Muhammad died slowly, painfully, and miserably.

Also, ironically.

When you think of groups of people who Muhammad disserviced the most, two groups come to mind: women, and the Jewish people. They’d both get their revenge.

Muhammad had committed genocide against multiple Jewish tribes and settlements. Many men were killed, children enslaved, and women became sex slaves.

One female Jewish survivor was tasked with preparing a meal for Muhammad.

I’m going to admit that being a megalomaniac is outside my area of expertise. But I think it’s pretty obvious that you’re not supposed to trust your professed enemies to prepare food for you, especially after you give them plenty of reason to hate your guts.

Because bad things could happen to your guts. Bad things.

Also, I think that that thought goes together well with the common sense advice that you don’t upset the person who cooks for you.

So, a Jewish woman who saw her community ravaged, her husband probably killed, and her children probably taken away from her, has a poison on hand, and an opportunity to prepare a meal for the person who destroyed her entire life. And she knows just what cut of lamb that he likes best.

And it’s an opportunity that she took.

Muhammad and his friends began feasting. One of them didn’t begin until he saw Muhammad begin, because he trusted him. As with so many others, his trust was misplaced.

When Muhammad tasted something funny, he demanded that everyone stop eating, saying that the food told him that it was poisoned.

This would have been more impressive if the food would have told him that before he started eating it.

Muhammad had the chef called in, and asked her to explain herself. Her explanation was that, if he were a prophet, the poison would have killed him, but if he were a king, then her people would have been rid of him.

Ready for a surprise? Muhammad forgave her. Yes, really. Except, not really. When one of Muhammad’s men, who also ate from the same meal, had died, Muhammad rescinded his forgiveness, and had the woman put to death.

But ultimately, the poison would kill Muhammad. But it took years for it to happen. And as the poison worked away at Muhammad’s system, he was in worsening pain by reason of the complications.

Some might point out that it probably wasn’t the poison that killed him. Some attribute his death to a fever. But Muhammad himself attributed his worsening condition to the poison.

It’s the inclination of Muslims to believe their prophet. But if they do that, they admit that their prophet was killed by a Jewish woman. Or they can decide not to, but why stop there when they can disbelieve many of his other ridiculous claims?

In the ancient world, it was considered humiliating for a man to be killed by a woman. Because of this, it might be difficult for Muslims to accept the way that their own prophet died. But would they disbelieve the claim made by their own prophet?

Because of this, Muhammad’s death puts Muslims in a difficult spot. They could accept the humiliating way Muhammad died because he said that that’s how he died, accepting this humiliation as an indelible feature of their religion, or they could disbelieve him, and risk losing their status as Muslims.

Over the course of years, Muhammad’s condition got worse. He was in such pain that he required the help of two men to carry him about.

Speaking of his pain, Muhammad complained that it felt like his aorta had been severed. This is interesting, because Muhammad had previously said that if he was lying, then his aorta would be severed. While it’s possible that he meant this as a colloquialism for a great amount of pain, there’s still a lot of potential in that phrase to be interpreted in a way that’s disfavorable to Muhammad.

But is that really needed considering that he was a false prophet, traitor, oath breaker, rapist, child molester, torturer, and on, and on…

Muhammad turned to folk remedies, such as cumin, to no avail.

In his desperation, Muhammad turned to blowing on knots. This was a form of sorcery where a knot was formed which represented one’s illness, and the act of undoing it by blowing it undone has been said by practitioners to cure the illness. As you might expect, it didn’t work.

Practicing sorcery is a huge no-no. It’s been forbidden by Abrahamic religions. Even Islam forbids it. But Muhammad practiced sorcery by blowing on knots. He was supposed to be Islam’s greatest prophet (an easy hurtle to clear, considering that he was Islam’s only prophet). Was he disqualified by his own religion? More than he already was?

But then, Muhammad claimed to have another visit from the angel, Gabriel. According to Muhammad, Gabriel told him that he wouldn’t die. We know how reliable Muhammad’s visions are, don’t we?

Muhammad would die days later. At his request, he would die in the company of his favorite wife, Aisha.

Muhammad didn’t anticipate his death, so he didn’t appoint a successor. He likely realized that if he did, the successor would have a motivation to assassinate him. And Muhammad probably didn’t care what would become of his empire after his own death.

In the days to come, those close to Muhammad would jockey for control of the caliphate, a battle that would continue in the centuries to come in the form of the Sunni/Shia divide. It’s a divide that’s so bitter that some Muslims consider one another infidels. Part of the reason why Islam hasn’t spread further than it could have is because Muslims have been divided against themselves.

One might imagine that Muhammad would go to heaven in his own religion. But in reality, Muhammad was unsure of his own salvation. And he didn’t die in battle, meaning that he wouldn’t have gotten the special 72 virgins treatment.

This is the reason why Muslims frequently append Muhammad’s name with the phrase “peace be upon him”. Even though he was supposed to be his religion’s greatest (actually, only) prophet, his religion might have still condemned him to hell.

In Christianity, there’s more than one kind of salvation, and they are provided for mankind. One is a spiritual salvation, preserving us from the eternal punishment for our sins, and another is a physical salvation, where the Messiah intervenes in a future time to prevent humanity from destroying itself. Both forms of salvation are undeserved. And considering the kinds of ideologies, including religions, that humans have invented, we definitely need a savior.

The legacy of Muhammad has been a legacy of terror, violence, and bloodshed, overlaid with suffocating legalism and mind-numbing ritual. If you’ve learned a few things about Muhammad, you’ve learned that he’s not worth believing in, and that the religion that he invented is the way it is because of him.

Muhammad was truly one of history’s worst people.

Back to Part 6

Before getting to how Muhammad died, let’s briefly get into how he lived.

When it comes to the religion that he taught, imagine rules that eliminate the graces of human life, alongside rituals and superstitions that sound like they were born from the mind of the worst case of OCD in the universe. Then, you’d have the general idea.

While the prohibition on pork was an idea that he took from the Jews, what’s really unusual is his prohibition on music, dogs, alcoholic beverages, and much more.

He also prohibited playing chess, comparing playing chess to dipping one’s own hand in pigs blood. I suspect that he’s not a huge fan of games of strategy.

Muhammad also practiced many superstitions. Among these was the belief that if a person has a bad dream, it won’t harm them if they spit on one side of the bed. Another is the belief that Satan might steal silverware if it’s not covered up at night.

They’re not all hokey folk practices, though. Some of them are bad health advice. For example, Muhammad taught that water cannot be contaminated. Using this as an excuse, Muhammad and his men drank from a pool of water that he knew had the corpse of a donkey in it.

On another occasion, after washing in a small pool of water, he was informed that a woman washed involving menstrual fluid in it, and he insisted that it was fine.

Again, Muhammad taught that water cannot be contaminated.

He also believed that if a fly fell into your drink, you should push it until it’s completely submerged, reasoning that one of it’s wings contains a disease, and the other one the antidote for it.

Muhammad seemed to like entertaining his men with tall tales involving historical figures, whether or not he understood them. Sometimes, this would involve persons in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.

Among these was King Saul, who he portrayed in a positive light, even though the Scriptures portrayed him mostly negatively. Famously, Saul mistreated David before David  became King.

He also told stories about Jesus, though it’s evident that he lifted stories from the gnostic gospels. And he told a story about Nimrod, saying that he strengthened a couple eagles by making them drink beer, then used them to fly into the sky.

There’s a reason why you want to be familiar with the Scriptures: there’s no telling when you might encounter a madman who calls himself a prophet mentioned in the Scriptures, though he himself hasn’t read a word of it.

Outside the Scriptures, Muhammad said that Alexander the Great was a Muslim, and he ventured so far to the west that he found the place where the sun set, in a giant mud pit surrounded by a city inhabited by extraterrestrials.

Now’s not a bad time to point out that Muhammad didn’t have a strong understanding of cosmology. For example, he said that the “smudges” on the moon were the result of Satan dragging his wings across it. I guess if he were here today, he might have claimed that Nimrod was on an Apollo mission.

The hadiths get into unnecessary detail about Muhammad’s married life. He had many wives and sex slaves at a time, and there was only one of him, so one could only imagine the adventures that were his home life.

In one instance, a couple of his wives pleaded with him for intimate attention, rather than the sex slave he wanted to give attention to. This resulted in a convenient revelation which, to the surprise of precisely no one, favored Muhammad and what he wanted to do.

Muhammad also had relations with a servant of one of his wives. That wife caught him, and afterwards, he promised not to have relations with the same servant again. But he did, with a revelation that, once again, favored him and what he wanted to do.

Muhammad discovered that his wives had a tradition of giving gifts to the one whose turn it was with Muhammad. Muhammad then discovered that Aisha, his child bride, got the most of any of them. Knowing this, Muhammad decided to take turns with Aisha more often.

Speaking of, Aisha liked to take dolls with her when it was her turn. Being that she was a child, it’s understandable that she’d have those. But in Muhammad’s legalistic mind, dolls were a form of idolatry. In spite of this, Muhammad allowed her to bring those with her.

Well, whaddaya know? He actually does have a soft spot.

Muhammad also had ideas on how to run a society. He taught that one’s children should receive an equal inheritance, except for females, who would receive half as much. That one caveat aside, this sounds egalitarian, so it might appeal to people who don’t understand second order consequences. But there’s a problem with this.

In Sharia, upon the death of a business owner, the business would have to be liquidated, laying off the entire staff in the process, and the contributions of the large business to the economy would be no more. Worse yet, large businesses tend to be owned by high status men with lots of children, making it less realistic that the children would pool the liquidated assets together to restart the business.

In most non-Sharia societies, the business could just be passed on to another person, often the owner’s firstborn, so its operations and its contributions to the economy could continue. This avoids the problems that would be caused by Muhammad’s silly approach.

Muhammad also taught that the testimony of a woman is less than the testimony of a man in a court of law. Depending on the verse, it could take the testimony of two or four women to equal a man’s testimony.

One of Muhammad’s favorite teachings is his famous “Day of Doom” prophecy, in which numerous cataclysms would take place, which he said would be bad news for non-Muslims specifically.

Muhammad claimed that the Day of Doom would occur within 500 years of his own life. For him, this probably seemed safe. After all, he knew he would not live to see his own prophecy’s failure. Therefore, by the time anyone might have otherwise called him out on it, he’ll have already died rich.

But for Muslims today, there’s a huge problem. Muhammad died in the year 632 AD. More than 500 years have passed since then, and Muhammad’s Day of Doom never happened. This is true whether we’re talking about solar years, used by most of the world, or lunar years without intercalary months, as the Islamic world does.

Muhammad was a failure in many ways. But in failing in his biggest prophecy, Muhammad would fail his own followers in the far future. Considering the nature of his failure, it’s a wonder why Islam still has any followers.

Also of note was the fact that Muhammad believed that he had sorcery cast upon him. This sorcery, according to Muhammad, was the reason why he sometimes thought he did something, such as having relations with one of his wives, when he didn’t. Realistically, such a delusion is consistent with dementia.

That Muhammad would have been affected by sorcery at all would cast doubts on his claim to be a prophet. Even if sorcery was something that would really work, I’d have imagined that a prophet would have a protection from it. Yet, Muhammad claimed to be the greatest prophet. And he blamed sorcery for his memory issues.

If Muhammad was a prophet, one might ask whether he performed miracles. If he was the greatest prophet, as he claimed, then one might think that he performed some great miracles.

He didn’t. Not only did Muhammad not perform miracles, he informed people that he wouldn’t perform miracles. He didn’t heal people, and he didn’t raise the dead. His men did the opposite of these things, with physical means.

He claimed to receive revelations and see visions, then demanded that other people take his word for it, but didn’t perform miracles.

Among these professed visions was Muhammad’s so-called “night vision”. Muhammad claimed to have literally visited the Temple in Jerusalem during the night, then ascended into heaven to meet people mentioned in the Bible.

It’s obvious that he made the whole thing up. But he didn’t seem aware that, at the time, there was no temple in Jerusalem, and there hasn’t been one there since the first century AD.

Aisha, being more wise than Muhammad, begged him to not share his “night vision”. Which is understandable, but she night have been shocked at how many Muslims have believed it.

Muhammad’s bogus night vision is the justification that Muslims today use for claiming the Temple Mount for their Dome of the Rock.

While Muhammad’s life had many examples of foolishness, it’s not a life that would go on forever. Death would come for him, and while he fought to resist, it was a fight that he couldn’t possibly win.

Back to Part 5

To Part 7

If all land belongs to Allah, as Muslims claim, why does he need humans to do his dirty work to claim it?

The answer is obvious: Allah is just a rock idol in the middle of the desert. He can’t even act as a paperweight unless someone were to first lift him up.

As stupid as Muhammad was, he did comprehend Allah’s impotence. Thus, he knew that he wouldn’t get very far with his religion unless he could motivate men to fanaticism.

Thus, Muhammad developed a two-pronged approach. First, if his men conquered, his men got spoils of war, with Muhammad usually claiming one-fifth for himself. But if his men died while in battle to further Islam, they would be granted an express ticket into heaven, and they’d be granted a heavenly brothel of 72 virgins in addition to the usual heavenly reward.

The Islamic heaven also has music and wine, which is interesting considering that those are among the many things that Muhammad’s religion forbids on earth. Kind of makes me wonder whether the Islamic heaven also has bacon and beer.

The Islamic heaven obviously sounds more carnal than spiritual, but it does motivate carnally-minded half-wits to go out to battle to further Islam. Though that Muslims themselves want a way out of their own religion’s suffocating strictures, mind-numbing ritual, and ridiculous legalism probably has something to do with it.

When you understand this, you know why Muslims are so fanatical about spreading their religion. As they see it, they get something even if they die trying.

And so it was with the first Muslims. With Medina now under Muhammad’s control, Islam’s expansionist push can gain serious traction.

Basically, any nearby city that Muhammad could conquer, he did. And he considered caravans to be fair game.

Interestingly, he would make a peace treaty with the Meccans, a few years after his flight from there. But it was a treaty that he would eventually break. As part of the treaty, Muhammad would put aside his prophet status in his dealings with the town. As we’ve already seen with the Satanic Verses incident, Muhammad was certainly willing to put aside significant aspects of his identity if it meant he stood to benefit.

One of the towns that he did attack was Khaybar, which was not at war with the Muslims. The Muslims snuck up on them and took the town by surprise. Like with the Banu Qurayza, many of the men were slaughtered and women, boys and girls were taken as slaves. However, Muhammad allowed some of them to live as long as they payed tribute.

And I’m sure that many Muslims today claim that they were done a favor, just by being kept alive.

If you border anything Islamic, you have to stay alert. There’s an expression: The Islamic world has bloody borders.

If you have any doubt that Muhammad was motivated by money, consider that a Khaybar treasurer was tortured because he was suspected of hiding treasure from Muslims. Muslims set a fire on his chest until he confessed, and said where the treasure was hidden. He was then beheaded and his wife was raped by one of Muhammad’s men. Then the woman was immediately made to marry the monster himself.

Never lose a war against Muslims. Being killed by them is better than being captured by them, and to die is better than seeing the kind of world they want to bring about.

Muhammad played fast and loose with his treaty with the Meccans, especiallywhen he wanted a pretext to attack them. This came when a tribe allied with the Meccans attacked a tribe allied with the Medinans. So, in he marched, treating his hometown as he did others.

With Mecca under Muhammad’s control, he set out to destroy all the rock idols of the Kaaba, except for the black stone that represented his god. Because in Muhammad’s book, idolatry is bad, except for the idolatry he considered halal. Also, he would ban anyone who wasn’t Muslim from Mecca, a ban which Muslims honor to this day.

As Muhammad gained more power for himself, he required less justification for attacking neighboring towns and cities, and just attacked them to expand his growing empire. Many of those attacked simply converted in an effort to avoid Muhammad’s wrath.

Muhammad also had people assassinated if they criticized or satirized Muhammad. If there’s one thing a tyrant hates, it’s being satirized. That’s because that’s their weakness. A tyrant inspires fear in an effort to control people. If they are ridiculed, the fear goes away, and the control along with it. European kings understood this, which was why they preferred not to execute their own jesters, knowing the bad optics that could come from doing so, instead granting them permission to ridicule even the king, if desired.

One person who was assassinated had a nursing child pulled from her right before killing her. Another was killed by multiple Muslims, so Muhammad decided that the one who got the killing blow had to be the one whose blade still had traces of food the victim had previously consumed.

Muhammad reportedly laughed so hard at the account of one assassination that his back teeth could be easily seen, in case you wondered at the kind of thing that he found funny. It’s easy to see why he kept company with assassins rather than jesters.

However, Muhammad faced financial problems. It seems as though the funds raised from conquered non-Muslims, such as in Khaybar, were far greater than the relatively small tax collected from Muslims.

What would Muhammad do? Go out conquering, that’s what. But having become the undisputed king of Arabia in about a decade, where would he go?

Muhammad set his sights on the Byzantines and the Persians. He sent out notices that they convert to Islam, or else. They pretty much declined, so the Muslims attacked them.

One could almost pity them. It’s as though they had no idea what else they could do.

However, because the civilizations just outside Arabia were far more developed, they did a much better job at repeling the Islamic invaders. The invasions of the surrounding cultures would be measured in centuries, rather than days, weeks, or years.

Islam would provide a strategy: send wave after wave of young men, who would die in the meat grinder of war in all the time it would take to conquer.

That sounds like a bad strategy, and it is. But the Islamic world could feed into it.

Fecundism describes the practice of encouraging high birth rates, usually to the end of increasing political influence held by ethnic groups, but it can be used for other purposes.

The high birth rates among Muslims is due to a discouraging of birth control, and also due to polygamy.

Where polygamy is practiced, it heavily favors high-status males. In Islam, men are permitted up to four wives. Assuming the most affluent 25% of men marry 100% of women, that would mean that three-quarters of the men wouldn’t know a day of marriage.

But Islam tells them about a way out: die in battle furthering Islam, for 72 heavenly virgins. Considering that their religion doesn’t give them any earthly hope, this is quite a motivation.

And if 75% of the male population were to be wiped out in war, they’d be quickly replaced as the surviving 25% continually impregnate their multiple wives.

It’s been estimated that, due to the prevalence of polygamy, two-thirds of all men who have ever lived have never married. Not only would Islam have been a significant contributor to this statistic, it also means that many of those men lived brief, heavily-indoctrinated lives which ended in a violent and sustained push to expand the worst religion to have ever been imagined.

Back to Part 4

To Part 6

Though Muhammad was a traitor, the Meccans didn’t pursue him into Medina. Once he was out of town, they were no longer concerned with him. This was a mistake.

This was about the time that the themes of Muhammad’s religion became about warfare. The physical variety.

Muhammad’s exile was at about the time that Muhammad began referring to his god primarily as “Allah”, where he seemed to prefer “Al Rahman”, the name of the Hanif god, during his initial preaching in Mecca.

To aquire wealth, Muhammad would have his men raid Meccan caravans. These caravans were initially defenseless, so the raiders encountered little resistance. But in time, caravans started getting more evasive.

Eventually, the caravans would primarily run during the observance of Ramadan. The idea was that, because absolutely no violence was permitted during the month-long celebration, then caravans could pass by Medina without fear.

Except some of Muhammad’s raiders decided to attack a caravan anyway. However, Muhammad inquired of his god, and as his god often did, he provided a revelation that satisfied Muhammad’s personal desire: the booty was considered legit, meaning that raiding on Ramadan was allowed.

Muhammad had committed an immense cultural faux-pas. But as his means of violence increased, fewer people challenged him.

One of the most significant battles in Muhammad’s life was the Battle of Badr, in which Muslims emerged victorious against the Quraysh, damaged their trade routes, and established Muslims as a serious threat against the people who were once Muhammad’s friends and family. Muhammad had risen (descended?) from being a mere traitor to a significant adversary to the kin he had betrayed.

It can be interesting to see Muslims portray the Battle of Badr as glorious, when you know that it was a battle between pirates and merchants.

Medina had three Jewish tribes. Among them, Muhammad and his Muslims were in a minority. It was at Medina that Muhammad had established a pattern that would eventually be followed by Muslims the world over. While they were few in number, they would present themselves as peaceful and conciliatory. But they would also take opportunities to put pressures in place in an effort to make their own religion seem more attractive. As Muslims grew in number, they became increasingly belligerent in their demands. Eventually, enough power would consolidate around Muslims that they could go full mask-off, taking whatever influence and wealth they wanted by force.

Initially, Muhammad would change the qiblah, or direction of prayer, towards Jerusalem, rather than Mecca. He also taught that Christians and Jews could attain salvation by observing their own religions. These acts were intended to make other people less defensive around Muslims. But Muhammad had only said them when it was advantageous for him to do so. Once he had sufficient strength, all pretense of tolerance was discarded.

One of the problems that Muhammad ran into was that the Jews knew their own Scriptures better than he did. So when Muhammad made the claim to be a prophet, it didn’t hold up to scrutiny. There was even a point where Muhammad claimed to be the Jewish messiah. No points for correctly guessing how they responded to that.

Muhammad wasn’t very bright. He initially claimed that the Jewish Scriptures indicated that he was a prophet, and indicated his coming. When the Jews understandably rejected his claim, he then claimed that this teaching was erased from all Scriptures everywhere in the world in a conspiratorial fashion, all in an effort to hamper him.

Muhammad didn’t check his own brain to see whether this new statement contradicted his earlier claim that he was mentioned.

Like many half-wits who fail at reason, Muhammad would turn to threats and violence.

The first Medinan Jewish tribe that Muhammad threatened was the Qaynuqa, who were told to either convert or be driven into exile. After they refused to convert, Muhammad looked for a pretext to go to war with them. This was found when a Jew was accused of harassing a Muslim woman. The Jew was killed by a Muslim, and the Muslim was later killed by a Jew.

The Qaynuqa were forced into exile, leaving their properties in the hands of Muslims. This would greatly increase Muhammad’s influence.

The next tribe Muhammad would target would be the Nadir. But pay attention to how the conflict started, because it tells us a lot about how Muslims think.

First, on Muhammad’s order, some Muslims killed a Nadir Jew named Kaab Al-Ashraf. Muhammad then declared war on the whole Nadir clan, because he feared retaliation against him for the murder he ordered.

Even when a Muslim commits murder, they’ll still look for a way to make themselves the victim.

What’s more, Muhammad was such a fool that he didn’t seem to consider the possible consequences for his call for murder until it was already completed.

To make his call for war seem more divine, Muhammad claimed that an angel appeared to him in a dream and warned him of the retaliation. Whether for lack of skepticism or for spoils of war, the Muslims went to war, bringing the Nadir Jews to surrender, and the survivors were exiled.

After that, there was just one Jewish tribe left in Medina, the Qurayza. And they were like, “We saw what happened to those other guys, and want none of that.” Then they just straight-up surrendered.

Pay attention and learn a valuable lesson: Never surrender to Muslims.

Ever. Their forgiveness is capricious, and their cruelty is legendary.

On the plus side, Muslims today are generally talentless at fighting. This is due in large part to the fact that their religion gives them a reason to die, not a reason to live.

But if you’re up for a reason to never surrender to Muslims, pay attention to what happened to the Qurayza.

Muhammad decided that every adult male in the tribe should be executed. And to divide the men from the boys, they checked each individual male to see whether public hair was growing in.

Yep. They peeked.

Muhammad then had a huge ditch dug, had the men beheaded, then dumped their remains into the ditch.

Everyone who survived became property. Boys were made into slaves. Girls and women were made into sex slaves. This includes widows, some of which were forced to have sex the very night their husbands were executed.

By the way, Muhammad ordered a fifth of the women captured to be added to his personal collection of sex slaves. And, as a reminder, he only had one child, a daughter, in his entire life.

With all opposition eliminated from Medina, Muhammad finally had a city that he fully controlled, to use as his base of operations. And yet, it wasn’t his home. Even his initial base of operations was obtained through invasion. Even at their starting point, Muslims were always the invaders.

There’s an irony that begs to be recognized: that though Muslims love to claim that all land in the world belongs to their god and their prophet, in reality, they can never be anything other than invaders, anywhere they go.

Back to Part 3

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