The Koran explains Muhammad’s lack of miracles by prior peoples’ unbelief

Evidence

The Koran imposes unity on sacred history: if God is One and unchanging, so is the essential message of his prophets—and so is the eternal resistance of the damned. Even when confronted by the clear evidence of miracles performed by Moses, Jesus, and other prophets, they refused to believe the message. For this reason, Muhammad performed no miracles other than producing the Koran: “We refrain from sending Signs [miracles] because the men of former generations treated them as false” (Koran 17:61). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 218 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

This wider view of prophethood, within which it was not possible to exclude Muhammad by definition, indicated another and more effective direction of attack, which brought Peter the Venerable’s thought closer to that of his contemporaries and successors, and to an argument more securely set in Christian tradition. It proceeded, he himself said, from a ‘new starting-point’. This was to classify prophets as good and bad; the good as either universal or particular, the bad as either true or false. Universal prophets are those who foretold Christ; their supply was now naturally dried up. Particular or personal prophets foretell particular things, but the Qur’an contains no such prophecy. Bad prophets were those whose life was reprobate, their teaching false, like the prophets of Baal. It is obvious where Muhammad was to fit into this classification, although the author failed to develop this part of his argument. Peter’s attack on Muhammad as wicked and as false thus represents two elements in the systematic attack put forward by Pedro de Alfonso. A great deal of Peter’s argument consisted in setting the claims of Islam beside the story of the Hebrew prophets, to show the two to be inconsistent; this was also in line with the Risadlah, with Pedro de Alfonso and with the wide Christian tradition, and excluded Muhammad’s claims, not by definition, but by requiring particular qualities in the prophet and his prophecies. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 402 (#complicates, via linked claim)

[Muhammad’s] heart.” He was so confused and troubled by the revelation that he decided to commit suicide by throwing himself off a mountain, but when he went out to do so, he heard a voice from heaven proclaiming “O Muhammad! Thou art the apostle of God and I am Gabriel.” He looked up and saw the angel, “in the form of a man with feet astride the horizon.” He went home, still uncertain of his mission, and told his wife Khadîja what had happened. She told him to rejoice and be of good heart and went to her cousin Waraqa, a learned Christian who, upon hearing the details of Muhammad’s vision, proclaimed that he was indeed “the prophet of this people.” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 183 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Muhammad’s pre-prophetic life was ordinary merchant success in a polytheist Mecca; Muhammad’s miracle was the Koran itself because earlier prophets’ miracles were rejected — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 218; Christian polemic framed Muhammad’s lack of miracles as itself miraculous but perverse — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 429 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Muhammad’s miracle was the Koran itself because earlier prophets’ miracles were rejected #corroborates (0.95) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 218
• Medieval Christian polemic schematized prophecy tests to reject Muhammad empirically, not by definition #complicates (0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 402
• Medieval Christian writers widely understood Muhammad as merely a prophet #complicates (0.75)
• Early Islamic sources portray Muhammad as initially doubting his own prophetic call #complicates (0.75) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 183
• Muhammad’s failed resurrection legend explains early Islam’s fragility #complicates (0.70)
• Polemicists granted Muhammad more miracles than the Hadith did #complicates (0.70)