George Bush's Opinion Of Islam. No, Not THAT George Bush!

Note to family and friends: Updates on Mr. AOW are being added to this post, last updated on October 28.

Quickie link to this posting over at Sultan Knish. A must-read essay citing research by the 19th century clergyman and historian George Bush, who was also the author of the first American biography of Mohammed.

A sampling of Sultan Knish's essay is below the fold.

Take Bush's critique of Mohammed's progressive revelation of the Koran:

He declared himself appointed to promulge a new revelation in successive portions, the aggregate of which was to constitute the Bible of his followers. The original or archetype of the Koran, he taught, was laid up from everlasting in the archives of Heaven, being written on what he termed the preserved table, near the throne of Allah, from which the series of chapters communicated by Gabriel were a transcript. This pretended gradual mode of revelation was certainly a master stroke of policy in the impostor.

...Had the whole volume been published at once, so that a rigid examination could have been instituted into its contents as a whole, and the different parts brought into comparison with each other, glaring inconsistencies would have been easily detected and objections urged which he probably would have found impossible to answer. But by pretending to receive his oracles in separate portions, at different times... he had a ready way of silencing all cavils, and extricating himself with credit from every difficulty, as nothing forbade the message or mandate of to-day being modified or abrogated by that of to-morrow.

Now, go read the whole thing. There's much more!