Combating Islam

Dead on Arrival

Why Muhammad’s Islam Doesn’t Exist Anymore

How the Founder’s Message Was Buried Beneath Power, Politics, and Posthumous Invention

Introduction: The Islam That Died With Its Founder

Today’s Islam is a massive institutional superstructure — brimming with schools of law, hadith collections, sectarian boundaries, clerical classes, and fatwa machines. But if you strip it back to its earliest sources — especially the Qur’an — a stark reality emerges:

The Islam Muhammad preached is not the Islam practiced today.

The original message was simple: submit to God, reject idolatry, uphold justice. But that original islām — lowercase, principle-based, universal — didn’t survive Muhammad’s death. What replaced it was a tightly managed empire of doctrines and laws, engineered by men, often at odds with the very book they claimed to uphold.

1. Islam Was Never a Religious Brand

Qur’an: Islam as Submission — Not Sect

In the Qur’an, islām is a verb-derived noun, from aslama, meaning to surrender. It’s a disposition — not a denominational badge. The Qur’an never presents Islam as a codified religion with formal boundaries, institutions, or exclusivity.

“The [true] religion with Allah is submission (islām).” (Qur’an 3:19)
“Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian but a ḥanīf and a muslim.” (Qur’an 3:67)

To be a muslim in Qur’anic usage simply meant: “one who submits to God.” No rituals, no sectarian identity, no doctrinal checklists. Abraham, Moses, Jesus — all are called muslims.

🔎 Modern Islam flips the meaning: It defines a Muslim as someone who accepts post-Qur’anic traditions, imams, madhhabs, and sometimes even nationalist identity — which the Qur’an never demands.

2. The Qur’an Alone Was the Message

The Qur’an: Fully Detailed and Self-Sufficient

The Qur’an is emphatic — it is complete:

“We have sent down to you the Book explaining everything.” (Qur’an 16:89)
“Nothing have We omitted from the Book.” (Qur’an 6:38)
“Shall I seek a judge other than Allah, when it is He who sent down to you the Book fully detailed?” (Qur’an 6:114)

Muhammad was commanded to deliver only what was revealed to him — the Qur’an:

“I follow only what is revealed to me.” (Qur’an 6:50)
“Say: I do not follow anything except what is revealed to me from my Lord.” (Qur’an 7:203)

There is no Qur’anic authorization for Hadith, Sunnah, ijmā‘ (consensus), or qiyās (analogy). These tools — which dominate Islamic jurisprudence today — are extra-Qur’anic human inventions.

3. From Personal Submission to Institutional Control

Original Islam: Decentralized, Ethical, Non-Sectarian

Muhammad’s community was small, flexible, and ethically focused. The Qur’an called for:

Prayer (ṣalāh), but with no prescribed rituals or rak‘ah counts
Charity (zakāh), but with no calculation tables
Fasting (ṣawm), but with no legalese around menstruation or exemptions

This was a moral invitation, not a legal constitution.

After Muhammad: The Rise of Empire Islam

After 632 CE, Islam morphed into:

Qur’anic Islam	Post-Muhammad Islam
No clergy	Rise of ulama, fuqahā, and imams
No secondary texts	Canonization of Hadith and madhhabs
No sects	Emergence of Sunnism, Shiism, Sufism
No religious state	Caliphate as religious-political authority

The transition wasn’t organic — it was engineered. The religion was transformed to legitimize rulership, military expansion, and juridical control.

4. The Historical Record Supports This Break

Leading scholars — even secular and non-Muslim ones — confirm this rupture.

🔍 Patricia Crone (Hagarism)

Early Muslim armies did not call themselves Muslimīn — nor did they spread anything called "Islam" in the sense we understand today.

🔍 Fred Donner (Muhammad and the Believers)

Muhammad led a monotheistic reform movement, not a new religion. His followers included Christians, Jews, and ḥanīfs. The word Islam as a label for a formal religion didn’t solidify until later.

5. The Hadith Created a Retroactive Religion

Hadiths were collected 150–300 years after Muhammad’s death. These reports:

Rely on oral transmission chains (isnāds)
Are historically unverifiable
Are often contradictory
Conflict with the Qur’an

🚨 Example: Stoning vs. Lashing

Qur’an prescribes 100 lashes for adultery (24:2)
Hadith prescribes stoning — and overrides the Qur’an

🚨 Example: Prayer Details

The Qur’an commands prayer, but nowhere prescribes:
- How many times per day
- How many rak‘ahs
- The exact ritual format

All of these come from Hadith.

✅ Qur’anic Islam = Direct submission
❌ Modern Islam = Obedience to fabricated rules from 9th-century narrators

6. What Survives Today Is a Religion of Man

Today’s Islam is not submission — it’s obedience to manmade constructs. These include:

Schools of law (Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfi‘ī, Ḥanbalī, Ja‘farī)
Doctrinal sects
Fatwas
State-enforced Sharia
Clerical monopolies on interpretation

What was once decentralized is now highly institutionalized.
What was once universal is now exclusionary and sectarian.

The model left in the Qur’an — egalitarian, spiritual, justice-oriented — is extinct in any real-world Islamic state or system.

7. Logical Syllogism: Muhammad’s Islam Is Gone

First Argument:

Premise 1: The Qur’an is the only divinely authorized message (Qur’an 6:114, 6:38, 6:50)
Premise 2: Modern Islam depends on Hadith, fiqh, and state power
Premise 3: These sources contradict and supersede the Qur’an
Conclusion: Modern Islam is not Muhammad’s Islam.

Second Argument:

Premise 4: A Muslim, per the Qur’an, is anyone who submits to God
Premise 5: A Muslim, per modern Islam, must accept post-Qur’anic doctrines and rulings
Conclusion: The Qur’anic definition of Muslim is no longer practiced.

Final Verdict: Dead on Arrival

The original Islam — submission to God alone — was dead on arrival the moment it became:

Codified by jurists
Enforced by caliphs
Justified by fabricated Hadith
Rebranded as a political identity

Today’s Islam is not the Qur’an’s Islam. It is:

A religion built by men
A system justified by storytelling
A power structure enforcing conformity

🔥 The real Islam, as preached by Muhammad, does not exist anymore.

It was buried under centuries of intervention — and resurrected as something else entirely.

Disclaimer

This critique targets Islam as a doctrinal system — not Muslims as people.
Every human deserves respect.
But no idea is above scrutiny.

Based on Qur’anic exegesis, Islamic historiography (Crone, Donner, Wansbrough), Hadith analysis, and logical consistency. No core claim rests on speculation — only on evidence from Islamic sources or academic scholarship.