Let’s not rush into accepting the rash tradition of Islamic Rashidun imperial conquest

by Damien F. Mackey Hold it right there. This is entirely a fake history. According to the received tradition, which I must reject (to be explained): https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1571/early-muslim-conquests-622-656-ce/ Islam arose as a religious and socio-political force in Arabia in the 7th century CE (610 CE onwards). The Islamic Prophet Muhammad (l. 570-632 CE), despite facing resistance and persecution, amassed a huge following and started building an empire. The tenets of this empire were to be humanitarian and its military might uncontestable. After he died in 632 CE, his friend Abu Bakr (l. 573-634 CE) laid the foundation of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 CE), which continued the imperial expansion. Though a feeble force at first, the Islamic Empire soon became the most important influencer in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Within a few decades, the empire expanded from the city of Medina in Hejaz to engulf all of Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Levant, Iran, Egypt, parts of North Africa, and several islands in the Mediterranean. Internal conflict during the First Fitna (656-661 CE), or the first Islamic civil war, stagnated the empire's borders temporarily but the conquests were resumed afterward by the Umayyad Dynasty (661-750 CE). …. [End of quote] Hold it right there. This is entirely a fake history. Why? The term, Rashidun (“Rightly-guided”, “successors”) Caliphate (ٱلْخِلَافَةُ ٱلرَّاشِدَةُ) was, according to some, coined more than a century or so after the Prophet Mohammed, in the Abbasid era (C9th AD). The Abbasid Caliphate is thought to have succeeded the Umayyads, which Caliphate, as we have learned in various articles now, e.g.: Oh, my, the Umayyads. Deconstructing the Caliphate https://www.academia.edu/117122001/Oh_my_the_Umayyads_Deconstructing_the_Caliphate belongs archaeologically to the early Roman (BC) era. This, in one blow, negatives, (i) the Umayyads; (ii) the preceding Rashidun Caliphate; and (iii) the Mohammed whom the latter is thought to have succeeded. Moreover, (iv) it leaves the Abbasids (Islam’s Golden Age) totally devoid of any archaeologico-historical foundation. Further, see my article regarding the Abbasids: Original Baghdad was Jerusalem https://www.academia.edu/117007478/Original_Baghdad_was_Jerusalem Prophet Mohammed There was no Prophet Mohammed, as such, to start the building of an Islamic empire. He was a non-historical fictitious composite. Many scholars, now, are disproving Mohammed and the Koran (Qur’an). See for example: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/from-our-archives/the-revisionist-case-that-muhammad-did-not-exist/ Did Muhammad exist? No. And neither did the Koran for that matter, at least not in the form or with the status ascribed to it by Muslims. These are the two major conclusions of a vigorous stream of revisionist scholarship that has struggled for many decades to gain a hearing within the critically indolent field of Islamic Studies. It is a primary virtue of a new book by Robert Spencer, Did Muhammad Exist?, that it summarises and explores this important work in a balanced, lucid and compelling fashion. It shows that the vast presence that Muhammad enjoys in global history rests on flimsy foundations, which Spencer’s new book systematically dismantles, leaving few stones standing, synthesising the findings of revisionist scholars into a devastating demolition of the traditional accounts of Muhammad and the origins of Islam in all their aspects. …. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=cD178PXa68M And: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=zTJ2QR9ayyw See also my various articles on the subject, e.g.: Anachronistic contemporaries of the so-called Prophet Mohammed https://www.academia.edu/116850671/Anachronistic_contemporaries_of_the_so_called_Prophet_Mohammed Firmly standing by my opinion on Mohammed (3) Firmly standing by my opinion on Mohammed Myth of C11th AD Arab Invasion (3) Myth of C11th AD Arab Invasion