This is another installment from a series of posts from the Coptic convert Ibn Raja: A Coptic Convert Exposes Muhammad Pt. 2.
In this section I quote what this blessed monk wrote in respect to the manner in which Muhammad allegedly received inspiration. Ibn Raja exposes Muhammad as a charlatan who plagiarized what he had been told by the Jews and Christians that learned from.
The following is taken from, David Bertaina’s book Būluṣ ibn Rajāʾ The Fatimid Egyptian Convert Who Shaped Christian Views of Islam, pp. 147-153. All emphasis is mine.
[Chapter 6]
[50] On Muḥammad’s claim of how the revelation came to him.
[51] He used to sit in the midst of the people with his companions, and someone would ask him a question. Then he would say: “I don’t know, but now Gabriel will come to me with an answer to your question.” So he would contemplate it for an hour. Then when the answer came he would collapse to the ground and his hands and legs would seize. When they saw him like that, they said: “This is Gabriel talking to him,” so his companions would cover him with their clothing. So he would continue in that state until he would lift his head and he would say: “Where is the questioner?” Then he would reply: “Here I am.” So he would say: “Gabriel came to me with an answer to your question and it is such-and-such.”111
[52] Aḥmad112 and al-Ḥusayn told me the truthfulness of that, saying from Yaḥyā113 from Mālik114 from Nāfiʿ115 from Ibn ʿUmar116 who said:I heard ʿĀʾisha117 say: “I asked Muḥammad and I said to him: how does your revelation come?” So he said: “It comes to me like the sound of a bell. If I see it, I have no control collapsing to the ground just as you see, so sweat would drip in the cold and I would drip sweat.”118
[53] If those who have reason and discernment among the People of the Book thought about this conversation, then its flaws and corruption would be obvious to them. Namely, he alleges that he arose and went to the seven Heavens [the distance] between each Heaven being a five-hundred-year march. He alleged that, among the angels, he saw one who was greater than Gabriel. If I were to explain this to the end, I would take a long time.
[54] [Muḥammad] even said: “I saw one of the angels and he was the size of the world thousands of times over. He was sitting upon his knees crying and the tears were flowing from his eyes to his heel like the Euphrates and the Nile. Then he said to me: ‘Muḥammad, ask God to forgive me’. Then I said to him: ‘You are humiliated?’ He said: ‘What can protect me when God your Lord has created Gehenna?’”119 With lies and many alterations there is no point in me repeating it. If every time [Muḥammad] passed by angelic soldiers, he would ask God to forgive them, and he would pray with them two prostrations and pray for them, then how could he be in the Heavens and witnessing these magnificent groups of angels, and God would give him the ability to speak with them and pray with them? Why when he returned to this world – where the people and his companions and those who doubted him and those who required established proofs and belief which he would report to them – would he look to a single angel and then fall down like a crazed person? No reasonable person would believe or accept this.
[55] There’s no disagreement that the prophet Moses spoke orally to his Lord God. God endowed him with power to endure that. [Muḥammad] alleged that he is better than Moses and all creatures. Whoever is in this rank, can he not endure to look at one angel without falling down like a crazed person?
[56] However, the monk Baḥīra120 became associated with him, and he was the first among those who partnered with him. He had knowledge about the reading of the Scriptures so he informed him about that which would be [relevant] for him. He read to him from the earlier Scriptures, then he hoped to take over as leader after him. It is said that he was close to him until the monk Baḥīra died. It is said that he killed him and Phineas121 the Jew on one night. Salmān the Persian122 and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām123 the Jew partnered with him and they converted to Islam and they hoped for the same things as the monk Baḥīra, hoping to take over as leader after him. They read to him from the ancient Scriptures so he grasped them and mastered them. He summarized them using the language of the ancient Arabs and the eloquence of the Quraysh and other Arabs. He gathered in [the Qurʾan] stories and legends of the sects of the prophets and others among the ancients.
[57] Then the Quraysh said: “From where did Muḥammad learn about the ancestors’ stories?” Then Abū Jahl ibn Hishām124 and Shayba ibn Rabīʿa125 came to him. They said to him: “Muḥammad, from where did you get this knowledge?” He replied: “God revealed it to me.” So they said to him: “Did not ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām the Jew and Salmān teach you about all of this?” He replied to them – between them and him – “No.” As they were sitting, he fell on the ground and his companions came to him. Then they covered him up in their clothes. Then he arose and said: “God gave a revelation to me – responding to your words – that Salmān and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām are teaching me.” They said: “What did he say to you?” Then he recited to them from sura “The Bee”: “We know for certain that they say: ‘It is only a man [that teaches him]’. The language to which they refer is foreign, while this language is clear Arabic.”126
Then he said to them: “How can Salmān and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām offer instruction, when one of them is a Persian and the other one is a Hebrew?” They said to him: “Couldn’t they be talking to you in their language, if they interpret it for you, and then you summarize it in your language?” He did not give an answer, so they departed and left him.127
111 This account is based upon a hadith about the process by which Muḥammad was said to receive his revelation. See al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 6:377, 401–402 (Book 65, #4929, 4953), and 6:452–453 (Book 66, #5044). The eighth-century Byzantine historian Theophanes was one of the first historians to refer to Muḥammad’s revelations as epileptic fits. See Theophanes, The Chronicle Of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine And Near Eastern History, ad284–813, eds. Cyril Mango, Roger Scott, and Geoffrey Greatrex (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 464.
112 I have not identified Aḥmad. Later in the text Ibn Rajāʾ transmits another hadith via Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad al-Naysabūrī. He also transmits another hadith later via Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad.
113 This reference is most likely the Mālikī jurist Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī (d. 848), see EI2, 4:87 and 6:744.
114 On Mālik ibn Anas, see Sezgin, GAS, 457–464. 115 Nāfiʿ ibn ʿUmar (d. 735); EI2, 7:876.
116 ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (d. 693); ei2, 1:53.
117 ʿĀʾisha (d. 678); EI2, 1:307.
118 This comes from a hadith on revelation from al-Bukhārī: Al-Harith bin Hisham asked Allah’s Messenger “O Allah’s Messenger! How is the Divine Revelation revealed to you?” Allah’s Messenger replied, “Sometimes it is (revealed) like the ringing of a bell, this form of Revelation is the hardest of all and then this state passes off after I have grasped what is revealed. Sometimes the angel comes in the form of a man and talks to me and I grasp whatever he says.” ʿAishah added: “Verily I saw the Prophet being inspired (divinely) and (noticed) the sweat dropping from his forehead on a very cold day as the Revelation was over.” See al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 1:46 (Book 1, #2).
119 This is a summary from numerous hadiths on Muḥammad’s Night Journey, some of which can be found in al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 4:272–275 (Book 59, #3207); 5:132–136 (Book 63, #3887); and 9:368–372 (Book 97, #7517).
120 According to Arabic Christian traditions, the monk Baḥīra was a source for passages in the Qurʾan. On these accounts in Syriac and Christian Arabic texts, see Roggema, The Legend of Sergius Baḥīra.
121 According to Ibn Isḥāq’s biography of Muḥammad, Phineas (Finḥāṣ) ibn Azūra was a Jewish rabbi who entered a disagreement with Abū Bakr, resulting in the revealing of Q 3:181 to Muḥammad. But this Phineas is an antagonist not a supporter of Muḥammad. I cannot find other traditions about Phineas as a source for material in Islamic literature.
122 Salmān al-Fārisī (d. ca. 657) was a Persian Christian who converted to Islam. According to Islamic tradition, he is mentioned as a teacher of Muḥammad.
123 ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām (d. ca. 663) was a Jewish rabbi who converted to Islam. See EI2, 1:52.
124 Abū Jahl ʿAmr ibn Hishām (d. 624); EI2, 1:115.
125 Shayba ibn Rabīʿa (d. 624). Both figures were described as Meccan Quraysh opponents of Muḥammad who died at the Battle of Badr.
126 Q 16:103.
127 This is a retelling of Islamic stories regarding the circumstances of the revelation of Q 16:103. See a list in Burman, Religious Polemic, 273, who notes that the two are not usually put together in the Islamic versions.
With the foregoing in view we are now ready to proceed to the next section: A Coptic Convert Exposes Muhammad Pt. 4.
FURTHER READING
Source of Muhammad’s Inspiration – Divine or Demonic?
Revisiting the issue of Muhammad and Epilepsy Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3
On The Bible Borrowing Theories Of The Qur’ân: An Authoritative Refutation
Muhammad the Borrower Debate With Saifullah: 1, 2
Muhammad the Borrower Still! [Part 1], [Part 2]
Answering Islam Blog 
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