What Does The Quran Actually Say?

A History of Mankind (380)

Islam remained a diffused semi-religion, semi-heresy for a long time. The first real evidence of Muslim prayers oriented toward Muhammad’s Kaaba in Mecca — instead of towards Christ’s and King David’s holy city of Jerusalem as before — dates only from 705, eight decades after Muhammad’s death, and is from the Christian Jacob of Edessa.

John of Damascus (675-749), writing in 735, was still referring to the “Cult of the Ishmaelites” as one of many Christian heresies described in his “Book of Heresies”¹; within a few years, a Spanish Mozarabe (Christian) under Islamic domination wrote the Storia de Mahometh² – eventually made part of the 9^th century Cronica Prophetica – in which the Muslim prophet is described as the Antichrist and a false prophet predicted by the New Testament.

Much later, the Muslim polymath Yakub bin Ishaq Al-Kindi (801-873), considered by some the father of Arab philosophy, confidently wrote that the Quran had, obviously, been put together from different histories by different authors, much like the Christian Bible and all the Jewish holy books³ – an opinion that seems to have been widespread among learned people of his era, and one that pretty soon became downright heretical⁴.