Until around the 1970s, non-Muslim scholars did accept its Islamic origin story.Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.45 Ernest Renan famously declared that "Islam was born, not amid the mystery which cradles the origins of other religions, but rather in the full light of history"Cilliot, Claude "Muhammad, le Curan et les `Contraites de l'Histoire`" in Wild, Stefan (editor): The Qur'an as Text (Leiden, 1966), p.4—an empire ruling in the name of the religion of Islam and whose expansion was fuelled by religious fervor, and which presided over the compilation, editing, approving and distributing of the holy book of that religion (the Quran).
