Firas Al-Sawwah's Delusions and Youssef Ziedan's Lies

Once again, I find myself compelled to return to what Firas Al-Sawwah and Youssef Ziedan say, not because what they present represents a great cognitive discovery, but because the magnitude of the shock they deliberately cause makes silence a kind of surrender to what I see as nothing but a misleading reading of history, religion, and humanity combined.Firas Al-Sawwah says that our master Muhammad, peace be upon him, was a Christian, and that the Quran is nothing but an extension of the myths and stories of previous peoples, from the Sumerians to the Syriacs and others. He goes further when he proposes the idea that God is Gabriel, as if he carries the ultimate truth in his pocket, or as if fourteen centuries of Islamic thought, interpretation, and creed were merely a collective error finally discovered by a contemporary researcher.As for Youssef Ziedan, he says that Abraha al-Habashi did not want to demolish the Kaaba, but was a Christian saint, and he questions the story of the Companions of the Elephant on the pretext that elephants cannot travel from Yemen to Mecca, and considers that the narrative is derived from apocryphal gospels.For me, the problem is not only in the validity or invalidity of these statements, as there are Arab and Muslim researchers, historians, and scholars who have discussed these issues and proven the fragility of many of these claims. Rather, the deeper problem is: why do some choose to fight their intellectual battles in such a shocking way in societies already living under the weight of killing, displacement, forced migration, poverty, and oppression?What do you say to a father who lost his son, or to a person whose home was destroyed, or to a people living under occupation and siege? Do you tell him that all he relies on in faith, hope, and spiritual strength are mere transmitted myths? Do you tell him that all that gives him the ability to endure is just a historical illusion?The problem is that those who want to strip people of faith do not offer a real alternative. It is not enough to raise slogans of enlightenment, modernity, and re-reading heritage, and then leave people alone to face ruin. Where is the alternative ethical project? Where is the vision that gives people meaning and the ability to endure?Europe witnessed a conflict with the Church during the Renaissance, but those who criticized the religious institution there presented new philosophies, sciences, and visions for humanity, the world, and society. But to come today and tell hundreds of millions that what they believe is false, and then offer nothing but media sensationalism and provocation, this does not create a renaissance nor achieve progress.Moreover, some of these theses do not stand up to the simplest reading of the Quranic text. The distinction between Allah Almighty and Gabriel is clear in the Quran, and the difference between the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, as a human messenger, and revelation as a divine discourse, is unequivocally present in the Islamic text itself. Also, God in the Quran is presented as transcending nature, history, and humanity, and not merely a mythical figure or an intermediary being that can be reduced to Gabriel or others.What also bothers me is that these battles sometimes seem like an attempt to change priorities. Instead of talking about hunger, poverty, tyranny, the erosion of human dignity, and the absence of justice, people are pushed into debates that do not affect their daily lives as much as they affect their emotions and sacred beliefs.It is not required that we stop thinking, criticizing, or re-examining heritage, for criticism is a legitimate right, and scientific research is a necessity. But there is a difference between serious criticism and the pursuit of shock, and between the search for truth and turning religious heritage into material for provocation and controversy.Therefore, I believe that what Al-Sawwah and Ziedan propose does not open new doors to understanding as much as it creates intellectual chaos and further divisions in already exhausted societies. Nations do not progress by insulting people's convictions, nor by making them feel that everything they held onto for centuries was an illusion, but rather by building people, defending their dignity, and confronting the real causes of their misery, not by fabricating symbolic battles that only add more confusion and resentment to people's suffering.