Islamic Awareness and the reality of research

In my videos I frequently refer to an apologetic site called IslamicAwareness (http://www.islamic-awareness.org). They still make claims ranging from the now obsolete and very tired "scientific miracle" claims to using a group of academics who supposedly say something nice about the Koran. Most have since withdrawn their statements and have declared they were being misrepresented and taken out of context (http://www.youtube.com/user/ThisIsTheTruthUncut). IslamicAwareness ignores this. I suspect this site is made by dreamers for dreamers. Dreamers who try and push reality away as far as possible as long as possible.

This is also the webpage I was told has the most comprehensive collection of evidence for the physical and historically correct existence of Haman as was mentioned in the Koran, which I thoroughly refuted in several videos a year or so ago. This, relatively recent update still tries to push the notion that the guy could have existed in Egypt, by going to extremes and really ridiculous, intellectual lengths. Looking at their latest claims all they have done is added more hot air and padded everything with more fat to further obscure the basic facts. They carry on and on bringing up nonsensical argument after another, thinking that volume will automatically bring about contents. It does not. They have updated their information, using the same professor and using the same quotes that I presented in my video after my research, but continue peddling their illusions. For some reason they ignore the professor's strongest damnation, that of using burnt bricks, and continue pretending theirs is a valid argument. What they have abandoned is the idea that the claim made by Bucaille as to the identity of Haman was accurate, by saying: "however, this is no longer the case". But they maintain that Haman as grand helper of one of the 332 Pharaohs must have existed. Without saying which one or providing evidence.

They are also the ones cited in the highly unethical iERA press release regarding a documentary on UK's Channel 4, using this page as source for the early mentioning of Muhammad and, as another example, coins depicting Muhammad and making it look as though Muhammad was referred to at an early stage in Islam. But do these coins do this?

Well, no!

Let's take a closer look at this claim. The title promises coins from the year 1 to the year 100, ie the first century. But somehow, they start with coins made 40 years after Muhammad first received the revelations and kick-started Islam. They say these coins have, what they call, a "religious content". What religious content?

They manage to issue a taunt and don't see how incredibly childish it is. Similar to what? Material? Date? Size? Value? Who will decide on similarity? This is the typical approach I see so often on Muslim apologetic pages and texts, using the same juvenile methodology and cocky approach. Well, here are similar coins. I declare them similar. Now prove me wrong.

What is interesting is that IslamicAwareness does not even consult basic sources to get a handle on history. The Sassanid Empire was conquered and wiped out by Muslims. The dynasty was wiped out in 651 and a year later a coin is minted with the last Sassanid Emperor on it and this is Islamic? They show a couple of these coins on their page, all saying they depict a fire altar. Are fire altars common in Islam? Not really.

This goes on and on until they come across some coins which seem to mention Allah. And? Allah was a well-known god and simply the word god. Only now, we are in 685CE or 75 years after the first revelation. IslamicAwareness concurs that "This is the earliest occurance of the name "Muh?ammad" in a dated Muslim text." [sic]

So now we know that Islam existed and the name Muhammad, meaning the praiseworthy, chosen or anointed one, was part of this.

Are the texts any better in telling us what happened in the first 10 or 20 years, by providing historically accurate evidence?

There is a European archaeological group called ICAANE (International Conference on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East) which includes a section called Islam. Here, 100s of archaeologists convene and discuss their research and findings. Because this was too broad and possibly too much spiritual, some experts came together and founded the Association of Islamic Archaeologists, concentrating on factual findings and the culture, rather than the religion.

Even though the papers can be purchased for anything between 50 and 200 Euros, you can get glimpses if you look hard enough as they are sometimes published in universities around the world.

Have any of these groups found any kind of material which would describe the rising and development of early Islam? If yes, I have been unable to find it.



But IslamicAwareness knows better. They come up with really obscure sources, some of them only available in Arabic and some with a really low hit count, which seems to indicate they are not exactly in high demand. I am unable to judge this as I could not read the texts, so if one of these should really provide historically accurate and valid evidence depicting the eruption of Islam I have to accept this and withdraw my claim that no early accounts exist.

What IslamicAwareness mentions over and over again is the existence of early manuscripts of Koranic origins. While I have no idea what exactly this means, we all agree that the Koran was started off quite early - but does not have a completion date and does not show why or how Arabs became Muslims.

Koranic materials, or to be more precise: sentences which were later found in the Koran, have been identified in manuscripts from the 6th century, well before the existence of Muhammad. The Koran consists to a large degree of Biblical, both Jewish and Christian, stories which were "localized" and made to fit Arabic folklore. So it is no small wonder that these stories made the rounds and some poets or scribes wrote these down. But do they mention Muhammad? No! Even the Koran itself only mentions the name Muhammad by name 4 times.

IslamicAwareness now pulls the same trick they used with coins here with the texts. By insinuating the texts are from 1-100 AH, they make it look as the texts are closer to the origins of Islam than they really are.

Their first example, exhibit 1, so to speak, is dated by them as from 637 CE or 15 AH. But in actual fact it is, even according to their dating, issued some 27 years after Islam supposedly started.



This text, which they claim mentions the prophet Muhammad, stems from a person who witnessed the destruction of some settlements along with the killing of the inhabitants.

... and in January, they took the word for their lives ... Emesa, and many villages were ruined with killing by ... Mu?hammad and a great number of people were killed and captives ... from Galilee as far as Beth [...] and those Arabs pitched camp beside  [...] and we saw everywhe ... and o[...]ive oil which they brought and them. And on the t...th of May went S... cattle [...] [...] from the vicinity of Emesa and the Romans chased them [...] and on the tenth [...] the Romans fled from the vicinity of Damascus [...] many [...] some 10,000. And at the turn [...]ar the Romans came; and on the twentieth of August in the year n[...] seven there gathered in Gabitha [...] the Romans and great many people were ki ... omans, [s]ome fifty thousand [...]

So we have a text which mentions a Muhammad. Which Muhammad? This is a story of a pirate looting villages. We know Muhammad, the messenger of Islam did this, but how can anyone say with any degree of confidence that this is the same guy?

We have some names of villages and months and IslamicAwareness immediately gets some super-natural input that this proves the assumed date of 636 because there was a battle in Yarmuk. Because the mentioning of "turn of the year" only happens once in human history: the year 635. All I see is a note: the fragmentary nature of this note has resulted in scholars advising caution.

What I find interesting is the abundant usage of "appears to have been", "suggested that", "seems to be", appears to be", "appears to have", "suggesting that", "worthwhile cautioning", "unclear or disputable", which do not exactly exude confidence.

I will ignore the next one as it is much of the same, just the location is different.


Their try #3 comes up with a person from Armenia, more than 2000 kilometers away from Mecca, Sebeos, a bishop of the House of Bagratunis. Here, he is said to be writing a mere 50 years after the start of Islam.

Ok, so let's look at Sebeos first. The text quoted by IslamicAwareness is taken from "A History of Heraclius", but unfortunately, "none of the full extant manuscripts of Sebeos predates the seventeenth century". They carry on saying that "Few Armenists today regard the Primary History and "Sebeos" as the work of the same author. Who Sebeos was, and if he really was the author of this history are presently unanswerable questions".

But that does not mean the text is a fake or faulty, just that we should exercise some caution when attributing author, dates and locations.

No, my issue is with the contents.

Heraclius died in 641, so the story must have happened before then. When I read the IslamicAwareness translation I had to laugh as it reminded me so much of the fake Jesus paragraph in Josephus, which also starts off with "there was about this time Jesus, a wise man"... anyway, looking at what is written here we are supposed to believe that the Jews called in their Arab allies and they fended off the Romans together. If I remember correctly, Muhammad broke with the Jews in 624 as is mentioned in the Koran in 2:144, 149-150. Yet here we have him, a couple of years after his death, 1000s of miles from home where he died in 632, conspiring with the Jews. Telling them not that Allah is the one god and Muhammad is his messenger, but laying out the rules for food, drink and sex. This is more a political figure-head than a religious leader.

And then it actually gets quite freaky, because the very same Muhammad who drove out the Jews and killed them everywhere now thinks it's ok they keep their promised land, saying "take the country which God gave to your father, Abraham". Wow, now that is what I call generous. And IslamicAwareness is trying to tell me this is the Muhammad as depicted in the Sunnah? Hmmmm nope, sorry, I don't buy it.

Now IslamicAwareness brings up more and more non-issue texts and going later and later into time. None of these is historically reliable in any way and provides any insight into the early days of Islam.



We now get to their section 3, which seems to be a last, desperate attempt at artificially inserting Muhammad into the early history of Islam.

IslamicAwareness seems to think that piling on claim after claim is the way to go, rather than having fewer and more documented or substantiated arguments. As though the previous claims in section 2 were not embarrassing enough, they mount a last awkward effort, using a text written by a Christian, Jacob. Are they really doing this? Are they seriously suggesting that a thinking person, using both braincells will buy this nonsense? The Greek text is written by a Christian in Palestine sometime between 634 and 640 which has a very strong anti-Semitic character. The story is about some Jews celebrating the death of a military guard and the arrival of yet another messiah, a prophet. The story in the Doctrina Jacobi goes on to say that this messiah arose from within the Saracens. A prophet standing on a chariot brandishing a sword. He is called a false prophet. A prophet holding the keys of paradise.

Does this really fit Muhammad, the messenger?

A false prophet on a chariot holding the keys to paradise and a sword years after his death? Is that the best IslamicAwareness can come up with?

At the beginning of this section we are informed that:

To put Muslim and non-Muslim accounts in a chronological perspective, the death of the Prophet happened in Rabi al-Awwal, 11 AH / June, 632 CE.

Yet here we have a man in his prime leading entire armies, very much undead.

Have we really learnt anything from the many, many words put forward by IslamicAwareness?

No, nothing at all. As per usual it's all hot air, no substance and no facts which would be considered historically accurate. Another site made by dreamers for dreamers. If you want to dream all your life that's fine - however, if reality and the truth is more your line of thinking, I invite you to look at the real world.

The stupid movie

People have asked me about this movie which is causing outrage, uproar and the death of humans.

I am looking at this with unbelief. Why can't people ignore it?

It turns out, they did.

The terribly made and hugely pathetic "movie" depicting a man supposed to represent the Islamic Muhammad has been around for some time and was ignored. Until a fundamentalist Arab TV-station, Al-Nas, promoted it along with the US zealot Terry Jones.

Only this was sufficient to give it increased visibility and stir up the emotions which are so easily stirred amongst the easily influenced Muslims. So we have fundamentalist Muslims using a movie, made in the US with backing from different countries, to incite violence and aggression. And it seems they knew what they were doing and have managed to incite riots and protests.

What these brainwashed and misguided rioters, killers and bigots don't understand and are forever unable to comprehend is that the USA don't make videos or movies and don't instruct others to do so. Also, the USA can't stop individuals making movies, unless they violate clearly defined laws.

But some of these blind followers will simply associate the country they hate so much and at the same time are so in awe of with a movie and attack all symbols of that country, where the popular flag burning is a process never to be missed. They could engage in a factual rebuttal, but I suppose that would require too much thinking, which is discouraged in many Muslim majority states.

So we'll just have to live with the increasing militarisation of Muslim majority countries and wait for someone to get a little bit too emotional and push the button. After all, religious nutters don't really care whether they die and get to pick up their rewards on the way out, it's people like me who do.

But then I don't try to implement a 7th century culture in a 21st century civilisation.

Refutation of iERA's refutation of the documentary "Islam: the Untold Story"

Hi guys,

A documentary by a British historian shown end of August 2012 on Channel 4, a British TV-Channel has ruffled some feathers amongst the Muslim community. Their feathers are easily ruffled as all it takes is someone pronouncing Muhammad or Koran in a way they don’t like, heated arguments and violence ensue.

So imagine what a documentary of over an hour will do, if it dares to question the existence of texts from the viewpoint of a historian? Not a theologian, but a historian. Someone who looks at indications and left-overs from ancient days and then pieces them together to form a view or understanding what might, could or even probably happened.

Only a few hours after this documentary was aired, a paper made the rounds, where Muslim apologists already attacked the veracity of the documentary, going into their usual whining and playing the victim card and begging for special consideration and mercy.

But are there some points which are justly raised or something which was accurately raised as being erroneous?

Let me point out something right from the start: Tom Holland is a historian. He does not have an attitude and now sets out to prove his point of view. He does not attack Muslims or their faith but tries to establish facts and I don’t think I am misrepresenting him here.

iERA however is the opposite. They have made up their minds and anyone asking critical questions is attacking their entire existence, their raison d’être.

Whoever wrote this paper claims that the #1 claim the documentary is making is that “there is no historical evidence in the seventh century on the origins of Islam”

Looking at what the documentary is saying I find the first claim is that from antiquity to the middle ages the most “influential of all these empires” was “the empire founded by the Arabs in the 7th century - the empire that gave us Islam”

Next, Tom Holland says he would have – based on what majestic claims he found – expected some sort of Muslim testimony, describing the circumstances of the birth of Islam. He says he can’t find anything which would warrant the expression: in the full light of history. So the claims surrounding the birth of Islam is what drives expectation.

And iERA, in their naivety and endless ignorance demonstrate exactly what Tom Holland is lamenting: instead of an abundance of supportive literature and narrative, all they could find are some vague texts mentioning a prophet here, some Muhammadan slaughter there, but certainly nothing contemporary or precise. And the first real account of a person with a name similar to Muhammad appeared decades after his death – written not by a Muslim, but a Christian Bishop.

Whoever wrote the paper trying to discredit the documentary and Tom Holland’s research, has little or no confidence into their own points and uses projection to score some points using “clearly mentions”, “clearly seen”, “clearly understood”, when all there is, is a vague reference to “the prophet who has appeared among the Saracens”.

iERA researchers, who must be the most overpaid blunderers in the UK, claim this is “the contemporary non-Islamic as well as material evidence” for the origins of Islam.

Is it contemporary? They themselves say: “only two years after the death of the Prophet”, so the answer is: no.

Is it non-Islamic? Yes, some.

Is it material? No, because mentioning some prophet or other does not really constitute the explanation for the origins of a religion, does it? Tom Holland never ever claims that Muhammad does not exist, so the point they are trying to make is utterly superfluous.

Instead, they contradict themselves and just waffle without substance. Nothing new.

But again: what is Tom Holland trying to tell us? He very clearly states it only 5 minutes into the video:

“We know how and when the Romans became Christian because contemporaries tell us all about it. But what we don't know is how the Arabs became Muslim. Take a journey into the past and you can't be certain where it's going to end. History is like a labyrinth. Once you're inside, who knows where it may lead?”    

Next comes another masterpiece of logical deduction: the next contemporary person who wrote just “5 years after the death of the Prophet” says that some Arabs killed several villagers and plundered - or ruined - them and took the survivors captive. How does this relate to the birth of Islam?

Where does Holland claim that Muhammad is not mentioned in records? If he did, how would that be “historically obnoxious”??? I remember the senior or chief researcher having vocabulary problems before, so maybe consulting a dictionary once in a while would be in order.

Anyway, what Tom Holland actually says is: “For nearly 60 years, the rulers of the Arab empire didn't put Muhammad on their coins. And then they did. Maybe, 60 years was what they needed to work out what the story really was.”

There is a difference between “records” and “coins”.

What they also don’t mention, is that the text in the book is taken not from the text itself, but the footnotes as is stated in their footnote #2. Referring to footnotes in a book, which state: conjectured by Palmer, conjectured by Hoyland, Brooks conjectured, etc etc. How is that accurate, honest and reliable research?

Where the iERA researcher is 100% sure that it mentions Muhammad by name, all I see is the Syriac reference to someone called MWHMD. Is it really so 100% clear this can only be Muhammad?

I could go into even more details and discredit every single word in this statement, but I’ll just move on.

Next up is an Armenian non-contemporary who is simply recounting hearsay and is thus exactly the kind of typical lack of real evidence that Tom Holland is talking about.

Again, iERA misrepresent what the claim in the documentary is and try to wriggle their way into religious doctrine by claiming that the mentioning of Muhammad automatically accounts for the origin of Islam, while this does nothing of the sort. Never at any point does the iERA paper deliver any real refutation and simply answers claims never made.

Next, we get the real source for their paper: the Islamic apologist site Islamic-Awareness, which several people, including myself have demolished in the past. But there we also find the same stories about the existence of Muhammad, which was never contested by Mr. Holland in his documentary, Fail.

They carry on misunderstanding the topic and argue something not under scrutiny.

The iERA jokers now jump to the next false conclusion, by referring to non-Muslim authors. In their #2 point they insult the character of Tom Holland – well, what else can they attack when lacking factual grounds – and claim that other views would by earlier scholars would question the approach of Tom Holland.

How so? Well, Tom Holland says that merely mentioning Muhammad does nothing to explain WHY people converted and HOW that was achieved and that there were no Muslim accounts for any of this or confirming any of this and iERA bravely refutes this by stating that a Greek text mentions Muhammad.

How ignorant do you need to be to take

“Mohammed is the prophet of God. Islam is submission to God. And it was this message that gave them an empire. Or was it? No-one doubts the conquests really took place, but the question is, was it because of Islam?”

as meaning: did Muhammad exist?

When looking at Greek or Roman texts, there was evidence for claims, much smaller than the immense and huge ones found in Islam. Yet the Greek claims added up. So did the Roman ones. But where are the Muslim Arab texts? Nothing.

Because the clueless researchers at iERA run out of ideas but need to come up with something that will guarantee them further donations and income, they turn to other authors and use their opinions and approaches, instead of them developing their own.

And because they are so desperate, they tend to get sloppy, inaccurate and simply keep their fingers crossed and hope for the best. Are Muslims in general renowned for critical thinking? Hardly. Ar Muslim known to be critical of something which supports Islam? Hardly.

So when iERA comes up with Peter Webb (Peter Webb teaches Arabic and classical Arabic literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) and him stating that “the mnemonic capacity of oral traditions are more robust than Holland gives them credit” they are understandably ecstatic. They are so carried away that they somehow forget that Peter Webb is commenting on a book Tom Holland wrote and not anything to do with the current documentary. It is another unprofessional attack of Mr. Holland’s character, not a factual refutation of his claims made in the programme.

Next up, instead of finding factual mistakes and clarifying them for their trusting Muslim readership, they find an important sounding name: Professor Robert Hoyland from the University of Oxford. Wow!

Does this professor contribute anything meaningful? Yes, if you claim that Muhammad is an invention and a fictitious character such as Jesus Christ in the Bible. Does Tom Holland claim this, no, quite the opposite.

This is so frustrating!

WE now reach the highlight of the paper, with point #3: rejecting the Islamic oral tradition, which Tom Holland never does.

But, just for good measure, the iERA researches first attack the person and character of the historian before – once again – jumping to false conclusions.

But first, they introduce a new concept, which Mr. Holland also does not contest: the oral Prophetic traditions

How does Mr. Holland in the documentary totally reject the oral tradition? Well, by saying:

In most religions, the tradition was handed down through oral history, for millennia.

There you have it.

Next, the ludicrous researchers at iERA quote a different person in the programme and attribute that quote to the evil intentions of Tom Holland. Because this is not infantile enough, the collation and writing down of centuries old hearsay is now termed a science and an entire area of Islam, the hadiths, never mentioned by Mr. Holland, are defined as trustworthy and valid.

For what? The documentary never contests it. So, what exactly is the point?

Was the Koran suddenly found lying next to the Kaaba one day or was it based on oral tradition? Was it collected by people just reciting what they had memorised? So how are floating mountains and talking ants accurate history?

If talking about Islam and the followers of the Koran, are all followers automatically also believers of the hadiths? No, of course not. More and more Muslims or believers or followers believe in what a god told them in one book and reject what humans collected about what a human did several centuries earlier as unreliable hearsay. Does the documentary touch on this in any way? No!

Now we get the same point again: rejection of what is not rejected. Wow, the author of this paper really is desperate now. A total ignorant of philosophy and epistemology is now attempting to use these words and coherently explain something. And fails horribly.

We are talking about history here and not philosophy.

Next we have a moronic statement: “In epistemology … testimony is considered as one of the sources of knowledge” where anyone with just a cursory acquaintance with epistemology knows it is the opposite.

Embarrassingly bad! Even worse is the chosen example to demonstrate this, using the existence of China, which can easily be refuted by providing scientific evidence for the physical existence of China through photographs or other hard proof. Oh dear. Reading the iERA text just killed another 20 braincells.

And now the researchers at the iEResearch Academy equivocate the claim of oral passing on messages over centuries with accurate knowledge.

We come to point 5 of the hilarious iERA refutation and their claim fro a textual tradition in Islam.

What the documentary claims is that there is no library full of accounts of people telling their stories. As one would expect if the claim is that Islam was born in the full light of history is correct.

Does iERA refute this? No, not at all. They are unable to do so.

They claim that there are “a myriad of written works in the early period of Islam”. Do they prove what they claim? Nope. What iERA does, is simply quote people who said something about someone else and then say: 4597 narrations are attributed to this person. Using the hadiths to validate the hadiths. Great stuff. And so primitive.

Maybe the hadiths were written “with extreme care and enthusiasm”, but that does not make them accurate or true.

And quite frankly, I don’t think anyone cares whether the story of a guy splitting our moon in half is told enthusiastically or not, it is not a fact and not true.

In #6 our professional researchers now slide into the next abyss: the “baseless assumptions” which they would like to add their accomplishments. But because they have not shown any baseless assumptions yet, I really wonder how can they claim there will be further ones?

It starts off once again by stating what was not claimed and then expanding on this.

Nowhere in this documentary are any traditions rejected. If they are, why not quote the sentence?

When and if the text used by Tom Holland to read out a sentence from the Koran they correct it using one of their own, more toned down and politically correct translations. Why not provide some hard evidence?

Because now it gets really grotty. This is some of the worst apologetics I’ve come across. Because the Koran says a city was destroyed and Muslims surrounding Muhammad (the you) pass by it “day and night” (i.e. all the time) it implies closeness to Mecca or Medina.

 

What our heroic twats are doing is saying this is equivalent of Muslims not travelling because they can pass the ruins during the day or the night, even if these are 1000s of kilometres away. I feel like crawling under the desk and waving a white flag.

Our desperately searching researchers must have been sitting until late at night. I have no idea what substances they were subjecting their brains to, but I doubt it would have been legal. They now claim that Tom Holland, in his documentary about the historical roots of Islam “claims that the city of Mecca is not mentioned in the Qur'an”.

This is what he really says:

} Mecca 37:27

Neither the Qur'an nor any contemporary source actually specifies where Bakkah was, but Muslims, now, would have absolutely no doubt that Bakkah is another name for a place deep in the Arabian deserts. Mecca. The holiest city in Islam. The birthplace of Mohammed .

It is not about the existence at all, but the location.  Of a city called Mecca, which for some reason seems to show up in the Koran as “Makkah” or “Bakkah”. It is mentioned in a side-sentence, not in conjunction with the oldest Islamic site, the Kaaba, or the Birthplace of Muhammad.

And again later he says: “Aside from a single, ambiguous mention in the Qur'an itself, there is no mention of Mecca, not one, in any datable text for over 100 years after Mohammed's death.“

So where does Tom Holland, in mentioning Mecca 24 times, claim: Mecca does not exist?

It sure makes you cry. This boundless incompetence of paid researchers, whose job it is to inform fellow Muslims about issues accurately and what I find again and again is that they simply have no clue what they are doing, but they are doing it loudly.

Whatever. Let me move on, wipe the tears of laughter and frustration from my eyes and boldly venture on to #7, where the iERA people are once again mistaking a probing question for an assertion.

What if it wasn't Islam that gave birth to the Arab empire?

But the Arab empire that gave birth to Islam?

They quite rightly state that this does not represent any threat to Islamic tradition. But why don’t they just shut up? They dig up some quote and embarrass themselves, showing their lack of historical knowledge. The ideology of Islam did not unite Islam, but split it. Muslims were killing each other in power struggles which prompted Muawiyah to set up shop in Damascus and kill his political opponents in Medina and the other power centres via henchmen. He was a politician, not a religious person at all. The same we see today where Islam is dying due to internal struggles, tearing the system of Islam apart.

We are now approximately halfway through their paper, which claims to refute the findings of Mr. Tom Holland. Have they managed to refute anything so far? No!

Have they provided a single document which would help the case of Tom Holland in finding the historical origins of Islam? No!

Have they managed to even cast some doubt over what has been said? No, not at all. All they have done so far is write about things not claimed or stated and, when they ran out of arguments, they attacked the personality of Mr. Holland and his co-narrators. Not good so far.

But will they be honest and retract their paper? Will they ever apologise for their unwarranted assertions and that they lied to their fellow Muslims and deceived them? My atheistic ethics would compel me to do so. But Muslims have ethics plus religion, which poisons everything and results in morality, which does not require a guilty conscience or fairness towards others.

Let’s move on and get out of this emotional low and look at #8. What if the Qur’an is God’s word?

One of the key reasons of why the Muslim narrative has remained resilient against baseless and uninformed polemics is based on the fact that the Qur’an is from God. The argument is simple yet profound. If it can be shown that the Qur’an is from God, an inflaiible and omnipotent being, then it follows that whatever is in the Qur’an is true. This will include the fact that Islam is a religion sent by God and not the development of an Arab empire, as claimed by Holland.

Is this what Tom Holland claims or finds?

What does he himself say?

" ... "

Feeble excuses

But even if none of this were the case and Holland were really to claim that Islam is a human invention, would the iERA arguments make any sense?

Let's take a look at the reasoning:

1. the Muslim narrative has survived

2. What has it survived: baseless and uninformed polemics

Is it difficult or does it require any remarkable qualities to survive baseless and uninformed polemics? No, of course not. It's dead easy. Just look at the iERA text as a prime example.

If, however, the attacks were fact based and substantial, well, then it would be a different story and the narrative concept would need to be robust and reliable.

So in his attempt to discredit anything sounding just the slightest critical of Islam the author of this paper shoots himself in the foot. Or wahtever the case may be if there were several authors.

Following this we immediately have the next fallacy.

"based on the fact that the Qur’an is from God"

Fact? What fact? If a god wrote or dictated the Koran we first need to establish the existence of a god, before that god can do something, right? Well, this has been attemmpted numerous times, but so far without tangible result. After 6000 years with all types and kinds of gods we are nowhere closer to demonstrating the existence of just one of them.

The following shows the childish dispensation of the author. Why does it follow that if the Koran was in fact written by a god this automatically means the contents of the book is true? Maybe the authors would like this to be the case.

They claim a god is "inflaiible and omnipotent" whatever inflaiible is supposed to mean. Don't they have spell checkers in a professional Research Academy for the professional senior researchers?

And infallible or unfailable is projection and omnipotent a logical absurdity.

Anyway, let me ignore the unprofessional attitude and concentrate on the contents. A god can write a lie. Why not? Do we have a god who does not lie as an example? No, this is sheer wishful thinking.

So even if I - for the sake of the argument - allow the existence of a god, why does it follow that this god is honest and writes books and sends religions to people? They are just piling on supposition after assumption after wishful thinking. No proof, no evidence and not even reasonable argumentation. Frustrating.

Next we get plain assertions: the Koran is extraordinary. It is imposing, positive, engages, asks, challenges - and if you don't accept it you go to hell. Great logics and highly compelling.

Then we are confronted with the most stupid and ridiculous argument anyone has ever come up with: produce something like it.

But how? How much? How many? Like what? Where are the definitions? Who judges this? What is the result if I do produce something like it?

But hang on, it gets worse. Because the challenge to try something is already thwarted by the next sentence: you never will. So no matter what the outcome of the challenge is, it will never be enough and will never be accepted. So what is the point?

And it still gets worse. Because if you should attempt to produce something, you have just pulled the go straight to hell card.

What does any of this have to do with the historical origins of the civilisation and religion of Islam?

iERA now leave the area of the documentary they are attempting to refute completely and go into the standard apologetic mode, where nothing makes sense and does not have to. Everything here is built on faith and that is all that is required.

They think that quoting some people saying the Koran is nice represents some sort of argument. But we are not talking about the contents of the Koran. Why don't they understand this? Why don't they understand the topic of the documentary? We are talking about the origins of a civilisation, not a book.

How can you even hope to refute a factual and objective approach regarding the historical development of a religion and civilisation with using the unsubstantiated fairy tales inside the book? How is a talking ant or the erroneous naming of a ruler in Egypt relevant? The Koran merely copies the Bibles with its reference to Pharaoh.  Thinking it is a name and not a title. Instead of shutting up about this, iERA are attempting to turn the flaw into a feature.

Let's turn to item #9. Does it get better here? Nope. We get the all too familiar attack on a person rather than the facts to try and discredit the value of the satements made by that person. Some guy comments on something that this person has said or done elsewhere, without referring to the statements at hand. Pitiful.

Looking at the statements here I can only shake my head in utter disbelief. Tom Holland makes use of different people delivering their opinions. The "refutation paper" mentions Patricia Crone, but not the Muslim philosopher and professor for Islamic Studies Seyeed Hossain Nasr. And iERA accuses Mr Holland of selecting people who substantiate his approach and corroborate his findings. Of course he does. Should he present his points with someone who immediately rejects his facts on the basis of faith? Hardly. He candidly admits that Prof Crone “has sharply divided the world of early Islamic studies”.

No, Mr Holland did not heavily rely on Patricia Crone, who have , have? no has been criticised by some people. Anyone who asks a question about the origins of Islam or the Koran is automatically criticised by over-protective, scared apologists.

iERA is now selective themselves by bringing up named critics of Patricia Crone. How could they?

In summary we see that the simpletons at iERA have not understood the documentary, which showed how a person tried to establish the historical sources surrounding the birth of a civilisation and religion which heavily influenced the world and is still doing so. The claims made by the followers of this system and worldview makes one believe that the origins are well documented and there for the finding. Alas, this is not the case.

And that is all the documentary says. There is no judgmental tone or any passing of value regarding the Koran or its contents, just the historical approach. Tom Holland does not claim to be an Islam scholar and just inspects the facts. iERA don't seem to like a factual approach, even if it is unbiased, if it does not arrive at the conclusions they wish to see concluded. But not everybody takes a result as pre-supposition and then sets out to find arguments for it. All iERA tries to do is to apply censorship to any other approach, no matter how honest and straightforward it might be.

That is the message I am taking away from this group of apologists, who just seek sensationalism for the sake of generating more income.

Sources:

http://www.iera.org.uk/press_29aug2012.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/testimony-episprob/

Seyeed Hossain Nasr, Professor of Islamic Studies, Washington Uni

Patricia Crone, Professor at Princeton

Fred Donner, Professor of Near Eastern History, Chicago Uni

Tali Erickson-Gini, PhD Israeli Antiquities Authority

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[1] Fudge, mistake, hedge, conceal