2016-04-25
Syncretism in Christianity
Reply to Derek Allan

Assuming it is correct, this comment from a book I’m reading at the moment seems to answer the question I was asking:

… there has not been a scholarly “quest for the historical Muhammad” the way there has been, and still is, a quest for the historical Jesus. The true identity, words, and deeds of the Prophet of Islam are topics that have only been lightly explored by scholars, largely owing to the paucity of early, reliable sources, and the entrenched Islamic resistance to any questioning of accepted Islamic beliefs, even if that questioning is based on non-polemical, scholarly principles. While historical critics of the Bible have operated freely and wielded tremendous influence in the Christian and post-Christian West, in the Islamic world such studies are virtually nonexistent. The few scholars who work in this field, such as Christoph Luxenberg, receive death threats and publish under pseudonyms.

DA