Ok so what is Holland’s argument exactly, other than the gap between existence and written history? The Prophet - as l have explained - forbade the writing of hadith as he wanted the oral traditions to be passed from authority to authority, rather than a delocalised haze of ahadith compiled in multiple books (as eventually has now happened, we have 5 main codified compilations in book form plus many others). The reason is that it must be transmitted based on trust, with the narrators well known to each other at each stage of transmission, and well respected. Like the security chain (forget the official term) of Bitcoin. The entire appeal of Bitcoin is that it can’t be forged, whereas the world right now is HEAVING with forged gold and silver bullion and coins (gold’s properties can be very closely mimicked by tungsten or something, it’s a minefield, you could lose everything).
For forged ahadith to find their way into books, and those booiks to become revered as an adjunct to the Qur’an, was rightly deemed by our Prophet to be very dangerous. Many false things may be legitimised that way, and evil characters foretold in prophecy may even be called good guys and so many many people may end up in hell for eternity for following an apocalyptic evil character e.g. we have a prophecy about a very evil character due within a century or two (so some think) whom many assert is actually a very good character, and we have seen traditions go either way. Very bad. I love ahadith but l agree it’s dangerous to commit them to writing.
I’ve already explained this.
Apologies if that logical fallacy call was in error, but at best it’s a very fine line what you wrote. It’s better to say youi’re undecided and perhaps ask for clarity.
I’m happy to continue but please, summarise the arguments. I’m sorry if my earlier response seemed grumpy but Holland is clearly driving a narrative excising huge amounts of flesh and l’m feeling it keenly, he’s taken the life out of our history via his own red editing pen, and presenting the skeletal fragments of what thus appears to be this, only this:
A group of swarthy road warriors dressed in tattered clothing, waving swords, have taken fair-skinned christendom for themselves. Lo! The sound of a heavy chain clanks. Darkness has descended. A sexy female voice sings for her lost church oh my! And what will these dark thin men do with my daughter? They will surely capture her. We must fight them back, all they know is war.
Sure he doesn’t explicitly state this but it’s all in the innuendo. Tom Holland = argument from innuendo. Low on actual discourse.
Please DO feed me more actual arguments from Tom Holland, but please look at my rebuttals and know also that he is NOT a mainstream academic, it’d be better to try mainstream anti-islamic academic authors. Also l’d likle your takedown of the phi ratio argument and the sana’a mosque meridian argument for Makkah, which underlines that the sacred heart of Islam was indeed Makkah, not Tom’s Petra, Jerusalem, whatevs.