I wonder what Robert Spencer thinks of this?
I’ll check his website.
There’s nothing surprising about this. Islam is a syncretic religion, a fabricated synthesis of the different religions circulating in the ME at the time: Judaism, Christianity and paganism (hence the moon worship). Basically, Mohammed realized that military conquest of the surrounding peoples was not enough, and this new “religion” was thought up as a way of supplanting their old pre-Islamic conquest cultures and making them totally subject to him.
Mohammed took certain aspects of ritual law from the Jews, certain figures (such as Mary) from the Christians, and lots and lots of things (including the meteorite in the black cube at Mecca) from the pagan religions. It’s very possible that he also came across some kind of text fragments, probably of gnostic origin, that he also incorporated into it or perhaps that even gave him the idea.