An ex-Muslim's Review of Tom Hollands "Islam: The Untold Story"

An acquaintance recently shared with me this documentary called "Islam: The Untold Story" by Historian Tom Holland, in which he claims that there is a possibility that Arabs were not really Muslims when they started their expansion, and that they picked up Islam later, which was a little known religion that started in the city of Avdat in Negev, Southern Palestine.

Below I'd like to review this documentary, but if you would like a tl;dr review: That's why everyone hates orientalists...

Tom Holland with the exotic specimen

First of all, I would like to state that I think it's possible that all of Holland's claims are true. I am not a Muslim myself. I don't believe Islam came from God, and I doubt there is a God to begin with, and so I am ready to discuss what most Muslims would not be willing to. Despite all of that, Holland successfully managed to heavily offend me.

I find it astonishing that, up until this day, we still find reputable thinkers in the West following such an orientalist approach. An approach that takes as a given the moral superiority of the West over those in the East, and finds it OK to examine them as a species, not as peers. The movie is offensive not because of any of its content, but because the only two Arab/Muslim opinions in it were:

1. A tribe of Bedouin people that Holland met, where they just described what they believed in, and did not engage in any actual discussion with Holland. To that I have a few questions:
1. Did you know that not all Arabs, neither now nor back in the 6th century, were nomads? and that Muhammad is said to have come from a town and was not one of the nomads?
2. Did you know that those people might have had objections had you actually told them what your theory was? and that some of them might have presented some serious arguments for you to consider? Is there a reason why we don't hear their opinions on your theory?
   
2. An Islamic Philosophy professor, who is mostly quoted saying things like "Just because you cannot see something, doesn't mean it's not true". And to that, I have more important questions:
1. Did you know that you didn't really need a professor to tell you that? And that such a statement could have been taken out from a random Muslim on the street? Are you just trying to show that even professors are irrational and have nothing to offer?
   
2. Did you ask the professor for some rebuttals against your theory? Why is none of them shared?

This is the place of Arabs in Holland's movie, a bunch of irrational nomads whose opinion is worth nothing, of whom the most educated will tell you nothing of value. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being a Bedouin. Many Arabs still are to this day, but you can't help but think that this movie is playing on a much older view of Arabs, one we used to see in Indiana Jones's movies, but that we had hoped was long gone...

But moving on, and apart from that offensive view of Arabs, Holland goes on to present an argument that seems very weak to someone educated on the subject. Again, I insist that his argument was possibly right; I am intrigued and would love to learn more to see its merits, but during the movie Holland was not remotely interested in addressing any of the tens of objections that came up to my mind. Did you really come up with an unbreakable, unobjectionable theory? No respectable scientist or scholar would ever say that. So why did you not even bother to hint at any possible weaknesses in this theory? The lack of presenting counter-evidence, to me, seems to only imply that this person either did not appreciate the opposing theories (you know, those coming from these Arabs), or that he is not the truth-seeker that he claims to be, rather a showman trying to entice us with his revelations...

And below, I'd like to list some of the questions that I had while I was watching the movie, and that were not addressed by Mr. Holland:

• Refusing to acknowledge oral history: Holland says that any piece of evidence must be written down at the time of the event to be acknowledged as history. Anything written later (even if just a few decades later) must be ignored. And I understand and respect that motivation. However, the majority of Arabs could not read or write back in the day, including (as narrated) Muhammad himself. So what you're saying is that the majority of sources coming from Arabic origin is to be fully neglected without further examination.
  
  
• More on the topic above, Muslim scholars have recognized this weakness in their history, and thus developed the "Scienes of Narrators", also known as Biographical Evaluation, which was a methodology to evaluate the likelihood of truthfulness of a certain story. And while this is far from perfect, it is at least worth considering, or at least a honorable mention maybe? But no, I have forgotten that Arabs were those irrational creatures
  
  
• Further more, if many stories were written just a few decades later (the longest was a century and a half later), isn't there a hint of truthfulness at least in the agreed upon parts? Don't they have a level of merit? Couldn't we take them and multiply their credibility by a certain modifier to make it less important, but not fully cancel it?
  
  
• And yet even more on the topic above, Holland has considered Quran to be the only written resource from that time. But I mean, I know I am an irrational Arab, but I have noticed that there is also The Constitution of Medina, and the Letters To The Heads of States (of lower historical certainty). Can those sources have an honorable mention maybe? What about the Migration to Abyssinia? Is it not worth looking at all these resources, considering their truthfulness, and evaluation their effects on your theory?
  
  
• And on a different topic, when trying to prove that Islam originated in Southern Palestine, he mentioned that Islam had a lot of mention of agriculture, specifically that of olives, and he said that there was no agriculture in Mecca, in the middle of the desert. This is compelling, but first of all, Arabs knew about olives; they imported it from the Levant; they were merchants. It was not a bizarre thing to mention. Second, is there a reason why you didn't mention that palm trees were mentioned much more than olives? The trees that were cultivated heavily in Arabia back then? Is there also a reason why you didn't mention the extreme abundance of mentions of camels? Isn't this what some would call "cherry picking"?
  
  
• He then went on to mention that the excessive mention of biblical references proved that it was close to Palestine. But Arabia had a lot of Jews and Christians! Arabs knew those stories. Moreover, Muslims say that their religion is an extension of those religions, so even if those stories were not very common in Arabia, it would have made sense for Muhammad to go and seek those biblical stories regardless of where Islam originated.
  
  
• Holland then presented his very first compelling argument, where he mentioned that the Quran says that "You pass by the ruins of the people of Lot in the morning and at night", which is supposedly situated close to The Dead Sea. I don't know to be honest if this one argument can trump all the other, much more abundant arguments. Especially that Muslim scholars have interpreted this long ago as meaning "when you travel for merchandise", so I don't see it as constituting enough evidence
  
  
• I would like to also present evidence supporting Holland, which is the mentions in Quran of goddesses Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat, all of which originated in Northen Arabia, closer to Jordan. The history written down by Arabs later acknowledges that, and says that the cults of these goddesses were "imported" by Arab merchants, but this could be debated. Of course, Holland was too busy to bring up any of that and debate it...
  
  
• Moving on, since Holland was interested in what was mentioned in Quran. He brought up that Mecca was not mentioned, only "Becca" was. Well, not really true, there is a mention in Quran about a battle that Muslims supposedly had in Mecca. There are also mentions of Yathreb, the adjacent city that later became known as Al-Medina, but that was of no interest to Holland...
  
  
• Speaking of mentions, the Quran also mentions the tribe of Quraish, and the events of "The Year of the Elephant". Is there a reason he ignored all of these mentions?
  
  
• Finally, he talked about how AbdulMalik Bin Marwan decided to adopt Islam, make it the religion of all Arabs, and modify it to look like it has always been. To me this sounds like Conspiracy Theory. I find it too much to believe that all Arab sources say that Islam came from Mecca, and not a single source that says otherwise has survived. While this is possible, it is extremely improbable
  

To conclude, it is OK to not believe in Islam; I don't. It is also OK, and even desirable, to question what we know about its history, and aim to uncover the truth.

What is not OK is to treat a group of people like this exotic, irrational specimen. What is not OK is to cherry pick only what supports your theory. What is not OK is to disrespect your audience and present them with only part of the facts to make it look like your theory is groundbreaking.

"Islam: The Untold Story" is not OK...