The worst is not Mel. It is his friend "Joe" a guy who brings confusion in a topic which does not need it.
that is a good one
AJ Deus in The Great Leap Fraud Part II was the first to bring forward this assumption ;
well I am not ceratin he was the first one to mention that Prophet of Islam Muhammad could be that guy the governor al-Hirah from 602 to 617 .. Iyas ibn Qabisah al-Ta'i .. I think other folks thought about it before Deus...
It looks kind of possible but, the only issue I have with this, is that then why the islamic narrative didn't come forward in openly using this guy under its real name if this was the real Muhammad ; there are enough events in this guy 's life to do this and help build the prophet legend.
well anything is possible and any one of those Islamic characters of that time could be made as Muhammad PBUH ., but we can not just give handwaving assumption on "Muhammad"
anyways let me add this SELECTIVE BIBLOGRAPHY from that book...The Great Leap-Fraud, Volume II by A.J. Deus
Bibliography for The Great Leap-Fraud, Volume II Islam and Secularization
The bibliography is divided into primary sources, significant church councils, and secondary sources. Within these sections, the references are ordered according to the timeline. These are the sources that were utilized in The Great Leap-Fraud. There are hundreds more that had been studied without finding a place in the actual manuscript.
Primary Sources
Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, ca. 90 AD, translated by William Whiston.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, ca. 325 AD.
St. Augustine, DeGenesi ad Litteram, 354-430 AD.
Book of the Martyrdom of Bartholomew, ca. 500 AD, translated by Alexander Walker, from Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, Christian Literature,
1886. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.
Anicius Boethius,
The Consolation of Philosophy, ca. 525 AD, translated by W.V.Cooper, Dent, 1902.
The Poem of Amru, translated by W.A. Clouston, 1881.
The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Parke, Austin, & Lipscomb, 1917.
Poem of Hareth, translated by W. A. Clouston, 1881.
The Poem of Tarafa, translated by W.A. Clouston, 1881.
Thomas Hodgkin, Letters of Cassiodorus, Frowde, 1886.
Corpus Juris Civilis, 534 AD.
Procopius of Ceasarea, History of the Wars, 545 AD.
Procopius of Cesarea, The Secret History, ca. 550 AD.
Gregory the Great, Dialogues, ca. 600 AD.
Homily on the Child Saints of Babylon, ca. 640 AD.
Pseudo-Shenute, Vision, ca. 644 AD.
Thomas the Presbyter, Chronicle, ca. 640 AD.
Pope Martin, Epistles, ca. 655 AD.
Chronicler of Khuzistan, ca. 665 AD.
Sebeo’s History of the seventh century, publishing ca. 670 AD, English by Robert Bedrosian, 1985.
John, Bishop of Nikiû, Chronicles, ca. 690 AD.
Arculf, ca. 690s, Adomnan, De locis sanctis.
John of Damascus, The Fount of Knowledge, ca. 740 AD, Frederic Chase, Fathers of the Church, 1958.
Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor, Harry Turtledove (translator) The chronicle of Theophanes: an English translation of anni mundi 6095-6305 (602-813 AD), University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
ibn Khordadbeh, The Book of Roads and Kingdoms, ca. 870 AD.
Tabari (838–923 AD).
Secondary Sources
Al-Sahifa al-Kamilah al-Sajjadiyya,The Perfect Book of al-Sajjad, ca. 678-713 AD.
Ibn Ishaq, The Biography of Muhammad, ca. 760s AD (original is missing).
Sahih Bukhari, 846 AD,CMJE and the University of Southern California, 2007-2009.
Al-Tabarī, 838–923 AD, The History of Al Tabari, translated by Ismail K. Poonawala (1990, State University of New York) 107.
Daniel J. Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam: The "Heresy of the Ishmaelites", Brill, Leiden, 1972.
Patricia Crone, M.A. Cook, Hagarism, The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
John Wansbrough, Qur'anic Studies: Sources & Methods Of Scriptural Interpretation, Oxford University Press, 1977.
Emmanuel van Si, Radical Islam, Medieveal Theology and Modern Politics, Yale University Press, 1985.
Andrew Rippin, Jan Knappert, Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Francis E. Peters, Muhammad and the origins of Islam, State University of New York Press, 1994.
Neal Robinson, Christ in Islam and Christianity, in Ibn Rawandi, On Pre-Islamic Christian Strophic Poetical Tests in the Koran, from Ibn Warraq, What the Koran Really Says, Prometheus, 2002.
Yehuda D. Nevo, “Toward a Prehistory of Islam,” JSAI 17, 1994, from Ibn Warraq, What the Koran Really Says, Prometheus, 2002.
Albert Habib Hourani, Malise Ruthven, A history of the Arab Peoples, Harvard University press, 2002.
all those I selected to read.... (Here and there if not every page in them)....from that book bibliography ... great guy... wonderful thinker ..