Islam: The Untold Story is a documentary film written and directed by Kevin Sim and presented by the English novelist and popular historian Tom Holland. The documentary explores the origins of Islam, an Abrahamic religion that developed in Arabia in the 7th century and criticises the orthodox Islamic account of this history, claiming that the traditional story lacks sufficient supporting evidence. It was commissioned by the British television company Channel 4 and first broadcast in August 2012. Its release followed the publication of Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World (2012), which also discussed the rise of the Arab Empire and the origins of Islam.
Adopting the theories of the academic historian Patricia Crone as a basis, Holland claimed there was little hard evidence for the origins of Islam and asked why it took several decades after the death of Muhammad for his name to appear on surviving documents or artifacts. Arguing that there was little evidence for how the faith was born, he suggested that the city of Mecca may not have been the real birthplace of Muhammad and Islam. While not disputing Muhammad's existence as a real historical figure, he posited that much of the Islamic origin myth was developed later, in the early years of the Arab Empire.
The documentary proved controversial. Mainstream media reception was mixed, but it provoked criticism from figures within the United Kingdom's Islamic community who argued that Holland ignored evidence supporting the orthodox account of early Islamic history. Government-approved regulatory authority Ofcom and the broadcaster Channel 4 received an estimated 1200 complaints regarding the program. Fearing violent retaliation from militant Muslims, Channel 4 cancelled a public screening of the documentary at their London headquarters.
Background
Holland is an English novelist and popular historian who had published a trio of best-selling histories of the ancient world: Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (2003), Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (2005), and Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom (2008). In 2012, Holland's fourth work of history, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World, was published; it explored the collapse of the Roman and Persian Empires, as well as the rise of the Arab Empire and the accompanying Arabian religion of Islam.
In an interview with The Spectator, Holland rejected the Islamic belief that the Qur'an constituted the direct word of God, stating that he believed it to have been "very clearly" written by a human being during Late Antiquity. He highlighted "the lack of sources" that were available with which to analyse the origins of Islam, and that all religious movements come to construct their own back story, in doing so erasing alternative accounts and interpretations of their history.
It was on the basis of In the Shadow of the Sword that Channel 4, a commercial television company based in the U.K., commissioned Holland to produce a documentary on the subject of Islam's origins. A spokesperson for the company publicly announced that the documentary constituted a part of their "remit to support and stimulate well-informed debate on a wide range of issues" through "challenging established views" and providing access to alternative perspectives and information.
Synopsis Islam: The Untold Story deals with the origins of the religion Islam. Travelling to Saudi Arabia, Holland visits Arabian Bedouins to hear their orthodox Islamic accounts of the religion's origins. Holland then talks to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a practising Muslim who teaches Islamic studies at the George Washington University, Washington D.C., and Patricia Crone, a non-Muslim historian of Islamic history at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. The former defends the orthodox Islamic account of the faith's history, citing its development within oral history, but Crone challenges the reliability of oral history, and therefore the traditional account.
Holland looks at the earliest evidence for Muhammad, Mecca and Islam in the first century of the Arab Empire, pointing to a lack of evidence in the historical record to support the traditional account. He points out that there is almost no contemporary historical evidence about the life of Muhammad, with no mention of him at all in historical texts until 70 years after his death. He states that contrary to Islamic doctrine which says Islam was behind the creation of the Arab Empire, Muawiyah I became leader of the Arab Empire in Jerusalem 30 years after Muhammad's death despite showing little sign of being Muslim, and that no mention of Muhammad or Islam can be found in any of Muawiyah's inscriptions, coins, or documents.
Holland proceeds to note that with the exception of a single ambiguous reference in the Qur'an, there is no mention of Mecca in any datable text until a century after Muhammad's death. He points out that in the Qur'an, the Prophet appears to address farmers and agriculturalists while his opponents are described as keeping cattle and growing olives and vines. This appears to describe an environment foreign to Mecca, where there was no agriculture; thus Holland posits that the location attributed to Mecca in the Qur'an more closely fits a city in the Negev desert, in what is now southern Israel.
Holland suggests that under the reign of Arab Emperor Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, Mecca was intentionally yet erroneously portrayed as Muhammad's home and the birthplace of Islam in order to provide the religion with Arabian origins. Holland argues that in doing so, the faith was dissociated from the Jewish or Christian heritage that would have been self evident at a location in the Negev.
Cancelled public screening After security fears were raised, on 11 September 2012, Channel 4 cancelled a planned screening of the film for "opinion formers" at its London headquarters. They said they were nevertheless "extremely proud" of the film and would continue to provide access to it on their website, 4oD.
Their decision to cancel was criticised by Jenny Taylor, the founder of Lapido Media, a consultancy specialising in religious literacy in world affairs. Invited to attend the event, Taylor described the documentary as a good historical study and its cancellation as the "appalling" result of protest whipped up by the media. She argued that the right to debate historical events was a core value of the western world, and that Islam should not be exempt from historical inquiry. The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain expressed indignation at the cancellation, stating that giving in to the demands of Islamists would have a "catastrophic" effect on "free enquiry and expression where it pertains to Islam". They urged supporters to write to Channel 4 and Ofcom requesting a repeat screening.
Reception
Media reviews In The Independent, television reviewer Tom Sutcliffe noted that the documentary was likely to court controversy and cause problems for Holland. Although remarking that he did not know what devout Muslims would think of Holland's arguments, he asserted that "As a historian, Holland was troubled by a gap in the record, and by inconsistencies between the scriptural account and hard evidence on the ground. But the absence of evidence only matters to those for whom evidence is a sort of god. Those who have a God already, capitalised and unquestionable, don't really care either way...For those of us who don't take the Koran as the word of God the evidence was rather interesting, if by necessity inconclusive." Sutcliffe maintained that Holland had made his arguments "tactfully".
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Christopher Howse, a commentator on religious issues, was critical of the documentary, awarding it two stars out of five and labelling it "disjointed". He argued that it placed too much emphasis on historiography but that its "crowning annoyance" was Holland's habit of pausing mid-sentence. In contrast, Ed West, also of The Daily Telegraph, praised the documentary, stating that it was "atmospheric and intelligent". Noting it would make many viewers uncomfortable, he argued that the Islamic world had to accept "higher criticism" and "embrace the pain of doubt" in order to improve life for themselves and for their non-Muslim neighbours.
In an article on the political news and commentary website The Commentator, author and journalist Philippe Labrecque characterized the documentary as "harmless" and criticized what he saw as Channel 4's lack of courage in canceling the public screening: "What is threatened by our lack of courage in facing violent fundamentalists...is the very nature of Western empiricism and skepticism; in other words, the foundations of science."
In his review for The Guardian, the journalist John Crace complained that Holland had tried too hard to avoid offending Muslims, writing "For decades – centuries even – scholars have felt free to contest the accuracy of other religious texts. Not least the Bible; what's true, what's parable and what's just wishful thinking has all been up for grabs without any serious damage being done to Christian beliefs. Not so with Islam, around which non-Islamic scholars tread with extreme caution. I'm all for cultural and religious sensitivity, but the degree to which Holland tiptoed around the subject and apologised for his findings went way beyond what was required. Or would have been on offer for any other religion."
In the Arab Review, Raphael Cormack—a doctoral candidate in Middle Eastern studies—characterised the documentary as "an honest attempt to conduct historical research on a very murky period, and one that should be praised". He also lamented what he saw as the frequent attention given by Western scholars to Islam's origin story, with far less coverage being given to the rest of Islam's 1,300-year history.
Muslim responses
According to Cormack, Muslim responses on social media were largely negative, with some people attacking Holland on Twitter and some making personal threats against him. One commented that "You might be a target in the streets. You may recruit some bodyguards, for your own safety." Another stated that Holland was a "fool" for suggesting Islam was a "made-up religion". The historian Dan Snow responded to these attacks by tweeting: "Dear angry mad people on twitter, it is conceivable that you know more than @holland_tom & the world's leading scholars, but very unlikely".
The Huffington Post published a response from practising Muslim Afroze Zaidi-Jivraj, a graduate in English who had recently begun a master's degree in theology at the University of Birmingham. She asserted that Holland's methodology was flawed because he had neglected to study the corpus of material on early Islamic history found in libraries across the Islamic world, instead using only sources he had obtained in Western libraries. Zaidi-Jivraj argued that he did not consult any Islamic scholars of Islamic history, instead choosing the more "exotic" option of interviewing a Bedouin, and that although he had consulted Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr – who she called "a token Muslim voice" – Nasr was a scholar of Islamic philosophy, and not Islamic history. She expressed a fear that the programme would promote negative views of "an already poorly-understood faith and its much-maligned adherents."