Carolina QuotesIn July 751, at the Talas River on the border of present-day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the forces of the new caliphate met those of the Chinese Tang dynasty, in what was to be the decisive battle for hegemony over Central Asia. China’s Westward expansion was stopped, and the region was definitively secured for Islam. The Buddhist and Christian presence in Central Asia went into rapid decline. The area would be Islamic ever after.
Robert Bruce Spencer Connected to the Carolinas
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No citation is recorded for this quotation.
- work
- The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS (2018)
- year
- 2018
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“In July 751, at the Talas River on the border of present-day…” Robert Bruce Spencer. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-28DCF1FBD1. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/28dcf1fbd1
More from Robert Bruce Spencer
Here’s why the life of Muhammad [and Jesus] matters: Contrary to what many secularists would have us believe, religions are not entirely determined (or distorted) by the faithful over time. The lives and words of the founders remain central, no matter how long ago they lived. The idea that believers shape religion is derived, instead, from the fashionable 1960s philosophy of deconstructionism, which teaches that written words have no meaning other than that given to them by the reader. Equally important, it follows that if the reader alone finds meaning, there can be no truth (and certainly no religious truth); one person’s meaning is equal to another’s. Ultimately, according to deconstructionism, we all create our own set of “truths,” none better, or worse than any other. Yet for the religious man or woman on the streets of Chicago, Rome, Jerusalem, Damascus, Calcutta, and Bangkok, the words of Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, Krishna, and Buddha mean something far greater than any individual’s rendering of them. And even to the less-than-devout reader, the words of these great religious leaders are clearly not equal in their meaning.
I was surprised to see that there was indeed religiously sanctioned violence in it, as well as some others things which I found disturbing. But it was all intriguing, because I was entranced by the shorter, poetic chapters. I thought it very striking that this beauty could co-exist with clear mandates for warfare and violence against unbelievers.
In short, the lack of confirming detail in the historical record, the late development of biographical material about the Islamic prophet, the atmosphere of political and religious factionalism in which that material developed, and much more suggest that the Muhammad of Islamic tradition did not exist, or if he did, he was substantially different from how that tradition portrays him.