Muhammad and his succeeding governors in external accounts

Although the historical “Muhammad” has been accepted as the founder of a religion called “Islam” in the research of Western scholars of Islamic and related Studies in the past, doubts have gradually been raised about this beginning about one hundred and fifty years ago. In the last two decades, however, some individuals who come together under the name “Inârah e. V.” mainly in Germany and publish collaborative works in German have declared these doubts a certainty. In their works they have completely denied and rejected the historical reality of “Muhammad”, the religion ascribed to him, its sources such as the “Qur’an” as a book of revelation (at least by common Muslim belief) as well as figures of early Islam (the companions and the so-called “rightly guided caliphs”). The goal of this -not too long- piece of writing goes as follows: On the one hand, to present documentation from various primary sources such as inscriptions, coins, and written documents from the first decades of the emergence of Islam, as well as direct and indirect references to the name “Muhammad” or “Muhammad the Arab” or the title “Muhammad the Prophet” found in non-Islamic sources; on the other hand, to examine some works of the Inârah group and their pseudoscientific claims by subjection to an equally critical and scientifically fair analysis in order to show the invalidity or at least deficiency of most of their claims and ultimately their inadequacy to justify their ideological assumptions.