Abu al-Husayn Ahmad bin Yahya ben Isaac al-Rawandi was born in 827 CE in Greater Khorasan, modern-day northwest Afghanistan.
However, he eventually became estranged from his fellow Mu'tazilites and formed close alliances with Shia Muslims[6][8] and then with non-Muslims (Manichaeans, Jews and perhaps also Christians).
[4][5][6] Some sources look for the roots of his views in his connections with Shia Islam and Mu'tazilia, and claim that his heresy was exaggerated by his rivals.
[17] Most of his 114 books have been lost, but those with at least some remaining fragments include The Scandal of the Mu'tazilites (Fadihat al-Mu'tazila), which presents the arguments of various Mu'tazilite theologians and then makes the case that they are internally inconsistent, The Refutation (ad-Damigh), which attacks the Quran, and The Book of the Emerald (Kitab al-Zumurrud) which critiques prophecy and rejects Islam.
[18][19] Among his arguments, he critiques dogma as antithetical to reason, argues miracles are fake, that prophets (including Muhammad) are just magicians, and that the Paradise as described by the Quran is not desirable.
[21] He notes that the sources which portray Ibn al-Rawandi as a heretic are predominantly Mutazilite and stem from Iraq, whereas in eastern texts he appears in a more positive light.
From the Encyclopaedia of Islam: The plentiful extracts from the K. al-Zumurraudh provide a fairly clear indication of the most heterodox doctrine of Ibn al-Rawandi, that of which posterity has been least willing to forgive him: a biting criticism of prophecy in general and of the prophecy of Muhammad in particular; he maintains in addition that religious dogmas are not acceptable to reason and must, therefore, be rejected; the miracles attributed to the Prophets, persons who may reasonably be compared to sorcerers and magicians, are pure invention, and the greatest of the miracles in the eyes of orthodox Muslims, the Quran, gets no better treatment: it is neither a revealed book nor even an inimitable literary masterpiece.
In order to cloak his thesis, which attacks the root of all types of religion, Ibn al-Rawandi used the fiction that they were uttered by Brahmans.