ALMOST EVERYTHING MUSLIMS know about Muhammad comes to them orally, rarely from primary sources. Unlike Christians learning about Jesus from the Bible, the Quran has very little to say about Muhammad. Whether in the East or the West, Muslims usually only hear stories about him. They have no concept of details that might have been accidentally distorted or intentionally altered. It comes as a surprise to most of them, as it did to me, that even the earliest records of Muhammad’s life expressly admit that they have intentional alterations.
Muhammad’s first biography, Sirat Rasul Allah by Ibn Ishaq, comes down to our day only through the transmission of a later biographer, Ibn Hisham. In his introduction, Ibn Hisham explains that he altered the story of Muhammad’s life. “Things which it is disgraceful to discuss, matters which would distress certain people, and such reports as [my teacher] told me he could not accept as trustworthy — all these things I have omitted.”79
Even the earliest records of Muhammad’s life are altered versions of previous stories that were also altered.
This shows that even the earliest records of Muhammad’s life are altered versions of previous stories that were also altered.
I do not doubt that Ibn Hisham had noble intentions, but it does not change the fact that he altered Muhammad’s story to make it more palatable and to remove the things he considered unbelievable. The same filtration happens with our parents and teachers when they pass on traditions about Muhammad’s life.
What young Muslims learn about Muhammad is an airbrushed portrait — this blemish removed and that feature emphasized — that makes him fit a desired image. Through selective quotation, Muhammad becomes the picture-perfect prophet.
The vast body of hadith and sirah literature particularly enables this phenomenon. If a Western Muslim wants to paint a peaceful portrait of Muhammad, all they have to do is quote peaceful hadith and verses of the Quran, to the exclusion of the violent ones. If an Islamic extremist wants to mobilize his followers to acts of terrorism, he will quote the violent references, to the exclusion of the peaceful ones.80
This method of selective quotation is pervasive, often egregious. For example, the Quranic verse that I have seen quoted more often than any other to defend a peaceful view of Islam is 5:32. I have seen it cited on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and innumerable dawah materials to show that the Quran discourages murder. What each of these references omitted was the first line of the verse, which makes it explicit that the prohibition of murder was directed specifically to the Jews; it was not a teaching sent to Muslims. It is the next verse that directly relates to Islam and Muslims: “the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land.” Unfortunately, that verse is also ignored in the process of selective quotation.
I did not know any of this until I sought to find the truth myself. I decided to start studying Muhammad’s life by getting a better hold of the available information. Once I had a grasp of the material, I would be able to determine how to best approach its historicity.
I asked David to help, and he was more than willing. He had given a speech early in his college career that extolled Muhammad as a great and influential leader, and he was eager to revisit what he had learned with a more critical eye. He promised to get back to me in the near future.
In the meantime, I decided to start by reading all the hadith I could get my hands on. Abba’s library had a full copy of Sahih Bukhari, all nine volumes, so I flopped down on my stomach and began there. This is the collection that almost all Muslims consider the most historically authentic, so I expected it to paint the same picture of Muhammad that I had always known.
For the first time in my life, instead of being directed to a hadith, I was reading them with my own eyes, straight from the source. It did not take long for me to realize that the Muhammad I had come to know was a filtered version. Honestly, it took me about thirty seconds.
In the very first volume, the third hadith told the familiar story of Muhammad’s first revelation in the Cave of Hira. It included the details I had learned in childhood, but there were more particulars here than I had heard before. Instead of recounting that the angel simply asked Muhammad to recite, Muhammad reports that “the angel caught me forcefully and pressed me so hard that I could not bear it anymore.” Each time the angel asked Muhammad to recite, the angel “pressed” Muhammad so hard that he could not bear the pressure. After his encounters with the angel, Muhammad returned to his wife terrified, his “heart beating severely.” After this, the angel did not come back for a while and “the divine inspiration paused.”
This was not the picture of Muhammad I had come to know. It was raw, far less flattering. Here was an unfiltered, or at least a less-filtered, version of Muhammad. What’s more, there was a cross-reference to another hadith in Sahih Bukhari that elaborated even further: 9.111. I retrieved volume nine from Abba’s bookcase, found hadith 111, and read through it.
In an instant, the hadith shattered my illusion of familiarity with Muhammad. It said that when he saw Gabriel, his “neck muscles twitched in terror,” and when Gabriel had gone for a while, the Prophet became so depressed “that he intended several times to throw himself from the tops of high mountains and every time he went up the top of a mountain in order to throw himself down, Gabriel would appear before him and say, ‘O Muhammad! You are indeed Allah’s Apostle in truth,’ whereupon his heart would become quiet and he would calm down.”
I was shocked motionless. Was this Sahih Bukhari really saying Muhammad contemplated suicide?
As if to emphasize, the hadith went on to say that whenever the break in inspiration became long, “he would do as before, but when he used to reach the top of a mountain, Gabriel would appear before him.”
I was shocked. Was Sahih Bukhari really saying Muhammad contemplated suicide?
I stared at the book in disbelief. Far from a noble call to prophethood, Muhammad was violently accosted by a spiritual force that terrified him, driving him to contemplate suicide on multiple occasions. And this was not just any book, this was Sahih Bukhari, the most trustworthy book of hadith.
It was then that I began to realize that I had inherited an airbrushed image of Muhammad.
Of course, the real Muhammad was not a picture. He was a historical man with a real past. That was the Muhammad I resolved to know, and if anywhere, he would be found in the pages of history. But it was as if each effort to regroup and learn more resulted in another bomb being dropped.