Here is a free PDF download of KARL HEINZ OHLIG's EARLY ISLAM. Link below. 654 pages. This is a revisionist view so they flip everything upside down. To rebut them it may be useful to read what they are saying.
From the link:
EARLY ISLAM
This successor volume to The Hidden Origins of Islam (edited by Karl-Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin) continues the pioneering research begun in the first Islam. Using coins, commemorative build ing inscriptions, and a rigorous linguistic analysis of the Koran, along with Persian and Christian literature from the seventh and eighth centuries—when Islam was in its formative .stages—five expert contributors attempt a reconstruction of this critical time period.
Despite the scholarly nature of their work, the implications of their discoveries are startling:
• Islam originally emerged as a sect of Chri.stianity.
• Its central theological tenets go back to a pre-Nicean, Syrian Christianity.
• Aramaic, lingua franca of the Near Ha.st for many centuries and the language of Syrian Christianity, significantly influenced the Arabic of the Koran (i.e., its vocabulary, phraseology, and script).
• Finally, it was not until the end of the eighth and ninth centuries that Islam formed as a separate religion, and the Koran underwent a period of historical development of at least two hundred years.
Controversial and highly intriguing, this critical-historical analysis reveals the
beginning of Islam in a completely new light.
