Introduction

I don't consider you to be a fraud. I just, to be open with you, I think you're a very intelligent person. I think you have a lot to offer. The point is this, though, when you speak about religion and theology and philosophy and things, you make a lot of blunders, and I don't think you have a coherent philosophy.

Professor Jiang's Claims About Islam

[Professor Jiang claims:] "They keep on the fight even though they've lost the war against Romans. They will go into the Arabian desert where they will incubate a new religion called Islam, and they will prophesize the coming of the Messiah who turn out to be Muhammad."

He's making a claim that Islam is an offshoot or some kind of an outgrowth of Judaism. Now, this claim is without substance, frankly, and that is the reason why you will not find a single solitary secondary source, okay, from even Orientalist literature, okay, even Orientalist literature, which kind of substantiates what he's talking about.

Now, there are all kinds of, in the academy, in the Western academy and elsewhere, there are all kinds of theories about early Islam. There are many what you call historical exegetes, people that try to exegetically interpret the first, you know, couple of centuries of Islam and how the emergence of Islam is to be explained, etc. These theories, which I will be calling conspiratorial in this case, these conspiratorial theories of Mr. Jiang is something which unfortunately has not been even substantiated or even said by anybody.