The earliest Christian polemic demanded witnesses to Muhammad’s revelation

Evidence

Here John turns and interrogates a hypothetical Muslim adversary, asking him to produce witnesses to prove the legitimacy of the prophet’s revelation. He contrasts Muhammad to Moses, who received the law on Mount Sinai in full view of the people. The Ishmaelites’ law requires witnesses for weddings, land sales, and other transactions; why do they not ask for witnesses to prove that the Koran is truly revealed by God? — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 347

Categorization

• XREF: This witness-demand inaugurates the long Western insistence, still alive in modern secular-liberal critiques, that Islam’s founding lacks verifiable historical testimony — connecting to vault claims about how Islam has been epistemically delegitimized in Western discourse.