[Shadow Of War Sword Of Dominionl
Sharif Garmon
(Coincidentally today I heard another radio interview with Tom Holland, one in which he discusses the way he writes history, the modern relevance of his other historical works, Millennium and Rubicon, as well as further comments on In the Shadow of the Sword.)
Do not look for a fight with the enemy. Beg God for peace and security. But if you do end up facing the enemy, then show endurance, and remember that the gates of Paradise lie in the shadow of the sword.
The degree of authority one can give to the evangelists about the life of Christ is relatively small. Whereas for the life of Muhammad, we know everything more or less. We know where he lived, what his economic situation was, who he fell in love with. We know a great deal about the political circumstances and the socio-economic circumstances of the time.
Tom Holland writes with two voices, as he explains in his latest Radio National interview, and together they make for gripping reading. He writes as the historical researcher of cause and effect, commenting on the degree of certainty or less so of our knowledge, guiding readers to the raw materials and current scholarship upon which his narrative is built. At the same time he writes as a novelist, entering into the experiences of the actants, named and anonymous alike, drawing the reader into their world as inevitably as a Spielberg movie.
Nevertheless, [the] underlying presumption that religions have some mysterious and fundamental essence, immune to the processes of time, remains widely taken for granted. In large part, this is due to Eusebius and others like him. (Shadow, p. 10)
Those who lived by its tenets viewed this as an accomplishment so miraculous that they never doubted its divine origin. (p. 26, bolded text and paragraph formatting is mine, as in all quotations.)
A prize such as this, it seemed to many, could only ever have existed uncreated, beyond the dimensions of time and space: for to imagine that God might somehow be distinct from His words was, of course, to commit the mortal offence of shirk.
Just as the civilisation of Islam would be transfigured by the musings of philosophers, so would Christendom. East and west, much of the world was destined to bear witness to what had been, perhaps, the most startling discovery of late antiquity: that pondering how God might have manifested Himself on earth could serve to transform the way entire peoples have behaved and thought. (p. 31)
But there is one moment where TH does catch Gibbon possibly expressing just a sliver of doubt. It is in a footnote to his treatment of the life of Muhammad. The footnote in chapter 50 of Rise and Fall can be found in full online. The last part of the last sentence acknowledges that no historian can appeal to any writings from the lifetime of the Prophet himself! TH laments that Gibbon
By the nineteenth century Charles Darwin had published On the Origin of Species and Ernest Renan a life of Jesus that shocked readers by treating Jesus as a mere man, not a god. As critical scholars questioned many of the sources buttressing the narratives of the origins of Judaism and Christianity, it was inevitable that some questions would likewise be asked of Muslim sources.
Not that Muslim scholars were undiscerning. Back in the early years of Islam, in the wake of Arab conquests, Muslim scholars acknowledged that many of the unscrupulous had manufactured hadiths (sayings of Muhammad) for their own purposes. Accordingly, diligent scholarship of the day managed to whittle 600,000 sayings of the Prophet down to little more than around 7000 genuine nuggets.
But what about realistic details? I know there are Christian laity and scholars alike who point to vivid detail in narratives as evidence of eyewitness authenticity. Experienced textual critic Schacht knew better:
The lavish name-dropping of references, in anything affecting to cite the Prophet, was a mark, not of reliability, but of precisely the opposite. (p. 37. One wonders what would happen to Christian studies if the same scholarly acumen were applied there.)
In the last forty years there has been an eroding of confidence in what the sources can truly tell us about the origins of Islam. Some historians hold firm, however, continuing to confuse literary accounts (probably with more in common with Homer than Herodotus) with history. Homer spoke of gods intervening; Islamic sources speak of angels in their place.
How could this possibly have been so, when even on the most barbarous fringes of civilisation, even in Britain, even in the north of England, books of history were being written during the same period, and copied, and lovingly tended?
the precise details of what Muhammad might have said and done some two hundred years previously had come to provide, for vast numbers of people, a roadmap that they believed led straight to heaven. (p. 42)
Just as Darwin was physically prostrated by anxiety over how his theories might be received by his family and friends, there are many today no less nervous about causing offence to people whose whole lives are grounded in their faith. (p. 43)
I know some Muslims see such Western scholarship as another form of Orientalism, of Westerners attempting to impose once again their own narrative on the East. Such a criticism implies less blatantly that the only correct view is a Muslim view, or that only Muslims can write the history of their origins.
Many Muslim scholars today acknowledge that there are problems with their sources for early Islam. At the same time, however, many are engaged in efforts to find bedrock foundations among those sources that can indeed be relied upon.
Paradoxically . . . these attempts to repair the damage done to the mighty edifice of Muslim tradition do more than anything else to highlight the full scale of the paradigm shift that is afflicting it. Clearly, when two scholars can devote their entire careers to studying the same languages and sources, and yet arrive at wholly contradictory conclusions, it is no longer possible to presume that there is anything remotely self-evident about the birth of Islam. (p. 45)
The inherent implausibility of this is rarely considered. Instead, at a time when most historians are profoundly suspicious of any notion that great civilisations might emerge from nowhere, owing nothing to what went before, and transforming human behaviour in the merest blinking of an eye, Islam continues to be portrayed as somehow exceptional: lightning from a clear blue sky. (p. 51)
If the sources from the seventh century are meagre, fortunately those from the preceding two centuries are in abundance. TH sees the rise of Islam as part of the larger story of the shaping of the great monotheistic religions out of the turmoils and innovations of late antiquity.
The monotheisms that would end up established as state religions from the Atlantic to central Asia had ancient, and possibly unexpected, roots. To trace them is to cast a searchlight across the entire civilisation of late antiquity. From the dental hygiene of Zoroastrian priests to the frontier policy of Roman strategists; from fantasies about Alexander the Great in Syria to tales of buried books of spells in Iraq; from Jews who thought Christ the messiah to Christians who lived like Jews: all are pieces in the jigsaw. (p. 57)
Have you ever thought of gaining some relevant qualifications and publishing some peer-reviewed research to explain to academia where it is going wrong? Or is it just easier to peddle tripe on the internet?
M. Gould, you clearly are offended by my hobby and personal interest and think I have no business posting my reflections and experiences in a public blog. Have you ever thought of seriously engaging in an honest discussion of the issues or are you incapable of doing anything more than uttering crude put-downs and sarcasm?
As for my critical views appearing in peer-review publications and in books by authors with highly respected qualifications, they are already there. You have read very little of anything I have posted or you would know I am merely quoting or referencing what is already in the scholarly literature.
Silly me. I had some glimmer of hope that you would actually reply with evidence of having read some of my arguments and responded with intellectual seriousness instead of fatuous sarcasm. Welcome to my spam list.
Thankfully the extremist forms of Islam (and that rules in Saudi Arabia as a direct result of Western political backing, and that captured Iran as a direct result of the Western backed oppression there) are not representative of the faith as a whole. And thankfully no nation in recent history has sought to forcefully extend the rule of Islam as some have sought to bomb others into accepting liberal economies and democracy.
The founder of the faith, if he ever existed, was by any measure an extremist, probably even more extreme than any extreme form of Islam existing today. So while Saudi Arabia and all the other Sharia states may not be representative of any random Muslim in the world, they are pretty representative of Islam itself.
It is because too many people hold views like yours that I can see a need to post more on this topic. You are clearly ignorant of some fundamental facts about the world. Truly Islam is well and truly entrenched as the replacement for the Reds of the Cold War era. Your ignorance is appalling. Where to begin!?
Are there any redeeming characteristics in the character of Muhammad? If not, how do you explain the apparent wholesale embracing of a prophet with this sick personality? Are you implying that Arabs, or more generally, Muslims, love such loathesome characteristics?
It seems that all religions evolve from earlier forms and continue to evolve after separating from their antecedents. Judaism started as a polytheistic Near Eastern tribal faith similar to other religions in the region, and gradually changed into the Judaism we know and love today. Its early heroes, such as God, Adam, Abraham, and Moses were fictional characters in the Jewish holy book, which itself is an almost totally fictional account of the history of the world and of the Jews, and which is known to Christians as the Old Testament. Then, the Christian religion slowly developed as a sect of Judaism, and emerged as a religion in its own right, complete with its de rigeur trappings of a fictional founder, known as Jesus, and its own holy writings (the New Testament), which describe its hero Jesus in stories borrowed almost totally from the Old Testament.
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