Reddit reviews Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam)

Please stop lying. http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Islam-Others-Saw-Zoroastrian/dp/0878501258

There are numerous non-Islamic sources testifying existence of Muhammad. This one is from patricia crone's student Hoyland.

"Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam Book 13)"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeing-Islam-Others-Saw-Zoroastrian/dp/0878501258

Well, that is certainly one perspective. Another would be that placing the Hadith alongside the Qur'an as another infallible scriptural source is itself an "innovation" championed by al-Shaf'i, whose works show his awareness of many people who say that the Qur'an is indeed a book "explaining everything" (16:89) and to "obey Allah and His Messenger" is only to obey what God has revealed through His Messenger in the Qur'an. This was a widespread belief in early Islam. In Early Muslim Dogma, Cook transliterates and translates what is traditionally identified as a letter from Ibn Ibad to Abd al-Malik, condemning the Kūfans for accepting an authority other than the Qur'an.

> They abandoned the judgment of their Lord and took ḥadīths for their religion; they claimed to have obtained knowledge other than from the Koran, including a raising of the dead before the Day of Resurrection. They believed in a book which was not from God, written by the hands of men; they then attributed it to the Apostle of God, and there is [?] no greater lie against God than [?] the attribution of fabrications to His Apostle.

Of course, the authority to be accorded to authentic hadiths may be a moot point if many modern secular academics are correct to hold that few if any of the hadiths are reliable and the only solid information about Islam at its founding comes from the Qur'an itself and early non-Islamic sources, with later centuries' traditions about the Prophet largely being legendary developments to explain obscure passages in the Qur'an—though given your willingness to flatly assert that philology was no better understood at Cambridge in the 1950s than by 9th Century imams, I would expect a similar assessment of the abilities of modern historians.

Like I said from the start, I know the position that Christians can be saved in Islam may conflict with what has come to be regarded as Muslim orthodoxy, and with that tradition's claims for its own completeness and infallibility. But it is an interpretation of the Qur'an that to many Muslims, even expert Muslims familiar with the traditional exegesis, does not sound "quite ridiculous," as you called it; and if (what one takes to be) the plain sense of the Qur'an conflicts with the tradition, so much the worse for the tradition, since nobody would assign it an authority that overrules or abrogates the Qur'an.

Thank you for your suggestions, I will give them a look. The Bat Ye'or book I was referring to seemed similar to the Robert Hoyland book in that they give non-Muslim accounts of the Islam. Have not read either book yet but I do like to read many sources.