Assuming that’s Tom Holland, let’s get stuck in:
QUOTE: Just as Eusebius, five hundred years previously, had sought answers to very similar questions in the life of a Roman emperor, so now did Ibn Hisham—a scholar originally from Iraq who by the early ninth century had settled in Egypt—likewise turn to biography in order to fathom the purposes of heaven.
RESPONSE: Speculative, loaded stereotype of Ibn Hisham’s motivation.
QUOTE: “Sira,” he termed his chosen genre: “exemplary behaviour.” It was less what his subject had done that concerned Ibn Hisham than how he had done it. There was an urgent reason for this. The hero of Ibn Hisham’s biography, so Muslims believed, offered the ultimate in role models.
RESPONSE: No. Seerah means “Life”, “Path”, “Journey”. In other words, the story-arc of a person’s life. This is more or less an exact match with the word “Biography” which it almost always refers to as well.
But Tom Holland wastes no time in his defaming the Prophet. Tom Holland wrongly says seerah means exemplary behaviour and was a coinage of Ibn Hisham, and then dismisses our belief as speculative, that the Prophet’s life was exemplary. Let me guess. Tom will show us it wasn’t exemplary. DEAR TOM HOLLAND: PLEASE STAY ON TOPIC, YOU HAVE YOUR HANDS FULL TRYING TO PROVE THAT ISLAM WAS INVENTED 200 YEARS AFTER THE PROPHET, BY IBN HISHAM IN PETRA-JERUSALEM, USING INK MADE OF, EH, BLOOD & THE DEVIL’S BILE JUICES, AND A DEAD NUN’S EYEBALLS PICKLED IN A JAR RIGHT THERE NEXT TO HIM, YES? OH SO MORAL THESE ARABS WERE, OR WERE THEY? TOM INVESTIGATES FURTHER …
QUOTE: God had chosen him to serve as His mouthpiece. It was through him that the All Merciful had revealed His wishes to the Arabs, and graced them with those same revelations that had then inspired them, two centuries before the time of Ibn Hisham, to erupt from their deserts and tear the world’s superpowers to pieces.
RESPONSE: Here we go again. Thin swarthy nomads with red eyes (as seen in the documentary, courtest of Tom) tore (don’t worry, we can get them with hi-tech laser weapons) the good Christian and Pagan superpower empires to pieces. That’s all it was for Tom. In fact, Muslims only fought defensive wars for 3 reasons that l know of: 1. If preachers were blocked / attacked / killed 2. If Muslims were attacked (including diplomatic missions being killed, which is forbidden in Islam) 3. If people allied to Muslims were attacked.
Mass conversion happened in an s-curve / bell curve (depending on your axes) distribution from what l recall. I think in the Levant and Arabia the conversion was more rapid than say, Persia and Central Asia. In the Levant for example, an entire Talmud academy would convert to Islam overnight and so the rest of the Jewish community would rapidly follow. The Jews and Christians in the Levant knew their scriptures very well and understood a very taboo subject: that there was one more Prophet to come, aka “the Comforter”, or “That Prophet”, and so forth. It’s all been dumbed down now but there was a significant buzz of anticipation way back then. The clergy more often than not hated it, they were out of a job.
The bottom line is that Islam was better, uncorrupted, more sound.
But no, to Tom:
- The Muslims were desert locusts (even though l think they were mostly from towns and cities)
- Hell, they weren’t even Muslims, that came 200 years later, remember? Right Tom?
- So ner ner, Muslim Arabs did nothing good! Certain facts be damned of course. And now Tom can put his red editing pen away. Ok let’s backtrack and see what else Tom edited out of the annals of history.
QUOTE: “We are God’s helpers and the assistants of His prophet, and will fight men until they believe in God; and he who believes in God and His prophet has protected his life and property from us; and he who disbelieves we will fight in God unceasingly, and killing him will be a small matter to us.” 8 (Ibn Hisham, p. 629 )
RESPONSE: This is very poor referencing. Which edition of Ibn Hisham is the page numbering from?
Also, has the author considered how this might be the correct thing to say, before rebutting it, i.e. has the author taken a balanced approach via looking for context?
Example: “We are God’s Helpers” is from Qur’an 3:52 and the POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THE TOWN NAME “NAZARETH” and “NAZARENE” as meaning “CHRISTIAN” - because this verse describes how Jesus’s (peace be upon him) disciples declared themselves to be loyal to God and his Messiah Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him). They were thus known as the Helpers, aka THE NASARA. Their town became the town of The Helpers, a stronghold against Jewish and Pagan Roman persecution.
For a Muslim to utter this, they would be taking after the apostles of Christ, and thus assuming the mantle of Christianity, accepting the baton so to speak.
As for talk of surrender and protection, or failing that: war - that sounds like a standard declaration of war but as l say: war in Islam is only defensive - when preachers are blocked / attacked / killed, or the Muslim state is attacked, or allied states of the Muslim state are attacked.
Still, it would be nice to know the context.
QUOTE: This, according to Ibn Hisham, was the swaggering manifesto promoted by Arab warriors on the eve of their conquest of the world.
RESPONSE: AHHHH, here’s the context according to Tom: It’s not about defensive war, no, it’s about Muslims, specifically, thin wiry desert Arabs (don’t they know they will be attacked by hi-tech lasers? tee hee), having a vendetta against THE WORLD, NO MATTER WHAT THE WORLD HAS DONE, because if it’s against the WORLD it’s against people those desert Arabs HAVEN’T EVEN MET YET!
So, as you can see, Tom’s real purpose is to present the early Muslims, and thus Islam per se, as evil, violent, rapacious.
QUOTE: But who, precisely, was this “prophet?” Ibn Hisham’s aim was to provide the answer. Sitting in Egypt, surrounded by the ruins of forgotten and superseded civilisations, he regarded his sira not merely as a biography but as a record of the most momentous revolution in history. Its subject was a man who had died only two years before the dismemberment of the Roman and Persian empires had begun: an Arab by the name of Muhammad.
RESPONSE: The RUINS of Egypt. The DISMEMBERMENT of the Roman and Persian empires. Note Tom’s choice of words.
QUOTE: Aged forty, and with a moderate career as a merchant behind him, he had experienced—if Ibn Hisham were to be believed—history’s most epochal mid-life crisis.
RESPONSE: The Prophet Muhammad is NO WAY EVER going to be introduced as a Prophet by Tom. I can easily talk of Mormon prophets as a Muslim even though Mormonism is to me abhorrent and madeup. The fact is, to the Mormons, their prophets were prophets, so l shall refer to them as such.
The Prophet’s past as a merchant is reduced to “moderate” when in fact, he was a HIGHLY REGARDED merchant, known as “Al Amin” (The Trustworthy) due to his honesty and fair-dealing, in a world before police and credit-card chargebacks, a world rife with dishonesty like today, only back then, there was less you could do if you were cheated. So Muhammad was greatly appreciated by those who dealt with him. He threw all that away when he dared to declare Monotheism, he ended up in a lifetime of poverty and many years of persecution and turmoil - and STILL rejected a long-delayed compromise / fabulous power sharing deal offered by the pagans who tried to have Allah as a partner of their intercessor-idols. The Prophet told them “where to go” so to speak.
QUOTE: Restless and dissatisfied, he had begun to roam the wilderness which stretched beyond his home town, “and not a stone or tree that he passed by but would say, ‘Peace be unto you, O prophet of God.’ (Ibid., p. 105.)
RESPONSE: See? I wasn’t being oversensitive about Tom saying the Prophet’s career had been “moderate” in success. Tom builds on it to say that the Prophet was thus restless and annoyed and thus turned manic-depressive, and started hearing stuff, right?
QUOTE:
Most spectacular and irrefutable sign of God’s favour, however, was the transformation of Muhammad, in no more than a decade, from refugee to effective master of Arabia. He led twenty-seven campaigns in all, according to Ibn Hisham; and if occasionally there was a defeat, and if the angels, by and large, chose not to fight as they had done at Badr, but rather to serve him as a reserve, then perhaps his ultimate triumph could be considered only the more extraordinary for it. By 632, the traditional date of his death, paganism in Arabia had everywhere been put in shadow. Sweetest moment of all had been the conquest, two years previously, of Mecca itself. Riding into his hometown, Muhammad had ordered the Ka’ba stripped of its gods. A great bonfire had been lit. The toppled idols had been consigned to its flames. The Devil, summoning his progeny around him, had cried out in woe: “Abandon all hope that the community of Muhammad will ever revert to shirk after this day of theirs!” 21 (Waqidi:Kitab al-Maghazi, quoted by Hawting (1999), p. 69. )
Well might he have yowled. The venerable sanctuary, that pre-eminent bastion of paganism, had been brought at last to a due submission: to “Islam.” This consecration of Mecca to the service of the One True God, however, was far from an innovation. What Muhammad had done, so he revealed to his followers, was restore the shrine to its primordial, pristine state. “God made Mecca holy the day He created heaven and earth. It is the holy of holies until the resurrection day.” 22 (Ibn Hisham, p. 629)
By the time that Ibn Hisham sat down to write his biography, it was not only Arabs who faced Mecca as they prayed. Strange peoples of whom the Prophet had possibly never even heard—Visigoths and Berbers, Sogdians and Parthians—could all be seen treading the sands of Arabia: pilgrims bound for the Ka’ba. Although Ibn Hisham himself did not touch upon this phenomenon in his sira, there was no shortage of other scholars eager to relate the extraordinary conquests, far beyond the limits of Arabia, that had followed the death of the Prophet.
RESPONSE: I’ve already answered this tract in an earlier post my friend.
Note that Visigoths themselves may have been strangers, but the Prophet saw the future and thus likely knew of all people on earth in broad terms and in specific terms as regard their role in eschatology.
Note also that Europoid races were known to the early Arabs e.g. a red haired male was actually the first ruler of Islam after the Prophet - Suhayb the Roman (Allah be pleased with him), a temporary placeholder while they elected the next Caliph, eventually settling on Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) - the longest-standing friend of the Prophet. He wasn’t a Roman directly - the Byzantines weren’t blonde as Sam Shamoun, himself claiming to be Syrian, claims. Suhayb was from Basra in Iraq, he was enslaved by the Romans. I’d guess his origins were from northern Europe, many northern tribes attacked the Middle East, many were captured in the progress, many even settled there. I digress.
QUOTE: Such relish was hardly surprising. Back in the wild days of their paganism, nothing had delighted the Arabs more than a spot of loud-mouthed boasting, be it about some heroic feat of arms, some stirring deed of banditry, or some glorious humiliation forced upon a rival. Now, when they blew their own trumpets, it was all in the cause of God. From Badr to the ends of the world, the story of Islam had been one of storming military triumph. Cities infinitely greater than Mecca had been captured; peoples infinitely mightier than the Quraysh obliged to bow their necks. The scale of these victories, won in the teeth of ancient empires and venerable religions, surely furnished all the proof that anyone might need of the truth of the Prophet’s claims. “This is a sign that God loves us,” as one exultant Arab put it,
RESPONSE: HOOTERS SOUND. TOM IN FULL-ON BEAST MODE. TOM IN FULL-ON BEAST MODE. TOM IN FULL-ON BEAST MODE. TOM IN FULL-ON BEAST MODE. HOOTERS SOUND.
Confidentially whispers: l don’t think Tom Holland likes Muslims much.
QUOTE: Ibn Hisham: The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, trans. A. Guillaume (Oxford, 1955)
RESPONSE: Oh maybe this was the book reference. Good good.
Okay so l’ve made one edit to correct the name of Suhayb the Roman but it wasn’t important anyway. The main thing l want to say, at this point, is that Tom Holland is execrable as a scholar of anything, let alone Islam. In the OP video, he briefly chats with Syed Hossein Nasr, University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. Tom chops up the interview to give a soundbite: he asks if a non-Muslim can truly understand Islam. Professor Nasr replies “No”. I seriously doubt the exchange was so linear. I’d say in principle “Yes” but as Islam is in my opinion a true religion, it will go against the grain of the world. So, unless a person genuinely wants to hear Islam’s side, he will not hear Islam’s side. He won’t want to be associated with wiry desert nomads with red eyes and tatty clothing (as Tom Holland portrays in his docu-farces). He won’t want to be poor. He will want to fornicate endlessly, he will want intoxicants - weed, beer - and processed foods, etc etc. My point is: If you want to look at Islam you should NOT start with Tom Holland. You should avoid Tom Holland until you are familiar enough with Islam that you see Tom as light humour on a grey day. I said try other anti-Islamic scholars but coming to think of it, they’re all much like Tom Holland. Shoddy, smoke n mirrors, low blows. I don’t think God wants to be found so people like him will certainly not help you understand Islam. Try genuine Islamic sources. Backtracking slightly let me say also: I am Sunni, Prof. Syed Hossein Nasr is Shiah. However, l consider him to be the greatest Islamic scholar alive today, in terms of prolific scholarship and academic esteem. Him or William Chittick, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University. I’ve also briefly looked at the late Henry Corbin, he’s well regarded, but his writings were impenetrable to me but what little l understood, influenced me hugely re: revelation of divine image on finite humanity. I’ve heard only good about Annemarie Schimmel too. If you want to look at a biography of the Prophet, try Martin Lings . The only biography l’ve read so far is Mubarakpuri’s “The Sealed Nectar” but it is very hard going, the English translation isn’t very good and the style is very Salafi-oriented, but paradoxically, reading that book still helped me to decide that the Prophet Muhammad was the greatest man that ever lived. There’s also Abu Amina Elias’s site here, which has brilliant info on Islam and even answers key polemical attacks, but sadly this too is Salafi (Ibn Taymiyyah) oriented. But l’m not snob, l refer to the site occasionally for the good stuff there. Don’t wade through filth, ditch the Islamophobic authors if you want to appreciate Islam.