Exposing Islam

Part 15 – The Problem of Muhammad’s Late Biography

Why Islam’s Most Important Life Story Was Written Too Late to Trust

Introduction: The Strange Silence of the First Century

Muhammad is presented in Islamic tradition as:

The final and greatest prophet.
The man whose life is a perfect example for all Muslims (Qur’an 33:21).
The central figure around which the entire Islamic faith revolves.

One would expect that his life would be documented in extraordinary detail by his companions and immediate followers — especially given Islam’s claim that Muhammad’s words and deeds are essential for understanding the Qur’an.

Instead, the opposite is true:

There is no full biography of Muhammad written during his lifetime.
There is no contemporary non-Muslim biography of him.
The first full biography appears more than a century after his death — and by that time, oral traditions had been reshaped to suit the political and theological needs of the early caliphate.

This raises a critical question:
If Muhammad was as important in his own time as Islam claims, why is his biography a late, contradictory, and politicized creation?

Section 1 – The Official Islamic Timeline

According to Islamic tradition:

Muhammad was born around 570 AD (“Year of the Elephant”).
He began receiving revelations at age 40 (~610 AD).
He died in 632 AD in Medina.

His life supposedly included:

Preaching monotheism in pagan Mecca.
Persecution by Quraysh.
The Hijra (migration) to Medina in 622 AD.
Battles: Badr, Uhud, Khandaq, and the conquest of Mecca.
Establishment of Islam as the ruling religion of Arabia.

The Qur’an frequently commands Muslims to obey Muhammad — yet the Qur’an itself contains very little biographical detail about him.

This means that nearly everything Muslims believe about Muhammad’s life comes not from the Qur’an, but from later Sīra (biographical) literature.

Section 2 – The First Biography: Ibn Ishaq’s Sīra

The earliest surviving biography is credited to Ibn Ishaq (d. 767 AD) — written over 120 years after Muhammad’s death.
Problems:

Not contemporary — Ibn Ishaq never met anyone who knew Muhammad.
Based entirely on oral traditions — passed through multiple narrators.
Survives only through later edits by Ibn Hisham (d. 833) and al-Tabari (d. 923).

The Ibn Hisham Problem

Ibn Hisham openly admits to editing Ibn Ishaq’s biography:
- Removing “disgraceful” stories about Muhammad.
- Omitting poetry he thought was inauthentic.
- Changing details to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities.
This means no one today has Ibn Ishaq’s original work — only a sanitized, politically approved version.

Section 3 – The Gap in Time

Historical reliability declines sharply as the gap between an event and its recording grows.
For example:

Alexander the Great died in 323 BC. The earliest biography was written ~300 years later — and historians treat it with extreme caution.
In Muhammad’s case, we’re dealing with 120–150 years before the first complete biography appears — in a world without modern record-keeping.

In that gap:

Stories are politicized to justify ruling dynasties.
Miracles are added to increase Muhammad’s divine authority.
Awkward incidents are removed or reinterpreted.

By the time the Sīra was written, Islam had already become an empire — meaning the story of Muhammad had to serve imperial propaganda.

Section 4 – Political Shaping of Muhammad’s Image

From the Rashidun to the Umayyads to the Abbasids, rulers needed Muhammad’s story to:

Justify their policies.
Strengthen their legitimacy.
Define “orthodox” Islam.

Examples of Political Motivations:

Abbasid Caliphate: Depicted Muhammad as having close ties to their claimed lineage (through his uncle Abbas).
Umayyad Caliphate: Emphasized Muhammad’s military leadership to justify expansion.
Disputed theological debates (e.g., free will vs. predestination) were retroactively inserted into hadith and Sīra.

Section 5 – The Silence in Contemporary Records

For someone who supposedly changed the course of history, Muhammad is conspicuously absent in:

Byzantine chronicles of the time.
Persian records.
Early Arab inscriptions from the first decades after 632 AD.

Even the earliest coins from Muslim-ruled lands:

Often depict Byzantine emperors.
Contain Christian symbols.
Do not mention Muhammad.

When Muhammad finally appears in inscriptions (late 7th century), they do not match the Qur’anic portrayal — suggesting that his role in history was still being defined.

Section 6 – Contradictions in the Sīra

Because the biography was written from oral traditions passed down over a century, contradictions abound:

Birth Year Disputes
- Some sources tie it to the “Year of the Elephant” (~570 AD).
- Others give dates that contradict the timeline of major events.
The Night Journey (Isra and Mi’raj)
- Qur’an’s account is vague (Q 17:1).
- Later Sīra and Hadith expand it into a fantastical journey to heaven — details absent in earliest Islamic history.
The Constitution of Medina
- Often presented as a historical treaty.
- Some scholars believe it’s a later invention to model Muhammad as a statesman.
The Satanic Verses Incident
- Earliest sources mention it openly.
- Later Islamic historians censor or reinterpret it to protect Muhammad’s image.

Section 7 – The Qur’an’s Lack of Biography

The Qur’an gives almost no timeline:

No mention of Muhammad’s parents’ names.
No description of his appearance.
No record of his childhood or early adult life.
Few clear chronological markers.

If the Qur’an were the only source, we would know almost nothing about Muhammad’s personal life — which makes the late, edited biography the single most important source for Muslims today.

Section 8 – The Reliability Crisis

Historians use a principle called “multiple independent attestation” — if multiple independent sources agree on an event, it’s more likely to be true.

In Muhammad’s case:

All Islamic biographies derive from the same oral tradition pool.
There are no independent, contemporary accounts.
Even Muslim historians like al-Tabari freely admit contradictory reports and leave it to the reader to decide.

This is not how reliable history works — it’s how myth-making works.

Section 9 – What This Means for Islam

Since the Qur’an cannot be understood without Muhammad’s example, and that example comes from late, edited, contradictory sources, Islam’s theological foundation rests on:

A text (the Qur’an) with minimal context.
A biography written by believers, for believers, long after the fact.
A chain of transmission vulnerable to political rewriting.

If Muhammad’s biography is unreliable, then:

The Hadith lose their context.
Sharia law loses its prophetic basis.
Islam’s claim to be the uncorrupted message of God collapses.

Section 10 – Muslim Apologetic Defenses and Counterarguments

Defense 1: “Oral tradition preserved the biography accurately.”

Problem: Oral transmission is prone to alteration — especially over a century and in politically charged contexts.

Defense 2: “Ibn Ishaq relied on trustworthy narrators.”

Problem: Trustworthiness is judged by later Muslim scholars who already believed the traditions.

Defense 3: “Early Muslims didn’t need to write; they memorized everything.”

Problem: If memory was perfect, we wouldn’t have thousands of contradictory hadith and conflicting reports.

Logical Breakdown

The Qur’an commands obedience to Muhammad but gives no detailed biography.
The first full biography appears over a century after his death.
That biography survives only in heavily edited form.
The content is politically shaped and contradicts other early reports.
Therefore, the historical reliability of Muhammad’s life story is fatally compromised.

Conclusion: A Prophet Made by History, Not Recorded by It

The problem of Muhammad’s late biography is not a minor scholarly issue — it’s a foundational crack in Islam’s historical claims.

If the life of Islam’s central figure cannot be verified by contemporary evidence — and the first full account comes long after his death, filtered through political agendas — then the bedrock on which the religion stands is historically unstable.

The uncomfortable reality is that the Muhammad most Muslims know today is a product of Abbasid-era myth-making, not a man whose life was reliably recorded in the 7th century.

Next in series Part 16 The Satanic Verses Incident