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Remember that Muhammad (the praiseworthy one) was originally a TITLE, not a name. There was nosuch person as Muhammad

I've been reading

Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origin

and

What the Modern Martyr Should Know: 72 Grapes and not a single virgin.

and

No God but One: Allah or Jesus? (with Bonus Content): A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity

and

The Impact of Islam

And for fellow Freepers who know me, I'm an amateur historian.

The information in these books blew my mind.

To summarise:

The Arab empires in the 7th and 8th centuries do not mention any prophet, leave alone a prophet Muhammad.
The Buddhists, Christians, Zoroastrians do not mention anything about a prophet Muhamad or Islam or Muslims or the Quran.
Mecca itself is not mentioned in the Quran.
"Muhammad" is a title -- a title used in the Quran to refer to Jesus.
1. Jesus is mentioned many times in the Qur'an but Muhammad is mentioend only 4 times
Muhammad means "the chosen one" -- no parent will give their child such a name and there was no usage of the name Muhamad before the 6th century.
Nabatea and ARabia were outside the realms of the roman empire (where orthodoxy christianity reigned) and you had Ebionite Christians (a jewish sect of christianity who believed that christians should become jews first and that jesus was a prophet of Yahweh) and Gnostics (people who believed the world was an illusion and that jesus never died on the cross
the name Jesus is in hebrew Yehoshua, the same name as the English Joshua -- remember that Joshua was a great warrior who killed many Canaanites in the OT
The Qur'an was not written down until many decades after Muhamad allegedly lived -- and the Sahih bukhara states that they had to get it from different people's heads.
The Hadiths and Sirah (actions and life of M) were not written until over a century after M allegedly died -- and even then there were so many thousands that there are still disputes over what was really said and what wasn't
The Arabs supposedly conquered the two superpowers - Byzantium and Sassanid Persia -- kind of like saying that in 1980 Afghanistan would conquer both the USSR and half the USA.
The entire area was heavily literate and had been writing and minting coins for thousands of years. YET for the first 100 years you don't see ANY coins with the name Muhamad or any of the first 3 Caliphs, you don't see any reference to the Qur'an -- strange right, if the Arabs conquered these peoples.
The Persians in 611 conquered Jerusalem and held it for a long time until the Byzantines supposedly reconquered it and then they lose it shortly to the ARabs (supposedly)
Yet the first "Muslim Empire" coins have the faces of Khurso II of Persia and his son -- quite strange considering the Islamic injunct against depictions of people
Khusro's favorite wife was a Nestorian (or more likely Ebionite) christian.
a real killer -- for the first few decades after Muhammad's alleged death, Muslims BOW TO JERUSALEM for prayers NOT TO MECCA. Then for some time they bow to Petra and ultimately to Mecca.
It seems that what happened was:
a. The Persian king converted to Ebionite religion -- not too hard considering the Persian capital was Ctesiphon, near what is now Baghdad.
b. He defeated the Byzantines and took over much of their land
c. He was soundly helped by his Arab (Lakhmid) and then ARab Ghassanid allies. He was probably also helped by Jews who saw his version of monotheism as probably closer to their and they probably thought he would not persecute them as the Byzantines did. His Semitic allies were welcomed by the Coptic Patriarch of Egypt (kinda stupid in hindsight) - which makes sense if they were "known" people as opposed to the Greek speaking Byzantines
d. But after a few decades the Arab generals overthrew Khushro's son and moved the center of worship to Petra.
e. But to justify their coup d'etat, they used the Qur'an reference to the "chosen one" Muhamad and instead of it refering to Jesus (or rather the Ebionite version of Jesus), they fabricated a whole new person, an Arab person.
f. They then put the stories of the OT to favor them, like Abraham about to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac.
g. They take the Gnostic idea that Jesus didn't die on the Cross and use it
h. They then mix up Jesus and Joshua and use the tale of the warlord Joshua to aspects of Muhammad -- and add in details of other Arab warlords, so you have the stories of the warlord that goes into excruciating yet contradictory detail.