Yuyutsu, that is argument, not evidence, that Mohammed was literate.

It's not like Mohammed said he was literate, or was ever known to write anything down, or any of the people who knew him during his life-time said he was. Not one of his family or companions or faithful ever made any mention of it.

No-one says the Koran was physically written by him. All the histories I have read on the topic say that his followers wrote down what he said. But just think: if he could write, why didn't he write it down himself? Because that website speculates so on secondary data? I don't think so.

The mere facts that he went on trading caravans, or that as an orphan his uncle raised him, as a ground for his supposed literacy, I find pretty uncompelling.

I think even if we knew no more than what the article takes only as established fact, we would be safer concluding he was not literate, than that he was.

LEGO, what did you have in mind? A re-invasion, re-occupation and re-setting up a puppet government?

Bazz I remember following the whole WMD, and it was like.. well? Where are all these WMD the Yanks were telling us are here? And then it was uncovered that they were lying through their teeth.

But really, it comes down to how best to respond to the threat they pose; and I think it is legitimate to fear them and to fight fire with fire. But only remember, how much of this would never have happened if the west hadn't just spent the last 20 years killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and funding ISIS? And now we get this assumption that the solution is more western military intervention? It's possible that once they get their homeland back they'll settle down.

Jardine said;
It's possible that once they get their homeland back they'll settle down.

No I don't think so, this war has been going on for 1400 years and it
is Allah's command to carry it forward.
Aside from turning all moslem countries into sheets of glass I just do
not see another solution than repeatably militarily putting them down.

Re Rotherham, we sent our equivalents to gaol for up to 30 years and
that might have quietened them down for a while, but are they at it again ?
Perhaps they have learnt to be more careful.
I think the lesson to be learnt from Rotherham is that the local
police and local councils also need to be put under surveillance.
Has anyone done an investigation of Bankstown & Campsie councils ?
Now there is a project for an investigatory journalist.

It has now been long enough since the Bil Al gang was gaoled for the
next generation of teenagers to 20 somethings to have forgotten the lesson.

Perhaps there are some social workers in the area who have tried to
raise the problem but have been rebuffed.

Dear Jardine,

I sincerely hope that you are right about Muhammad being illiterate and that I was wrong, because in that case he didn't write the Koran - and if the Koran, or at least the militant (Medina) parts thereof, were written by others, then it is possible that Muhammad was after all a true prophet whose teachings were hijacked by unscrupulous scribes.

I observe that many ordinary Muslims benefit from their daily practices of prayer and worship in the Islamic mode. It is unfortunate that the same books that teach them those good practices also teach violent Jihad and male-dominance. The latter should be condemned, but why throw away the baby with the bath-water?

Hi Jardine.

I was not proposing anything other than recognising that Islam is the problem. Before you can solve any problem, you first have to identify what the problem is. We in the west simply assumed that Islam was "just another religion" without understanding anything about it, and then we react with amazement when Muslims behave in extremely violent fashion towards non believers, which is exactly what their religion teaches them to do.

It is ironic that trendy lefties who want a multicultural society without racism decided to import a group of people into western societies who are entirely cultural centric and engage in violent religious racism towards people of other faiths.

The only real solution to the Muslim inspired violence in the Middle east is for western leaders to start attacking Islamic religious doctrine which is the very cause of all the problems. But at the moment western leaders are stuck in the rut of the "majority good moderate" Muslims who are getting a bad name from the "minority bad extremist" Muslims. The Americans noted that the 20 9/11 attackers were all Saudis and when they investigated why this was so, they were surprised to find how widespread hatred towards non Muslims was the official policy of the House of Saude. Saudi schoolbooks displayed such texts as "all non Muslims are your enemies." The yanks got the Saudis to tone things down a bit in their mosques but the word was that the Imams were not happy about that.

There is some good coming from all of this. Previously, the Muslims hid their attitudes from the stupid non believers but Islam's basic beliefs are finally getting examined by people who once might have defended Islam. And this is making the mullahs very uncomfortable. Within the Islamic empire, nobody was ever allowed to question the faith or the principles it was founded upon, so the Mullahs never had to defend them. Today, they are really beginning to squirm whenever they are confronted by people who know how bad and violence endorsing the Muslim scriptures are, and confront them about it.

Yuyutsu

The various histories I have read on the life of Mohammed all agree on this point with Gibbon, and before you raised the issue, I didn’t know any Muslims disagreed.

“[H]e sprung from the tribe of Koreish and the family of Hashem, the most illustrious of the Arabs, the princes of Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the Caaba… The grandfather of Mahomet was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, a wealthy and generous citizen, who relieved the distress of famine with the supplies of commerce… “

“…In his early infancy he [Mohammed], was deprived of his father, his mother, and his grand-father; his uncles were strong and numerous; and, in the division of the inheritance, the orphans’s share was reduced to five camels and an Ethiopian maid-servant. At home and abroad, in peace and war, Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles, was the guide and guardian of his youth; in his twenty-fifth year, he entered the service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune.” (He took caravans to Syria for Cadijah; and she later became the first of the Muslims.)

…

“His memory was capacious and retentive, his wit easy and social, his imagination sublime, his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive…. The son of Abdallah [Mohammed] was educated in the bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia…. With these powers of eloquence, Mahomet was an illiterate barbarian; his youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing; the common ignorance exempted him from shame or reproach…

“(Footnote: Those who believe that Mahomet could read or write are incapable of reading what is written, with another pen, in the Surats, or chapters of the Koran, vii, xxix, xcvi. These texts, and the tradition of the Sonna, are admitted without doubt by [various authorities]. Mr White, almost alone, denies the ignorance, to accuse the imposture, of the prophet. His arguments are far from satisfactory…”

“…Two short trading journeys to the fairs of Syria were surely not sufficient to infuse a science so rare among the citizens of Mecca … nor can any conclusion be drawn from the words of disease and delirium. The *lettered* youth, before he aspired to the prophetic character, must have often exercised, in private life, the arts of reading and writing; and his first converts, of his own family, would have been the first to detect and upbraid his scandalous hypocrisy [i.e. of pretending he couldn’t read or write while dictating the Koran.]

In other words, it’s common knowledge among Muslims that Mohammed did not personally write the Koran because couldn’t read or write. And note that none of what you cite, Yuyutsu, is primary evidence: Mohammed saying he can, or any eye-witness to him doing so.

“…The word of God and of the apostle was diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the pages, without order or connection, were cast into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of his wives. Two years after the death of Mahomet, the sacred volume was collected and published by his friend and successor Abubeker…”

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, Chapter LI.

“The latter should be condemned, but why throw away the baby with the bath-water?”

Indeedy. And why not just be moral to our fellow human beings, and cut out the middle-man of an imaginary superbeing? But that would require a rational approach, which the religious, like the statists, find anathema.

LEGO
Yes I agree. A great website is “I Slam Islam” by Steve Omega: http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/Omega/I_slam_islam.htm.

So many facts about the life of Mohammed – for example his participation in mass murders, approving the rape of slaves, or marrying Ayesha when she was six - are never publicly mentioned in English by Muslims, and not known by the English-speaking public.

Probably the West’s best response would be no military intervention into Muslim lands and a huge worldwide publicity campaign about what Mohammed actually said and did.