Egyptian-German researcher Dr. Hamed Abdel-Samad published a series of lectures and interviews on his YouTube account under the title "The Box of Islam," in which he encouraged thinking “out of the box” when analyzing the Islamic religion. In the first two episodes of the series, Dr. Abdel-Samad addressed the early beginnings of Islam, contending that contrary to what is claimed by many liberal researchers of Islam, one must not draw a distinction between Islamic heritage, on the one hand, and the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran. These lectures were posted on the Internet on June 9 and 10, 2015.

Following are excerpts

Hamed Abdel-Samad: When we were children, we used to say: "I am a Muslim and proud of it," without knowing what we were proud of and why we are Muslims. Islam kept us in a box and we could not see anything else, but when we get out of the box, we begin to see other ideas and angles, which acquaint us with things in Islam, which we could not know all the while that we were locked in that box.

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There is a new trend in the Arab world, and especially in Egypt, of reforming Islam and renewing the religious discourse. People like Islam Behery, Dr. Adnan Ibrahim, Dr. Mohamed Shahrour, and others say that Islam in the days of the Prophet Muhammad was very beautiful - there were no problems, and it was a tolerant and merciful religion - but that then came the Umayyads and Abbasids, and began to distort Islam, or to interpret it in an erroneous way. For 1,400 years, according to them, Islam continued to be distorted, misunderstood, and misused, awaiting the arrival of people who would have a correct understanding of Islam, and who would interpret it, correctly, as a religion of mercy and peace.

I have a completely different theory on this issue. I believe that Islam began as a savage religion. That was its nature. The cities of Mecca and Medina, in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, did not follow any civilization or culture. These were tribes that gathered and raided the Arabian Peninsula, and then began to raid the entire world. When the Umayyads and the Abbasids came along, they were the ones to begin the refinement of that beast, and to usher it into civilization. They were the ones who invented a biography for the Prophet Muhammad, in order to place him within a certain civilized context. They invented the disciplines of Islamic jurisprudence and hadith, in order to place Islam within a certain context.

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Even the reformists themselves don't know how to think out of the box. Even the reformists draw a distinction: The Prophet and the Quran are one thing, and Islamic history is another. This is incomprehensible and completely unacceptable. Everything that has happened throughout the history of Islam stems from what happened in its first century. All that has happened throughout the history of Islam draws its legitimacy from what happened in the Arabian Peninsula in the days of the Prophet Muhammad. While reading the history of Islam, I saw that when the Prophet Muhammad made a peaceful call to Islam - "Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction" - hardly anyone heeded his da'wa. The very small group that did follow him was not enough to build a state.

What were the foundations upon which the Islamic State [in Medina] was established? It came into existence because an army was established, and this army began to launch raids and to attack convoys. It began to form an Islamic economy, based on the notion of invasion. When I tried to find out what kind of work the Prophet and his companions did after the hijra to Medina, I found that they did not work in anything - not in trade, not in agriculture, nothing. They would launch raids and then split the booty. When they employed this kind of logic, they grew in number.

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Islam is experiencing a catastrophe, and is inflicting this catastrophe upon the world, because of its inception stage, from which the Muslims have not been liberated. I call this the birth defect of Islam. The rapid political and economic success of the newly-born Islam, its expansion through conquests, or raids, have become... The success of early Islam is the very reason it cannot leave the box.

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A careful comparison teaches us that the birth of the mafia is very similar to the birth of Islam.

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The island of Sicily was occupied by the Arabs, and no culture influenced it more than the Arab culture. The Arabs had an impact on the island's agriculture and trade, and introduced the notion of jizya and extortion into southern Italy.

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In the mafia, they do not call it jizya. They call it pizzo.

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The same notion has existed since the foundation of the Islamic State in Medina: You launch a raid, take booty, and split it, and that was the basis of the economy. You protect a group of people in exchange for protection money. Politically, this is how Islam was established. This is the truth, whether we like it or not.

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What happened at the advent of Islam? The Prophet Muhammad called for Islam in Mecca for 12 years, but to no avail. He would say beautiful things. The most beautiful Quranic verses are from the Mecca period. He called for tolerance, saying to people: "You have your religion, and I have mine." "Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and dispute with them in a way that is best." [Quran 16:125] He did not call for violence or war. The words "fight" and "war" appeared only when he was in Medina. None of these beautiful principles resonated with the people of Mecca. But when the Prophet Muhammad moved to Medina, everything changed.

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What happened that made them join the religion of Allah in droves? What transformation took place? The Prophet Muhammad struck a very strange military alliance.

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The Sa'alik were young men banished by their tribes for committing a crime: for stealing or for doing something that dishonored the tribe. They were banished, and they gathered in the mountains, where they formed armed groups, which would raid convoys, would raid the tribes, would abduct women and children and sell them as slaves. They made a living out of attacks and pillaging. The first thing that the Prophet Muhammad did when he emigrated to Medina was to write them a letter of assurance: Oh Sa'alik, If you follow my religion and support me, everything you have done - all the murders, all the thefts - will become halal. Just become a part of my new state. Thus, the Sa'alik joined in. They were the first to attack a convoy.

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Those Sa'alik were the secret of success. Then came the Ghifar tribe, led by Abu Dharr Al-Ghifari. This was a tribe consisting entirely of highway robbers. It was the only tribe to emigrate in its entirety to Medina. They all settled in Medina. Why? How come out of all the tribes, this one emigrated to Medina? Because the Prophet Muhammad wanted them. He wanted them to make him stronger.

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This was how the Islamic economy was founded, and it lasted for many centuries. Since its inception, Islamic economy was based on these notions: enslavement, robbery, the splitting of booty, jizya, and human trafficking. This is very difficult to accept, but it is true. The slave trade was one of the mainstays of Islamic economy, all the way to the Ottoman Empire, until the abolition of slavery in America by Abraham Lincoln, when they started to form international treaties to ban the slave trade.

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When they could no longer steal, raid, pillage, or enslave and sell people, they realized that they had nothing to sell to the human race. The economy of the world today is based on the notion of selling something that humanity needs. The world is no longer dominated by whoever has more weapons, and whose savage people raid villages and tribes. No. Today, the world is dominated by whoever has something to sell it. The most important countries in the world today are the ones whose products you find in your home. Take a tour of your home, and you will see products from America, Germany, Japan, or China, and this is how you know that these are the powerful countries. Where are the Saudi products? The Pakistani products? The Egyptian products? The Moroccan products? The Syrian products? You won't find any in your home. Islam had a birth defect. It's birth was shrouded in violence, and its economy was based on the oppression of others, and on infringement upon their rights.

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You cannot draw a distinction between (Islamic) heritage on the one hand, and the Prophet and the Quran, on the other hand. When you have an old rusty car, without any brakes, and every day you kill four or five people with it, it's difficult to claim all the time that the car is fine, that the problem lies in the poor road conditions, that the gasoline was tampered with, or that the people who built the car are at fault. No, the problem is with the car and with the way you drive it. That is the problem. If your house is about to collapse, don't paint it in nice colors and say that it's fixed. If the house is about to collapse, the only solution is to demolish it, and rebuild it on solid foundations. Any engineer will tell you that. But we don't want engineers. We don't want experts. All we want to do is to save face. We refuse to admit that the source of the crisis lies in the inception of Islam.

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In the mafia, there is always a division between the capo, who is the boss, and the capo dei capi, the boss of all bosses. The notion of the godfather is very similar to the notion of the Prophet. The godfather is untouchable. You must not criticize him. If you do, you will be killed. If you betray him, you will be killed.

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The Mafia considers itself to be a moral organization. When they tell you their history, they say: We united the tribes in Sicily. We restored security and justice, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. This is how they present themselves. They present the mafia as a merciful organization, but, they say, later generations have distorted the image of the mafia, and have used it for criminal purposes. It is the exact same idea as our notion of the inception of Islam.

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In Medina, Muhammad founded a state with the best intelligence agency ever. As he continued with his raids and the number of Muslims grew, his suspicions of the Muslims who believed in him grew. At first, he had a small circle of people who really believed in his message.

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But most of the people who followed him later, in Medina, did so because they had no choice, after their tribe had been raided and had disintegrated, or because they were opportunists, who wanted to benefit economically from this. They realized that if they joined Muhammad's camp, they would have booty, they would get money and slave girls. They would benefit from the raids. When this group grew, the Prophet began to have suspicions: Who supports me and who doesn't? Do they really believe in my ideas? So he founded an inspection mechanism. He made them pray five times a day, thus gathering them five times a day - one at 4 AM and one late at night. That was his way of making sure that they were there. Why did he say that the punishment of someone who does not pray is death? Because he was afraid that someone who did not come to pray would go to the enemy camp and would do him harm. He even said: I almost burned down the houses of people praying out of home, Look how paranoid he was.

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Look what happened Look what happened to Raif Badawi, who got lashed in Saudi Arabia. to Farag Foda. Look at the millions who are afraid to utter a single word of criticism about Islam. Look how they killed ten people at the Charlie Hebdo magazine, merely for drawing a picture. This is the problem of Islam.

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