I'm looking through the Wayback Machine to find a supposed ask that Gaider answered regarding the Mage-Templar Conflict that a Fextralife discussion board cited back in 2013, and I found this gem that feels so vindicating:
The Chantry originally came from a hypothetical question - what if Jesus had been Joan of Arc instead? - and developed from that point.
Yes! I am vindicated once again about my utter distaste of some people in the Dragon Age fandom trying to tie Andraste as Thedas' Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad was never a reported inspiration for Andraste nor Islam as an inspiration for Andrastianism.
To be fair, the exact quote from the comment I am fervently disproving states the following:
"I agree with the other commenter that Koslun and his tome are probably modelled more on the Buddha and the Edicts of Ashoka than Muhammad and Quran. Interestingly enough, I think Andraste and the Chant of Light actually have more in common with Muhammad and his book. Both prophets being militants, their early base being slaves/freed slaves, one of Muhammad's prominent companions, Bilal ibn Rabah, being a black slave mimicked by Shartan being an elven slave, the Quran slips into verse past its earlier chapters, and of course the concept that the Chant must be spread to the four corners of the world mimicking the proselytizing nature of Islam, all of this of course mixed with Christianity and Joan of Arc." (Source)
To be fair to them, this redditor never claimed that Muhammad was the initial inspiration for Andraste and her Exalted March. The problem is their statement of:
"Both prophets being militants, their early base being slaves/freed slaves, one of Muhammad's prominent companions, Bilal ibn Rabah, being a black slave mimicked by Shartan being an elven slave, the Quran slips into verse past its earlier chapter, and of course the concept the Chant must be spread to the four corners of the world mimicking the proselytizing nature of Islam..."
At least from Gaider's statements, he has rarely made comments that indicated that much of anything in Thedas was inspired by Islam, West Asian history, or much less the Prophet Muhammad. The closest - that I have found - comes from a comment from the new defunct BioWare forum:
"The Qunari play a role in Thedas similar to Arabic cultures in Medieval Europe (combine with the Golden Horde, for good measure), which is where their Middle Eastern 'flavor' comes from...but beyond that any similarities are unintentional."
It is clear, however, that Gaider or the Dragon Age team did little in the way of actually studying the history of Islam in Europe, or the Muslim polities that directly engaged within the European continent (the Umayyad Kingdom of Cordoba, Muslim rule over Sicily, the Seljuk Turks, or the Ottomans), for as much as there was direct military conflict between the two "spheres", there was as much economic, cultural, social, and political interactions that went beyond conquest or violent expansion. One needs only to look at the initial alliance between the 'Abbasids and the Franks during the reigns of Charlemagne and Rashid al-Harun; the rise of the Ottomans with their early band of both Christian and Muslim warriors; the shifting alliances of Iberia during al-Andalusia; the utilization of pseudo-Arabic in architectural, iconographic, and manuscript imagery.
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