Part 3: Hagarism and the Invention of Muslim Identity
What You’ll Learn
How did early Arabs form Islam, according to the book Hagarism? Through failed Christian and Jewish alliances.
Where was the Hijra really headed? Jerusalem as a messianic exodus, not Mecca to Medina, explaining initial prayers toward the Holy City.
What are the big implications? Islam originally as part of the Jewish and Christian fold, with current worship sites as later Arab creations.
Why does the book’s central endure despite rejection? Authors’ partial disavowal but firm stance on challenging traditional narratives.
A Provactive Look at Islamic History: Hagarism
What happens when the traditional sources of Islamic history are cast aside and other sources are used? That’s the question addressed in the most controversial book in the study of Islam up till its time. Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977), is an academic exercise that interprets Islamic history through the eyes of Christian and Jewish sources. The book is provocatively titled Hagarism, challenging the traditional Islamic narrative that Arab followers of Muhammad self-identified as “Muslims,” a term that the authors argue reflects a later historical development. The book contends that Arabs courted Judaism and Christianity in a search for political and spiritual legitimacy for their revelation, but ultimately failed, leading them to forge their own, differentiated history, religion, and sense of identity.
Exile and Salvation: The Arab-Jewish Alliance
Based on Christian sources written during the time of the Arab conquests, Jewish rabbis, fleeing Christian persecution in the Holy Land and seeking allies, found the Arabs—with whom they formed an alliance. The earliest account we have of this is from an Armenian historian, Sebeos, who says that Jews went to Arabia and “explained to them that they were kinsmen according to the Bible” with an heirship tracing back to Hagar, Abraham’s concubine, who was sent away as an immigrant to Arabia. Muhammad, already familiar with Moses and Abrahamic traditions gained as a merchant traveling between Arabia and the Holy Land. He was encouraged by this Jewish alliance to take back the land in a new exodus, as a sort of messianic figure, in what would be an exodus (Arabic hijra) from Arabia to Jerusalem to rebuild the Jewish Temple. Muhammad died before the new exodus, but the land was conquered by his successors: Umar and then Abu Bakr.
“Muhammad is well-acquainted with the story of Moses, and presents himself as a preacher who is to lead his people out of the wilderness into the Promised Land.”
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