. The Qur’anic plagiarism is so prominent that Muslims cannot deny this. But how can they explain this incident? Did the poems of Imra’ul Qays were also divinely inspired like Qur’an?