Mick Hartley shares the Times’s reporting on Tom Holland’s talk at the Hay Festival on Tuesday:
Historian Tom Holland gave the inaugural Christopher Hitchens Lecture at the Hay Festival yesterday. From the Times (£):
The taboo of not speaking about the prophet Muhammad has to be broken to deradicalise jihadists, an acclaimed author, historian and film-maker said yesterday.
Tom Holland, who produced Islam: the Untold Story for Channel 4, said that the “moral perfection” of Muhammad had to be questioned and that to do so required non-Muslims to break the “unspoken blasphemy taboo that has taken hold in the West”.
Holland, who was giving the inaugural Christopher Hitchens Lecture at the Hay Festival, said that in the past 30 years the “one thing that people seem to have learnt is that to question the moral perfection of Muhammad is akin to poking a hornets’ nest with a stick”.
Muslims seem to take more offence at insults to Muhammad than at insults directed at God, he said.
Holland said that this silence from non-Muslims allowed Islamic State to draw inspiration from the Prophet’s example, despite Muhammad’s actions remaining largely unexamined.
It’s a very very dangerous idea – possibly the worst idea humans could collectively have. It short-circuits careful thinking about ethical issues, and that’s the very thing we must not do.
He added that the “sanction for what they do is within the various biographies and traditions associated with the Prophet . . . when beheading an infidel seems to have been enshrined within what every jihadi aspires to do, it is surely not irrelevant that Muhammad owned a sword that can be translated as the ‘cleaver of vertebrae’.
“Not examining these claims [about Muhammad] leaves free those who want to put the most hostile spin on it. Jihadists cannot possibly be deradicalised unless the prophet is deradicalised as well,” he said.
Holland said that it was dangerous of politicians to argue that atrocities committed by Muslims were nothing to do with Islam. He said the British government’s deradicalisation policy was based on this. “Jihadists see themselves as models of righteous behaviour doing God’s will. They see themselves as following the example of Muhammad,” he said. “The Koran is absolutely explicit about this, ‘In the messenger of God you have a beautiful example, an example to follow’.”
It’s almost as if “the messenger of God” wrote those words himself…
Tom Holland has some terrific books out – I’m right in the middle of his history of Islam, “In the Shadow of the Sword.” His “The Forge of Christendom”, similarly a history of Christianity, is likewise great, and his “Persian Fire”, about Greece’s collision with the world’s first empire, Persia, was wonderful.
Holland’s “Rubicon” is also really good.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed everything he has published. Because of a lack of information about Muhammad and Koranic textual criticism (which, I suppose, makes Holland’s point) I remain unconvinced regarding his argument that Islam is pretty much created out of whole cloth. Although, Holland doesn’t exactly say that. I suppose anyone writing about islam would be careful not to because it’s dangerous.
An appropriate talk for the Hitchens Lecture, at least!
“Jihadists cannot possibly be deradicalised unless the prophet is deradicalised as well,” he said.” Good luck with that project.
A useful start to the process would be to avoid calling Muhammed “The Prophet”, there’s no evidence that prophets have ever existed , although his demented followers believe that he was a ‘prophet’, rational people should know better. The insidious expression is becoming common on the MSM.
“Holland said that it was dangerous of politicians to argue that atrocities committed by Muslims were nothing to do with Islam.”
It’s easy to make that observation, however what are Western politicians to do, publicly concede that the Muslim community provides a reservoir for a continuous supply of jihadis, and that there’s an indeterminate and probably, an alarmingly large percentage of sympathisers within the community? Any Western politician who points out the huge grey pachyderm is usually quickly pushes to the fringes of politics and labelled “Far Right”.
“Holland said that this silence from non-Muslims allowed Islamic State to draw inspiration from the Prophet’s example,”
This seems dangerously close to kufarsplaining, the members of IS couldn’t give a rat’s about the opinions of the dirty Kufars, it’s a Western conceit that we can somehow influence the ideology of this totalitarian religion.
Blanche Quizno,
“Persian Fire”, about Greece’s collision with the world’s first empire, Persia, was wonderful.’
Yes, indeed. Western Civilisation come so close to extinction. Luckily for later generations, all those Greek philosophers, architects, mathematicians and proto-scientists were also militarily, far more efficient than their enemies.
… to question the moral perfection of Muhammad is akin to poking a hornets’ nest with a stick.
Wasn’t the whole original point of forbidding depiction of The Prophet® to prevent his being made into an icon?
Haven’t the fetishes around Mo and the Q book reached and exceeded that point long ago?