I was reading Empires of the Silk Road, for the millionth time, and the author, Dr. Chris Beckwith, mentioned that decades and decades ago he came across a work that mentioned a strong Central Asian/Indian influence on the formative years of Islam.
He has forgotten the scholar's name, and despite asking many Early Islam experts, cannot track this person down. The experts also became offended when confronted with a possible suggestion of an outside influence in Islam during this period.
Can anyone--especially our Islamic History moderator--tell me anything about this? Or recommend any works on early Islam so I can begin my own investigation?
As far as I'm aware we don't have any Islamic History moderators, and we actually only have a handful of Islamic History flairs (if you, dear readers, do have such an expertise, please apply for flair!).
I'm not familiar with the work he's referencing, nor am I aware of much support for an Indian origin of Islam. In contrast there are quite a lot of works on the Jewish/Hebrew/Christian/Syriac origins of Islam. One recent such consensus-building book, as it consists of a collection of essays, is The Quran in its Historical Context. For a broader overview of early Islam, I also quite like The Formative Period in Islamic Thought by W. Montgomery Watt.
That's not say that India didn't have an influence on Islam, I think most scholars would just say that this occurred somewhat later, for instance in the Persian and then Arabic translations of the Indian story Kalilah wa Dimnah or in the "Arabic" numerals, which were in fact the Hindu numerals.