Odon Lafontaine is back on Pfanderfilms Youtube channel with Jay Smith for a new presentation on Islam's origins, based on coins and epîgraphy.
Source:    • Odon's Coins prove ISLAM's SIN has it...  
Odon Lafontaine's website: https://thegreatsecretofislam.com (with the pdf file of the presentation)

We need to use coins because they are such great windows into that time and in that place, and because they don't deteriorate, since they are forged from metal.

The Standard Islamic Narrative (SIN) is very clear that the prophet Muhammad was born and lived in the city of Mecca until he was 52 years old, and that when he died all of Arabia was under the control of Islam. What's more, the SIN maintains that by the time the next 4 caliphs ruled and died (i.e. 661 AD), the Muslims completely controlled all the land from Tripoli in the West to Afghanistan in the East, and from Syria in the north to Yemen and Oman in the south, and that Islam was the religion of all these peoples and all these places.

The coins, however, don't agree.

Odon points out that the name 'Muhammad' had many different meanings: "the praised one", or "the desired one", or "the coveted one", or "the beloved" one, derived from the reference in Daniel 10:11 where in Hebrew the equivalent to the Arabic word Muhammad is known as "is-hamudot", which means "greatly beloved man". As time went on the Arabic root HMD drifted from "desire" to "praise", possibly due to the need to fit the 'Paraclete' of John 14 and 16 into the word 'ahmad' found in Surah 61:6.

In the 7th century, the Arab rulers conquered Jerusalem in 638 AD (usually credited to 'Umar'), with the hope that Jesus would return as the promised Messiah. When he didn't these Arab leaders decided to take on his 'mantle' and they became the intermediaries between God and man.

And the coins bear that out.

In the early 7th century we find Sassanian Drachmas of Khosrow II (590 - 628) which are used as models for later Arab coins from the area of Iran. On the reverse side are two figures situated on either side of a Zoroastrian fire altar, and along the fringes are a series of Crescent moons with a star inside them. Muslims have claimed these prove that they are Muslim, but the crescent-moon and star patterns were a common Persian motif used on coins by Persian kings since the time of King Orodes II in the first century BC.

It was not until the Ottomans used the star and crescent on their flag in 1844 AD that any Muslims applied it, which is just over 170 years ago, and it wasn't until the 20th century that other Islamic countries applied it to their flags (Azerbaijan in 1918. Pakistan in 1947, Mauritania in 1959, Algeria in 1962, and Malaysia in 1963), proving that the crescent-moon and star pattern on these 7th century coins had nothing to do with Islam.

In 640 - 660, which, according to the SIN should be the reigns of Umar, Uthman and Ali, we find instead no references to them at all, but a Christian coin minted by an Arab leader in the Levant, which was a copy of a Byzantine fals (copper coin). It has a Byzantine empire pattern with the emperor's figure, but there are crosses on his crown and on his staff, and another one on the reverse side (cf. Clive Foss, "Coins of two realms", In Aramco World 66, n°3).

This coin proves that the Arab leader couldn't have been a Muslim at all, and while there is no name on this coin, it is clear that even if it had possibly been minted by Umar or Ali (we have no reference to Uthman anywhere in the 7th century), those two individuals were not from Arabia at all, but from much further north, Ali from Hirah in what is today Iraq, and Umar from Syria, according to Odon.

This confronts Islam's SIN proving that it has the wrong people in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2021
(57,040) Music: "Dawn of Glory" by Rafael Krux, from filmmusic-io