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:
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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