Was Muhammad insane ? It is not a moot point. If the entire cult of Islam is premised on the mad ravings of an incoherent lunatic the entire project is null and void. Its claim to be a 'religion' becomes absurd. If Muhammad was just a more successful cult leader, one of the many thousands throughout the world in the 6th and 7th centuries, the edifice of Islam crumbles, its 'truth' transposed into lies and savage mendacity.
Muhammad is not a mythical figure. Over 12 contemporary or near-contemporary Moslem historians provide a huge corpus of material about Muhammad. As one German historian commented, Muhammad is shown in the full light of history [which is why books musing that he never existed are simply incorrect and worse, disingenuous]. The Koran, the Hadiths, and hundreds of Arab and Western chroniclers have also identified his life, actions, biographical details and even sketched out his psycho-biography. Muhammad was real, he invented Islam and he was most assuredly quite mad.
There are many issues with Muhammad. His invention of Allah, in which a moon deity is suffused with badly understood J-C ideals. His behaviour was the exact opposite of Christ. After they rejected him, he loathed and could not tolerate Jews and Christians. As a leader he was a totalitarian pagan-fascist in the true sense of those words. The Koran – his invention – is garbled, intolerant, Jihadic, contradictory and tautologically irrational. In Muhammad's deranged mind he is the Allah thing.
The key to Muhammad is that he must be viewed for what he was – a political-military adventurer, a blood thirsty murdering tyrant and a pagan cult leader. He was one of thousands in the world during the 7th century to form and lead a cult, inspired supposedly by some celestial power – the sun, the moon, a star, the rain, the thunder-god, the sky-god, or perhaps by the earth goddess.
As a pagan cult Islam is orthopraxic in that it demands 'right' conduct and behaviour and does not countenance disputes, debates or strange ideas which are outside of Koranic and mainstream Islamic thought. The cult is uber alles. There is no free-will or faith through reason which clearly denotes a cult organization. Thus, rather strangely, the Christian idea of the Trinity is a sin in Islam. Yet Christian theologia and scholasticism spent much effort and time to rationalize its faith in the Godhead using reason. Islam has never attempted the same. The last Moslem philosopher Averroes who was a mild rationalist, was threatened with death in the 12th century for attempting to infuse the Koran with Aristotelian ideas.
One of the animating aspects of the Moslem medieval Jihad which tortured and butchered Europe for 1000 years, was the Muslim belief that the Christians were pagans worshipping 3 Gods, not one. For Muslims only the worship of what they call Allah, which is ali-ilah or the male moon diety of the Meccan shrine [the Cube] is allowed. This is however rather odd. Islamic theology and the Koran are very clear in their hatred of the pagan and polytheistic. Yet Muslims pray to a mental illusion called Allah; which was the male moon deity of the Kabaa, and who had a wife, daughters and other celestial relatives. This is paganism in its purest and most unadulterated form.
Muhammad must be viewed historically for what he most certainly was. A pagan chief and brigand. A man who became the King of Medina using terror and bloodshed, and then spread his cult by force of armed Jihad to the rest of Arabia, exterminating Jews, Christians and pagans in the process.