Q&A: Robert Spencer on the Murderous Bandit Whom Muslims Consider the Perfect Man

John Hawkins: Muhammad was around for quite a long time before he claimed to see visions and became a religious leader, wasn't he?

Robert Spencer: Muhammad was about 40 when he first claimed to have been visited by the angel Gabriel. According to the earliest Islamic traditions he did not actually start preaching immediately. He only told his wife and a few people who were very close to him for the first couple of years after that. But, then he got the command to begin to preach. It was at that point he began to develop a...following.

Now, I've heard that Muhammad borrowed heavily from the pagan religion many Arabs worshipped at the time, as well as Judaism and Christianity. Is that true?

Yes, there are clear signs in the Koran of influences from not only the Jewish and Christian scriptures, but also Jewish and Christian oral traditions and from the teachings in particular of Christian heretical groups, most notably the Gnostics, who denied the crucifixion of Christ and said that Judas had been made to look like Jesus and was crucified in his place. (That) notion appears in the Koran, in Chapter 4, where it says that they did not kill or crucify him, but it appeared so unto them. In Islamic tradition it is identified also here with Judas, that it is he who is on the cross, not Jesus.

By today's standards, would Muhammad be considered a pedophile?

By today's standards, he probably would because you're talking about a man who did, according to the earliest Islamic traditions about the incident, consummate a marriage with a nine year old when he was in his early fifties.

Now, that being the case, however, it is also true that he is the supreme example for human behavior within Islam; he is imitated in this. That means that you have child marriage being very common all over the Islamic world where it is also not regarded as pedophilia today.

Would it be fair to call Muhammad a warlord or bandit leader, similar to the sort of bad actors we have in Afghanistan today?

Well, certainly there are quite a few similarities and that's not an accident either because these are people who are pious Muslims and who believe that he gave them an example for human behavior -- and he did lead battles, he ordered his followers to fight on his behalf and to offer his enemies conversion, subjugation as 2nd class citizens, or war. So, there's considerable precedent within Muhammad's life, in his words and deeds, to support that kind of a life.

Along similar lines, would it be fair to say that Muhammad lied, pillaged, murdered, and condoned rape and the murder of infidels?

He said, "War is deceit." He ordered his followers to pillage and the Koran contains very detailed instructions, both in a chapter called the Spoils of War and elsewhere in the book, for dealing with the results of that plunder. ... Murder is certainly in the aspects of the invitation to infidels that I mentioned just now. He said to his followers that they should offer non-believers conversion or subjugation as inferiors under the rule of Islamic law or death. So obviously, murder is condoned in that context. Also, he ordered the assassinations of some of his enemies—including several poets who had made fun of him in their verses and rewarded the killers, including the killers of a ... pregnant woman and a man who was according to the Islamic traditions, over 100 years old.

Muhammad ... took for granted that his followers would be having sex with the women that they captured in these battles—the wives of the pagan warriors that they had killed and the wives of the Jewish tribes that they had killed. ... In the Koran actually, it says that a Muslim may marry up to four wives and have sex with the captives that his right hand possesses, which refers to slave girls captured in battle.

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