The notion that Prophet Muhammad never existed — sometimes called Muhammad mythicism — is a fringe idea that has gained attention in certain circles, not because it is supported by credible historians, but because it has been aggressively promoted by Christian polemicists like Jay Smith and Robert Spencer. These are not scholars searching for truth, but rather activists with a long track record of using theatrics, cherry-picked evidence, and sensational claims to discredit Islam by any means possible.
The Nature of Muhammad Mythicism
Most academic historians, even those who are revisionist in their approach, accept Muhammad as a real historical figure, while debating the details of his life and the development of early Islamic tradition. The idea that Muhammad never existed is not taken seriously in academic circles. Instead, it is pushed primarily by polemicists outside the academy, who rely on public debate drama, popular books, and online platforms rather than rigorous scholarship.
This is where Jay Smith and Robert Spencer come in.
Jay Smith: Evangelical Showmanship Disguised as Scholarship
Jay Smith, an American missionary, has made a career out of debating Muslims at places like London’s Speakers’ Corner. He frames himself as a scholar of Islam, yet his work is deeply tied to Christian apologetics, with the underlying goal of evangelism rather than genuine inquiry.
One of Smith’s most infamous contributions has been his role in popularizing Dan Gibson’s outlandish Petra theory — the claim that Islam’s true birthplace was Petra, not Mecca. According to this theory, the Kaaba was originally located in Petra, and the centrality of Mecca is nothing but a historical fabrication. Serious scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, have dismissed this as baseless. But Smith’s platform gave the theory oxygen, using it as yet another tool to sow doubt and confusion rather than pursue historical clarity.
Smith’s long history shows a pattern: he takes speculative or fringe academic ideas, strips them of nuance, and amplifies them as if they were conclusive. Theatrics, not scholarship, drive his approach, and Muhammad mythicism is simply his latest argument to cling to. What makes this even more telling is that Smith himself realizes the absurdity of the claim.
In one of his recent videos, Jay Smith acknowledges that he understands Muhammad mythicism is a weak and bogus argument, yet he continues to push it. Why? He gives two reasons. First, he points to the impact that Jesus mythicism has had on Christianity: even though virtually all historians reject it, the theory nevertheless created doubt and shook the faith of many Christians. By analogy, Smith hopes that floating Muhammad mythicism—even if academically baseless—will create similar turmoil within Muslim communities.
Second, Smith argues that this line of attack feels “less threatening” to Muslim audiences, because it does not involve directly insulting Muhammad or Islam. Rather than calling the Prophet names or openly disparaging the Quran, mythicism casts doubt in a more subtle way: it questions the very existence of the Prophet, thereby pulling the rug out from under the entire tradition without overtly mocking it.
What Smith is describing here is not a pursuit of historical truth, but a calculated tactic. He admits the argument has no real merit, but sees it as a useful wedge to destabilize Muslims in the same way Jesus mythicism destabilized some Christians. This reveals the core of his approach: his interest is not scholarship, but strategy and theatrics, using whatever tool—credible or not—that he thinks will have maximum impact.
Robert Spencer: Political Polemics and Fearmongering
Robert Spencer comes from a different angle, but the effect is the same. Known for running Jihad Watch and publishing books like Did Muhammad Exist?, Spencer pushes the idea of Muhammad mythicism not as a sincere academic question but as part of a broader anti-Islam agenda. His work is polemical, politically motivated, and designed to paint Islam as inherently false and dangerous.
Unlike Smith, Spencer does not even attempt the facade of scholarly debate. He packages revisionist talking points into simplified, fear-inducing narratives for a Western audience, presenting Islam as a civilizational threat. He is widely criticized, even by non-Muslim scholars of Islam, for bad faith argumentation, selective sourcing, and outright distortions.
A Pattern of Bad Faith
Both Jay Smith and Robert Spencer thrive not on academic rigor, but on performance and sensationalism. They are not in the business of searching for answers. Their work begins with a conclusion — that Islam is false — and every argument they put forward is designed to reinforce that pre-determined outcome.
- Smith dresses his polemics in the clothes of scholarship and exploits fringe theories like Gibson’s Petra claim.
- Spencer uses alarmist rhetoric to spread fear about Islam, leveraging mythicism to undermine Islam’s very foundation.
Neither contributes to genuine historical understanding. Instead, both rely on theatrics, repetition, and amplification of discredited ideas.
Jesus Mythicism: The Precedent
To understand why some polemicists push Muhammad Mythicism despite its lack of credibility, it helps to look at the precedent of Jesus Mythicism. The Jesus myth theory argues that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as a historical figure, but was instead a mythical or symbolic invention later historicized by Christian communities.
While this idea has gained visibility through popular writers like Richard Carrier, George Wells, and Robert Price, it remains a fringe position in academia. Virtually all professional historians—whether Christian, secular, or skeptical—acknowledge Jesus as a real historical figure, even if they differ widely on how much of the Gospel accounts can be trusted. The scholarly consensus is clear: Jesus existed, preached in Judea in the early first century, and was crucified. The debate is not over whether he lived, but over who he was and how the later Christian tradition reshaped his memory.
Proponents of Jesus Mythicism typically make the following kinds of arguments. They point to the lack of contemporary evidence: no writings from Jesus himself, and no direct Roman or Jewish records of his life or crucifixion during his lifetime. The earliest Christian documents, Paul’s letters, are seen as especially significant; mythicists argue that Paul speaks of Jesus almost entirely in cosmic or spiritual terms, portraying him as a divine savior revealed through visions and scripture rather than as a recent teacher from Galilee as Paul provides no details to the life and teachings of Jesus as found in the Gospel, but only to his death and supposed resurrection.
Even the very name of Jesus is not as straightforward as many assume. Strikingly, scholars note that the earliest fully written-out form of the name Iēsous in inscriptions does not appear until the 3rd century CE, centuries after the time Jesus is believed to have lived, since nearly all earlier manuscripts have his name abbreviated using the nomina sacra (sacred abbreviations), typically written as ΙΣ, ΙΗΣ, or ΙΥ rather than fully spelled out. This means that even the name at the heart of Christianity carries doubt, underscoring how far removed the textual tradition is from the historical figure it seeks to represent.
Mythicists also emphasize the parallels between Jesus and older mythological or religious figures—dying-and-rising gods such as Osiris, Dionysus, or Mithras—arguing that early Christians may have adapted these motifs into their faith. Additionally, they highlight how much of the Gospel narrative appears to be scripture-driven midrash rather than eyewitness reporting, with Old Testament passages reshaped into stories about Jesus (e.g., the Passion narratives modeled on Psalms and Isaiah). Taken together, mythicists argue that Jesus was gradually historicized as a man of flesh and blood, but that originally he was a symbolic or mythological savior figure.
Despite its academic weakness, Jesus Mythicism had a cultural impact. By framing Jesus as possibly mythical, it generated confusion and doubt among Christians, especially in secular or skeptical circles. This is precisely what Jay Smith has admitted he hopes to replicate with Muhammad Mythicism. Even if historians reject it, he sees value in its disruptive potential.
The parallel between the two is telling: in both cases, the mythicist position is not grounded in serious historical research but in ideological utility. Jesus Mythicism provided a rhetorical weapon against Christianity; Muhammad Mythicism is now being used as a similar weapon against Islam. Both thrive in popular polemical spaces, not in scholarly circles.
The August 21, 2025 Debate: Raymond Ibrahim vs. Jay Smith
On August 21, 2025, Raymond Ibrahim debated Jay Smith on the topic: “Did the Muhammad of Islam Exist?”. In his opening remarks, Ibrahim laid out a comprehensive case against Muhammad mythicism. His arguments, far from being speculative, rested on the same historical methods scholars apply to figures across antiquity. What follows is a synthesis of the key points he made.
Early Non-Muslim Attestations
Ibrahim began by stressing the gold standard for historians: contemporaneous sources outside of the faith community in question. When evaluating Jesus, for example, historians weigh non-Christian sources like Tacitus or Josephus more heavily than the Gospels, since insider accounts are considered biased. Applying the same method to Muhammad yields an impressive body of evidence.
- Doctrine of Jacobi (c. 632–634 CE): A Greek Christian text written during the Arab invasion of Syria refers to “a false prophet” among the Saracens who leads with “swords and chariots.” This places knowledge of Muhammad within two years of his death — extraordinarily early for ancient history.
- Sebeos, Armenian bishop (c. 660s CE): Sebeos names Muhammad explicitly as a merchant-turned-preacher who urged the Arabs to follow the God of Abraham, forbade wine and fornication, and gave them laws. These details fit closely with Islamic tradition, showing that outsiders recognized him as a lawgiver and religious leader just decades after his death.
Few religious founders are so well-attested this close to their lifetimes by sources outside their own communities.
Patricia Crone’s Later Admission
Ibrahim then invoked Patricia Crone, one of the most skeptical voices in early Islamic studies. In her later career she clarified:
- “We probably know more about Muhammad than we do about Jesus, let alone Moses or the Buddha.”
- “There is no doubt that Muhammad existed. His neighbors in Byzantine Syria got to hear of him within two years of his death at the latest.”
Crone, who once questioned the reliability of Islamic historiography in Hagarism, eventually concluded that Muhammad’s existence is beyond serious doubt, making him the only founder of a world religion attested by contemporary sources.
Corroboration of Islamic Doctrines in External Sources
Ibrahim highlighted that non-Muslim writers from the late 7th and early 8th centuries confirm key features of Islamic belief.
- John of Damascus (c. 675–749 CE) and Theodore Abu Qurrah (8th century) explicitly name Muhammad as the prophet of the Arabs.
- They describe doctrines that align with Islam: rejection of the crucifixion, portrayal of Jesus as merely a prophet, circumcision, dietary restrictions, and even depictions of paradise.
Such external descriptions corroborate the broad contours of Islamic tradition, making it implausible that Muhammad was invented wholesale at a later time.
The Sunni–Shia Divide as Inexplicable Without Muhammad
Ibrahim then turned to sectarianism. The Sunni–Shia split, centered on who should succeed Muhammad, is one of the most enduring and violent divides in Islam.
- The Maronite Chronicle (687 CE) records disputes over succession and names Ali’s murder explicitly.
- Theophanes the Confessor (9th century) describes Muhammad, Abu Bakr, and the split over Ali.
- The Fatimid Caliphate (10th century) claimed legitimacy through descent from Fatima, Muhammad’s daughter.
For mythicism to be true, both Sunnis and Shias would have had to invent Muhammad while simultaneously inventing rival genealogies and then fighting each other to the death over them. Such a scenario is historically absurd. Rival dynasties basing their legitimacy on fabricated bloodlines from a fictional man stretches credulity beyond breaking.
The “Embarrassing” Material in Hadith and Sira
Ibrahim pointed out that the Islamic tradition is full of unflattering stories about Muhammad — his marriage to Aisha, the episode with Zayd and Zaynab, accusations of opportunistic revelations, and more. If later Arab rulers had invented Muhammad to create a pristine founding figure, why preserve so much compromising material?
Historians often use the criterion of embarrassment: unflattering traditions are more likely to be authentic because they would not be fabricated. By this measure, Muhammad’s historicity is strengthened, not weakened, by the corpus of Islamic tradition.
Comparisons With Other Figures of Antiquity
Ibrahim then put Muhammad’s evidence in context. Compared to other ancient figures, Muhammad is exceptionally well-attested.
- Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE): First biographies written ~300 years later.
- Julius Caesar (d. 44 BCE): Surviving manuscripts of his writings date 800 years after his death.
- Vikings: Much of what we know comes from sagas written centuries later in Iceland.
If Muhammad is dismissed for lack of immediate documentation, then most of ancient history must be discarded as well. By the standards of antiquity, the evidence for Muhammad is unusually strong.
Why Mythicism Exists at All
Finally, Ibrahim explained why mythicism persists: not because of evidence, but because of relevance. Nobody campaigns to disprove Alexander the Great or Clovis I, but Muhammad and Jesus matter profoundly today. Casting doubt on them serves a modern agenda.
In other words, the bar of evidence is artificially raised only for religious figures whose existence would undermine or empower living faiths. Muhammad is targeted not because the evidence is weak, but because it is strategically useful for polemicists to deny him.
The Problem of “Conspiracy Thinking”
Ibrahim pushed back on Smith’s “Mecca problem,” where Smith suggests that the absence of Mecca on certain maps or in early records undermines Muhammad’s existence. Ibrahim noted that this line of reasoning essentially requires conspiracy theories: either Muslims fabricated geography, or mapmakers suppressed Mecca’s existence. If Islam’s founders were inventing Muhammad, why would they anchor him to an obscure or questionable location at all? Why wouldn’t later dynasties conveniently relocate his origins to Damascus, Baghdad, or other centers of power to boost their legitimacy? For Ibrahim, the very “messiness” of the tradition — like tracing lineage through Fatima, a woman, in a patriarchal culture — argues for authenticity rather than invention.
EXPOSING THE DOubLE STANDARDS: Consistency With the Old Testament
Ibrahim confronted Smith on his double standards between Islam and Christianity. If late manuscripts and inconsistencies are grounds to dismiss Muhammad, then what of the Old Testament, whose earliest substantial manuscripts are nearly a thousand years after Moses? Or Moses himself writing about Adam and Eve, who were separated by millennia? Christians accept the Old Testament despite this chronological gap, so applying hyper-skeptical standards only to Islam is inconsistent and, as Ibrahim implied, disingenuous.
Ibrahim’s Conclusion
Raymond Ibrahim concluded that Muhammad stands on firmer historical ground than many figures of antiquity. The evidence is broad and compelling: multiple independent attestations within decades of his death, early sectarian rivalries rooted in disputes over his succession, corroboration by hostile outsiders, and even the preservation of unflattering traditions that no fabricated founder would carry.
The only reason Muhammad Mythicism appears plausible, Ibrahim argued, is because critics like Jay Smith impose impossibly high standards of proof that no ancient figure could withstand. If those standards were applied consistently, nearly all of history — from Alexander the Great to Moses — would vanish into doubt.
For Ibrahim, this reveals the true function of Muhammad Mythicism: not as a serious historical inquiry, but as a polemical weapon, a selective skepticism deployed against Islam while leaving other traditions unexamined. In this sense, it is less about the search for truth than about the strategy of undermining a living faith.
The debate can be seen here:
Joshua Little
Dr. Joshua J. Little, a research fellow at the University of Groningen and a scholar of early Islamic history, presents a comprehensive rebuttal to Muhammad Mythicism in his June 2025 article “Did Muhammad Exist? An Academic Response to a Popular Question.” He acknowledges the methodological problems of early Islamic sources—such as lateness, bias, and inconsistencies—but demonstrates that denying Muhammad’s historicity is nonetheless unsound.
Little highlights the broad consensus across diverse sectarian and geographical early sources, the clear identification of “Muhammad” as a proper name in early inscriptions, genealogical and documentary attestations of the name pre-dating late literary invention, and explicit mentions in 7th-century non-Muslim texts. Through these multiple lines of evidence, Little concludes that “there can be no reasonable doubt that the founding prophet of Islam existed in history.” His article serves as a rigorous, accessible defense of mainstream historical consensus and a rebuttal of the mythicist fringe
Key Arguments from Little’s Article:
Mythicism Rests on Weak Foundations: While many sources about Muhammad are indeed late, fragmentary, or influenced by religious agendas—as critical scholarship has long revealed—this does not justify wholesale denial of his historicity.
Fringe Sources Lack Credibility: Mythicist claims—such as those by Nevo & Koren, Ohlig, Jansen, and Spencer—that Muhammad is a literary invention or symbolic construct cannot account for the volume and diversity of both Muslim and non-Muslim sources converging on Muhammad as a historical figure.
Consensus Across Diverse Traditions: Sources from various sectarian and regional backgrounds (Sunni, Shia, Ibadi, Syriac, Armenian, etc.) consistently affirm that Muhammad emerged from Western Arabia in the early 7th century, led a religious community, and then died—unlikely to be a fabricated myth accepted across rival groups.
Problematic Interpretation of Early Inscriptions: Mythicists argue that early inscriptions (like those on the Dome of the Rock or Muslim coins) do not represent “Muhammad” as a proper name. But Little counters this by explaining the Arabic syntax indicates Muhammad is a proper name, not a descriptive title or euphemism; hence the phrase “Muhammad is the Messenger of God” is both literal and accurate.
Names and Iconography Predate Mythicists’ Timeline: The name “Muhammad” appears as a given name in early genealogical records and pre-Islamic inscriptions—contradicting the claim that it only emerged later as a title or invented proper noun.
Early Non-Muslim Texts Reinforce the Historicity: Syriac and Armenian chronicles from the 640s‑660s mention Muhammad by name and link him to monotheistic preaching—evidence that mythicists cannot simply dismiss as interpolations without extraordinary justification.
Robust Academic Consensus: Despite the popular visibility of mythicism online, “no reasonable historian familiar with all of the evidence doubts that Muhammad existed”—a sentiment articulated by scholars such as Chase Robinson and echoed throughout Little’s article.
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