Exposing Islam

🔥 From Arab Monotheism to Abbasid Islam: How Doctrinal Orthodoxy Was Engineered

1. 🏜️ Early Arab Monotheism (Pre-750 CE): Loose, Undefined, and Oral

What it looked like:

Early Arab conquerors (630s–700s) expressed basic monotheism—God is one, not incarnate—but lacked:
- A fixed creed
- Canonical scripture
- Legal code
- Clear rituals beyond prayer and charity
The early mu’minun (“believers”) identified with Abrahamic legacy, rejecting idols and affirming one God, but not necessarily as Muslims.
“Muhammad” may have originally been a title meaning “praised one,” possibly for Jesus or a military leader, later turned into a person.
No archaeological or epigraphic evidence confirms Mecca as a holy site in this period.

Evidence:

The Dome of the Rock (691) inscriptions emphasize monotheism and Jesus’ humanity—not yet a clear Islam.
Sebeos (660s) describes Arab monotheists allying with Jews—not Muslims forming an independent religion.
Early coins and inscriptions mix Islamic, Christian, and Jewish imagery—no doctrinal purity.

2. 🏛️ Why the Abbasids Needed Doctrinal Islam

The Abbasids came to power (750 CE) by claiming religious legitimacy against the Umayyads.
Once in power, they needed to standardize and control what “Islam” meant:
- To consolidate authority
- To justify their rule
- To unify diverse populations under a central religious law (Sharia)
Doctrinal Islam became a tool of imperial stability.

3. 🛠️ Engineering Orthodoxy: Abbasid Tools of Doctrinal Construction

A. The Hadith Factories (8th–9th c.)

Hadiths did not originate with Muhammad. They were produced under Abbasid patronage to define every detail of the faith:
- How to pray, fast, marry, wage war
- What Muhammad did in his daily life
- His political preferences, sexual relations, and legal decisions
Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim (d. 875) claimed to filter 600,000 reports down to a few thousand “authentic” ones—more than 200 years after Muhammad supposedly died.
Isnad chains were retroactively constructed to create illusion of reliability, but are logically circular (a late chain proves nothing about origin).
Hadiths were used to:
- Settle political disputes
- Attack rivals (e.g., Alids, Mutazilites)
- Sanctify Abbasid preferences (e.g., obedience to rulers)

B. Creation of Fiqh (Islamic Law)

Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) was born not from revelation, but from regional debates and case law.
Four Sunni madhabs (legal schools) arose to codify doctrine, relying heavily on hadiths and Qur’an reinterpretation.
The Abbasids institutionalized this via:
- Madrasas
- Qadis (judges)
- Integration with Sharia courts
Early proto-Islam had no Sharia—it was a Abbasid invention for societal control.

C. Control of Theology: Suppression and Selection

Theological debates (e.g., about free will, nature of the Qur’an) raged until the Abbasids enforced one version.
The Mihna (Inquisition) under al-Ma’mun (r. 813–833) was a brutal crackdown on dissenting theologians.
Mu'tazilites, who emphasized rationalism, were eventually crushed in favor of Ash'arite orthodoxy.

4. 📖 The Qur’an Reinterpreted Under Abbasid Dogma

The Qur’an’s ambiguity allowed Abbasid-era scholars to impose doctrinal readings onto vague verses:
- The term Islam (submission) became a proper noun for the new religion.
- The term Muslim was redefined to only apply to Abbasid-defined believers.
- Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were rewritten into a proto-Muslim lineage serving Muhammad.
Early Qur’anic manuscripts show:
- Lack of vowels, diacritics, or canon
- Later insertions and corrections
The “canon” Qur’an only became fixed under Ibn Mujahid (10th century), not Uthman.

5. 🧩 Logical Inconsistencies That Expose Construction

Feature	Pre-Abbasid	Abbasid-Era Orthodoxy
Identity of Muhammad	Vague, possibly a title	Fully historicized prophet with biography and sayings
Religious Law	Customary or tribal	Full legal code (Sharia)
Qur’an	Fragmented, evolving	Canonized, fixed, recited
Hadith	Oral, unverified	Mass-produced and systematized
Islamic Identity	Loose, Abrahamic monotheism	Totalized socio-religious system
Eschatology	Unclear	Borrowed from Christian/Jewish apocalypticism

🔚 Conclusion: Religion by Design, Not Revelation

What emerged under Abbasid rule was not the preservation of a divine religion but the invention of one.
By the early 9th century, “Islam” was no longer a belief in one God by a conquering people—it was:

A doctrinal empire-sanctioned system of law, theology, ritual, and memory—engineered to sanctify Abbasid rule and backfilled with fabricated origins.

Conclusion: Doctrinal Islam, as we know it, did not exist before the Abbasids. What we now call “Islam” is a codified mythology, constructed between 750–900 CE, enforced from above, and disconnected from the historical realities of the 7th-century Arabian world.