Author and terrorism expert Robert Spencer has done exhaustive research that has led him to doubt if the founder of Islam, Mohammad, ever really existed.
Since the storming of the American embassy in Cairo and the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the Middle East has exploded into violence, with Muslim mobs taking to the streets burning cars and torching an American business like KFC in Beirut, Lebanon.
For the most part the Muslims have said they are up in arms because of an obscure film that they say insults Mohammad.
But in his recently released book Did Mohammad Exist?, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch questions whether Islam's founder was even a real person.
"I found that Islam rests on quite shaky historical foundations," the author explains. "There's no certainty that Mohammad existed at all -- or if he did exist, that he did very many of the things, if any, that he is supposed to have done according to Islamic tradition."
Spencer says for one thing there are no records from the time of the huge Arab conquests that mention -- by name -- Mohammad, the Koran, or Islam.
"My theory is that he is a fictional character," Spencer announces. "He may be a composite of several real people, but there was no one person named Mohammad who did these things. He was created in order to be the centerpiece of this new religion, and that new religion was created in order to give impetus and unity to the new Arab empire."
Spencer also says his study of the Koran shows that it was essentially recast from Jewish and Christian texts.