Muhammad’s private life is UNVEILED in this somewhat stylised presentation, which introduces the men, women and children who shared his roof from the womb to the tomb.
Welcome to “Unsheathed”, the story of Muhammad as the original Muslim historians told it.
(If you want to read the text commentary, you may wish to play the video at reduced speed or pause it.)
How much do you know about the life of Muhammad? Perhaps very little, or perhaps a few episodes here and there? Or do you know enough to become annoyed by popular propaganda pieces that deliberately misrepresent Muhammad’s story?
Welcome to Unsheathed, the story of Muhammad as the original Muslim historians told it. Connor O’Grady has combined his pictures here with Rosa Terry's beautiful narration of my text.
The first episode (below) is about Muhammad’s childhood. What were his early years like? What shaped him into the man he became? What attitudes, assumptions and ideas contributed to the religion that he founded?
Unsheathed: The Story of Muhammad is now available in three versions:
the original unabridged and fully-referenced version with minor updates;
a new short (~two hours reading) version with 118 colour pictures by my friend Connor O'Grady; and
the short version without pictures, for those who dislike pictures. +
Free PDF copies are available from archive.org. Please download them, post them anywhere and everywhere, and share them with anyone who might be interested. Kindle and paperback copies can be purchased from Amazon*, which is the best place to leave a review if you’d like to write one, and a variety of other bookstores that you can find with your favourite search engine.
The audiobook is available from archive.org, or through Castbox or Soundcloud on your computer or favourite device via their free apps. A video version is on Youtube. #
Sometimes you will read that there is debate over Aïsha’s age and that she may have been much older than nine when she married Muhammad.[1] Some of these claims are very strongly worded.
Recent researches have established beyond doubt that the age of ‘A’ishah (rta) at the time of the consummation her marriage with the Prophet (sws) was around nineteen or twenty. The Ahadith which report her age to be eight or nine years at the time of marriage are absolutely baseless.[2]
People can “debate” what they like; but this is not an issue among scholars. Aïsha’s age on her wedding day is one of the best-attested facts of Muhammad’s life. All the early traditions state that she was nine,[3] except for Ibn Hisham, who says she was “nine or ten.”[4] This suggests that Ibn Hisham was not sure and so wrote an approximation. Aïsha herself was completely sure. To be precise, she was nine years and three months, plus or minus five weeks.
If Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, were standing in a large crowd, how would you spot him? Fortunately, numerous hadiths describe Muhammad's most noticeable physical characteristic: he was very, very white.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recently ruled that freedom of speech must be balanced with "protecting the religious feelings" of others. Hence, Europeans are no longer allowed to call Muhammad offensive names like "pedophile," even though he had sex with a prepubescent nine-year-old girl named Aisha.
More specifically, Unsheathed – the Story of Muhammad is now free and available at https://archive.org/details/@taramacarthur. Please download it, post it anywhere and everywhere, and share it with anyone who might be interested. If you refer to it, please reference it appropriately, providing the link above. Please don’t charge more than your costs to redistribute it. I’m not in this for the money. I don’t object to it generating some income, but a free publication will be accessible to a much wider audience and encourage and inform the conversation that we need to have about the origins of Islam. It will also allow copies to find their way to people in countries that don’t like this sort of publication, without their having to put themselves in danger by downloading it. The book will continue to be available on Amazon for those who like paper and Kindle versions, and the Amazon site is the best place to leave a review if you’d like to write one. The audio version is currently available through Castbox or Soundcloud, on your computer or on your favourite device via their free apps, or with the pictures on YouTube.
Vocab Malone and I were setting up for a video about a Sharia-compliant version of the Amazon Echo, when we realized that Alexa was completely willing to accuse Muhammad of hypocrisy for marrying more women than his own revelations allow!
When Muhammad gets things wrong about Jesus, Muslims typically blame the Apostle Paul for corrupting Christianity. But what happens when we compare Paul and Muhammad, and we realize that Paul is far more reliable than Muhammad? Let's find out in this video series.
Here's Episode 4 of our "Answering Islam" series, where I answer the question: "Did Muhammad use religion for his own interests?" For the rest of the series, click on the playlist.
Here's the full text of the video:
Did Muhammad Use Religion for His Own Interests?
There are several different ways to view Muhammad. Muslims, of course, believe that he was a prophet of God. Among those of us who reject Muhammad, there are some who claim that Muhammad knew that he was deceiving people. They believe that he was an imposter who manipulated people into serving him. I happen to believe, along with many others, that Muhammad sincerely believed that he was a prophet. The general criterion I use here is the same whether I’m evaluating Christianity, or Islam, or any other worldview—it’s that, if a person is willing to die for what he’s saying, he probably believes it. In other words, liars make poor martyrs. There are lots of liars in this world. If you put a gun to someone’s head over a lie, they’re generally going to admit that it’s a lie. People who are willing to die for their claims are usually people who wholeheartedly believe in what they’re dying for.
Based on the number of battles Muhammad was in, and the various dangers he faced, I believe that he really thought he was a prophet. So I don’t believe that Muhammad was intentionally using Islam for his own interests.
However, there are a number of passages in the Qur’an and the Hadith, which prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Muhammad’s revelations were influenced by his desires. Let me give you four examples.
First, Surah 4, verse 3 of the Qur’an says that Muslims can marry up to four women. But we know from references in Bukhari and other sources that Muhammad had at least nine wives at one time. So why did Muhammad get more than four wives when the Qur’an says that Muslim men can only marry four women? Well, Muhammad received a special revelation, Surah 33, verse 50, which says that he, and he alone, could have as many wives as he wanted. Now I don’t know about you, but when the guy who’s receiving the revelations starts getting special moral privileges—namely, more sex partners than anyone else—I start getting awfully suspicious.
Second, Muhammad had an adopted son named Zaid, who was called Zaid bin Muhammad—Zaid, son of Muhammad. One day, Muhammad went to visit him and was greeted by Zaid’s wife, Zaynab, who was very beautiful, and who was wearing very little clothing at the time. When Muhammad saw her, he supposedly received some sort of revelation telling him that he was going to marry her, even though she was already married to his adopted son, and Muhammad walked away praising Allah. When Zaid found out that Muhammad was attracted to his wife, he divorced her, so that Muhammad could marry her. Muhammad was worried about what people might think if he married Zaynab, but then he began receiving revelations to justify the marriage. This is when he received Surah 33, verse 37 of the Qur’an, which says that it’s okay to marry the divorced wives of your adopted sons. I’ve never met a person who struggles with this problem. I’ve never met someone who struggles with whether he should marry the divorced wife of his own adopted son. So this verse has no purpose other than justifying what Muhammad did.
Third, Muhammad's wife Hafsa once came home early and caught Muhammad in her bed with another woman—his slave-girl, Mary the Copt. Seeking to avoid further conflict, Muhammad promised that he would stop having sex with his slave-girl. But a little later, Muhammad started having sex with Mary again. How did he justify his sexual relationship with Mary when he had taken an oath to stop having sex with her? Well, he received a revelation. Surah 66, verses 1-2 of the Qur’an, where Allah says:
O Prophet! why do you forbid (yourself) that which Allah has made lawful for you; you seek to please your wives; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. Allah indeed has sanctioned for you the expiation of your oaths and Allah is your Protector, and He is the Knowing, the Wise.
Notice, Muhammad swears, “I’ll never have sex with my slave-girl again.” Then he starts having sex with her, because Allah told him to break his oath. Very interesting.
Fourth, one of Muhammad's wives was a woman named Sauda. As Sauda aged, she became unattractive and extremely overweight, and Muhammad decided to divorce her. Terrified of being abandoned in her old age, Sauda hatched a plan. She knew that Aisha was Muhammad's favorite wife, and that Muhammad would like to spend even more time with Aisha. So Sauda told Muhammad that, if he would keep her as his wife and not abandon her, she would give her sex night to Aisha. This arrangement would allow Muhammad to spend twice as much time with Aisha as he spent with any of his other wives. Muhammad was happy with the arrangement, and so was Allah. Allah praises Sauda, in Surah 4, verse 128, for coming up with this solution after fearing cruelty and desertion from Muhammad.
So Islam’s message to women is this: If your husband’s going to abandon you in your old age, just give up some of your rights and let him spend more time with his favorite wife. This will keep him from divorcing you and abandoning you.
Over and over again, Muhammad’s revelations are just too convenient. The Qur’an is supposed to exist eternally in heaven, and yet parts of it have more to do with satisfying Muhammad’s desires than with guiding humanity. Even Muhammad’s wife Aisha noticed this. In Sahih al-Bukhari, Muhammad receives one of his morally convenient revelations, and Aisha says to him, “I feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires.”
So, I personally believe that Muhammad was sincerely convinced that he was a prophet. But the evidence is clear that his desires influenced the revelations he was receiving.
Here's Episode 3 of our "Answering Islam" series, where I answer the question: "Was Muhammad a Prophet?" For the rest of the series, click on the playlist.
Here's the full text of the video:
“Was Muhammad a Prophet?”
Lots of people down through history have claimed to be prophets. There are people in the world today who claim to be prophets. But their messages contradict each other, so they can’t all be speaking for God. This means that we have to examine their messages to see who’s really speaking for God. And there are three main possibilities we have to consider. First, the person might be getting revelations from his own mind. He might be deliberately inventing revelations, or he might be insane. But it’s clear that some so-called revelations have a purely human origin. Second, the person might be getting revelations from demonic sources. He’s actually receiving revelations, these revelations just don’t come from God. They come from somewhere else. Third, someone who claims to be a prophet may genuinely be receiving revelations from God, in which case we should believe him.
So it’s important to examine Muhammad’s claims in light of these three possibilities. Did his revelations come from his own mind? Did they come from demons? Did they come from God? Let’s think about the evidence.
When we ask ourselves what evidence there is that Muhammad was getting his revelations from his own mind, we find that Islam really seems like a religion that came from the mind of a seventh-century Arabian caravan trader, because Islam is basically a collection of teachings and practices that were present in Arabia during Muhammad’s time. Jewish monotheism had spread into many communities in Arabia, along with biblical and non-biblical stories about Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. Teachings about Jesus and Mary that were popular in certain Christian cults were being taught in Arabia, things like Jesus speaking at birth, Jesus giving life to clay birds, Mary giving birth under a palm tree, and so on. The Sabians, who are mentioned in the Qur’an, prayed at all five of the times Muslims pray during their daily prayers, and they recited a creed—“La illaha ilallah.” Muslims recite this creed today. Many of the polytheists of Arabia performed ablutions (these are ceremonial washings); they took an annual pilgrimage to Mecca; they circled the Ka’aba; they kissed the black stone that supposedly fell from heaven. All of these teachings and practices became a part of Islam, which means that Islam is exactly the sort of religion we would expect to arise in seventh-century Mecca. So we have good reasons to think that Islam had a human origin—the mind of a man deeply affected by the teachings and practices that surrounded him.
But we should also look to see if there might be something darker at work. Here we find plenty of evidence suggesting that forces beyond Muhammad were involved in his teachings.
We know from Muslim records that when Muhammad began receiving revelations, his first impression was that he was demon-possessed. We also know that after his experience in the cave, he became suicidal and tried to hurl himself off a cliff. According to the earliest Muslim sources, Muhammad was tricked into delivering a revelation from the devil; these are the so-called “Satanic Verses,” where Allah gave Muslims permission to pray to three pagan goddesses. Muhammad revealed these verses as part of the Qur’an, but he later came back and said that Satan had deceived him. We also know from Muslim sources that Muhammad claimed that he was a victim of black magic—a spell that gave him delusion thoughts and false beliefs.
So, Muhammad’s first impression of his revelations was that he was demon-possessed; his revelations made him suicidal; and even Muslim sources claim that he delivered a revelation from the devil and that he was a victim of black magic. It seems that we don’t just have evidence that Muhammad’s revelations had a human origin; we also have evidence of spiritual problems.
The question now is whether there’s any evidence that Muhammad’s revelations came from God. Now the Qur’an offers two main arguments for Muhammad’s status as a prophet. The first is what I call the “Argument from Literary Excellence.” The claim here, which we find over and over again in the Qur’an, is that the Qur’an is so wonderfully written, it must be from God. So Muhammad’s main argument is that the poetry he was delivering was so wonderful, it could only come from God. There are two main problems with this argument: One, even if something is wonderfully written—so wonderfully written that it can’t be imitated—this tells us absolutely nothing about whether it’s from God. If we can’t write poems like T. S. Eliot, or plays like Shakespeare, or books like Charles Dickens, this doesn’t mean that Eliot, and Shakespeare, and Dickens are prophets of God. It would only mean that they had unique literary styles. Two, I’ll go ahead and say it, the Qur’an is awful. I’m someone who reads a lot, and I’ve never read a book as awful and boring and disorganized as the Qur’an. I agree with the late philosopher Antony Flew who said: “To read the Qur’an is a penance rather than a pleasure.” He said that reading the Qur’an is penance; it’s a kind of punishment. So the Argument from Literary Excellence fails completely.
The second main argument for Islam is the “Argument from Biblical Prophecy.” The Qur’an claims that there are prophecies about Muhammad in the Torah and the Gospel. What’s the problem here? Well, according to both the Torah and the Gospel, Muhammad was a false prophet. The criteria for a true prophet laid down in both the Torah and the Gospel rule out Muhammad, so we can’t even take this argument seriously.
Other arguments for Islam are even weaker, which means we have no good evidence that Muhammad’s revelations come from God. But we do have good reasons to think that at least some of his revelations had a purely human origin, and that others may even be demonic. We can only conclude that Muhammad was a false prophet, and that anyone who wants to follow the truth will have to look somewhere other than Islam.
Here's Episode 2 of our "Answering Islam" series, where I answer the question: "Who was Muhammad?" For the rest of the series, click on the playlist.
Here's the text of the video:
Who Was Muhammad?
It’s kind of difficult to be certain about most of the details of Muhammad’s life, because the historical sources are so late. Our earliest detailed biographical source on Muhammad’s life is Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, which was written more than a century after Muhammad died. And we don’t even have what Ibn Ishaq actually wrote. We only have an edited version by Ibn Hisham. And Muslims don’t even pay much attention to Ibn Ishaq. The sources they use to learn about Muhammad—their main Hadith collections—were written two to three centuries after he died. So we’re dealing with some very late material.
But if we take the Muslim sources at face value, the story of Muhammad’s life goes something like this.
He was born around 570 AD in a city called Mecca, in what is now Saudi Arabia. His father, Abdullah, died before he was born, and his mother, Amina, died when he was six years old. After the death of his grandfather, Muhammad was raised by his uncle Abu Talib, leader of the Banu Hashim clan.
While he was still young, Muhammad began working in the Meccan caravan trade, which put him in contact with diverse religious traditions. When he was 25, he married a wealthy widow, Khadijah, who was 15 years older than he was. With more leisure time, Muhammad developed the habit of retreating to a cave on Mount Hira for prayer and reflection, as was common for the polytheists of the Meccan Quraish tribe. So it seems that Muhammad was very interested in religious matters long before anyone believed he was a prophet.
During one of his yearly retreats, Muhammad became convinced that a jinn or a demonic spirit had possessed him and had ordered him to recite some verses. The verses said:
Read! In the name of your Lord Who created,
Who created man from a clot of blood.
Read! And your Lord is Most Generous,
Who taught by the pen,
Taught man what he did not know.
These words are now found in the Qur’an, Chapter 96, verses 1 through 5. So this is when Muhammad started receiving revelations that would eventually become the Qur’an. But again, he didn’t think that they were revelations at this point; he thought that he was possessed by some sort of poetry demon. He was 40 years old at the time, and he was so embarrassed at the thought of being possessed by a jinn or a demon that he tried to hurl himself off a cliff. But whatever it was that gave him the verses stopped him from committing suicide.
Muhammad ran home to his wife Khadijah and her cousin Waraqah, and it was Khadijah and Waraqah who persuaded him that he wasn’t possessed—he was a prophet of Allah. Muhammad soon began preaching Islam to friends and family members, and later to the public. But his messages became increasingly inflammatory. He condemned of the religious beliefs of the polytheists of Mecca, and he mocked their gods. Not surprisingly, the Meccans eventually started persecuting Muhammad and his followers, and after his wife Khadijah and his uncle Abu Talib died, Muhammad decided to flee the city of Mecca.
His new city, Medina, was a little over 200 miles north of Mecca. After forming alliances with various non-Muslim groups, Muhammad began robbing the Meccan caravans. These attacks eventually led to a series of battles with Mecca—the Battle of Badr, the Battle of Uhud, and the Battle of the Trench. As war booty poured in, so did new converts. The growing Muslim army allowed Muhammad not only to subdue Mecca, but to subdue the rest of Arabia as well.
Unfortunately for Muhammad, after attacking a Jewish settlement at Khaybar, a Jewish woman whose family had been killed by Muslims offered to cook dinner for Muhammad and some of his companions, and the prophet of Islam accepted her offer. But the food she gave him was poisoned. Muhammad spit the food out, but according to Muslim sources, the poison caused some sort of internal damage, which led to severe pain and ongoing medical problems. Muhammad suffered an agonizing death a few years later in in 632.
So to put all of this together, we can divide Muhammad’s life into three main periods. There’s the time before he claimed to be a prophet; this would be 570-610. There’s his time in Mecca after he claimed to be a prophet; this is 610-622. And there’s his time in Medina as a prophet; this is 622 until his death in 632.
I spent years discussing Christianity and Islam with my friend Nabeel Qureshi before he became a Christian. Since I kept his written defenses of Muhammad, I thought it would be nice to share some of them. In this video, I share Nabeel's defense of Muhammad's relationship with Aisha.
We can learn a lot about what's most important to a person by pondering his last words. In this video, I discuss the parting thoughts of Jesus, Muhammad, and Nabeel Qureshi.
In "The Psychology of Islam, Part 1: The Defective Father Hypothesis," we learned that Muhammad's traumatic childhood experiences would produce three psychological results: (1) he would rebel against authority and tradition; (2) he would have a problem with father figures, and especially with viewing God as a heavenly father; and (3) he would have some difficulty forming normal relationships with other people. In "The Psychology of Islam, Part 2: Muhammad's Rebellion," we examined the historical evidence to see if our first expectation was confirmed, and we found that it was completely confirmed. Now, in "The Psychology of Islam, Part 3: Theology of the Fatherless," we test our prediction that Muhammad's childhood experiences would affect his view of father-figures and his view of God.
In the Islamic hadith collection "Kanz al-Ummal," we read a disturbing story about Muhammad sleeping with a dead woman to ensure her place in paradise as his bride:
"Narrated by Ibn Abbas: 'I (Muhammad) put on her my shirt that she may wear the clothes of heaven, and I slept with her in her coffin (grave) that I may lessen the pressure of the grave. She was the best of Allah’s creatures to me after Abu Talib' . . . The prophet was referring to Fatima , the mother of Ali."
Since the word "slept" here can refer to sexual intercourse (as in the English sentence, "He slept with her"), some critics of Islam have suggested that Muhammad had sex with a dead woman.
Whether or not that's true, Muslim apologist Dr. Zakir Naik claims that Muhammad was a homosexual and a necrophile (someone who is sexually attracted to dead people). He makes this claim by arguing that Muhammad is mentioned by name in Song of Solomon 5:16 and that the Hebrew word "machmad" is the name "Muhammad." In this video, I point out the obvious implications of Naik's assertions.
In Part 1 of this series, we learned that the Defective Father Hypothesis (DFH) leads to certain expectations, given Muhammad's childhood experiences. In brief, based on DFH, we would expect Muhammad to rebel against authority and tradition; we would expect him to have a problem with father figures, and especially with viewing God as a heavenly father; and we would expect him to have some difficulty forming normal relationships with other people. In this video, we examine the historical evidence to see if our first expectation is confirmed. Along the way, we help Sheikh Yasir Qadhi understand Allah better.
In Islam's most trusted sources, Muhammad told his follower that, when they eat, they must either lick their own fingers, or have other people lick their fingers for them. Why the strange ruling? Muhammad explains:
According to Islam's most trusted sources, Muhammad repeatedly tried to kill himself. Indeed, he tried to kill himself so many times that we can fairly call him "the Suicidal Messenger."
In this video, we examine passages on Muhammad's suicide attempts in the History of al-Tabari, Ibn Ishaq, and Sahih al-Bukhari, showing that the real purpose of Islam was to keep Muhammad from hurling himself off a cliff.
