Muhammad (SAW) in the Near-Contemporaneous Non-Muslim Sources: An Appraisal of Robert Spencer’s Views

Muhammad’s (SAW life is fully reserved and recorded in history. It has been established beyond a shadow of doubt that not only the major and significant events of his life but even the minutest details of his life are also painstakingly preserved by the Muslims. In spite of the availability of abundant authentic documents concerning Muhammad’s (SAW) life, sayings and deeds, some critics of Islam stubbornly refuse to believe in his historicity. Robert Spencer is one such critic who maintains that Muhammad’s (SAW) value is nothing more than a fictional or mythological figure. This article is an attempt to prove the existence of Muhammad (SAW) in contemporary non-Muslims sources. The article is divided into three major parts: the first part of the paper throws light on how much emphasis Muslims lay on historical authenticity of Muhammad (SAW), in the second part of the paper views and doubts of prominent like orientalists Spencer concerning Muhammad’s (SAW) historical authenticity have been summarized, whereas the third part presents Robert Spencer’s views in the same connection and endeavors to refute his views and approach drawing on contemporary non-Muslim Sources.  

Archetypal Identification and Psycho Psycho- Spiritual Well Being: the Influence of Well-Being: Archetypal Polarity on Religiosity Hetypal Spirituality and Neuroticism

The concept of personal growth is highly important for human welfare. According to Jungian model of human development, personal growth and maturity refers to the search for completion which is universal, cross-cultural, and spiritual (Freeman, 2006). Using holistic approach, the question of the personal growth and maturity in relation to psycho-spiritual wellbeing has been explored in the sample of 500 adult population of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. The sample was composed of 262 men (52.4%) and 238 women (47.6%), whose age ranged from 17 to 47 with the mean age of 26.05 ± 6.381. The personal growth was gauged through the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator (Pearson, 2002). Spiritual Wellbeing Scale by Paloutzian and Ellison (1991) was used to measure existential and religious wellbeing which was supplemented with Subjective-Psychological Wellbeing Scale of Diener and Biswas-Diener (2008). Later, the two scales were validated against the Islamic Religiosity Scale (Khan, 2006) and Depression Anxiety and Stress respectively. The results were discussed in terms of hypotheses involving the meditating role of archetypes in psychological maturity and psycho-spiritual wellbeing. The evidence implicating psychological maturity in the determining of religiosity, spirituality and wellbeing was compelling. All of the main and most of the secondary predictions were confirmed. Multiple comparisons showed significant relationship of psychological maturity with age, gender and early life experiences of the respondents, F (2, n=500), 127.686, p<.01.; X2 (2, n=500) 33.476, p<.01.; and X2 = (9, n=500) 125.46, p<.01., respectively. As predicted, it was discovered that psychologically mature respondents obtained higher scores on all measures of subjective-psychological and spiritual wellbeing. Spiritual poverty apparently resulted when a respondent’s major identification was with the lower levels of ego and soul. Moreover, neurotic tendencies significantly reduced with psychological maturity and religious participation. As such these results confirm the importance of psychological maturity on psycho-spiritual wellbeing. ii