From an ongoing story in the UK reported on Jihad Watch today (relaying a story from the UK newspaper the Guardian):
The British historian behind a Channel 4 history of Islam has defended
the programme after it triggered hundreds of complaints...
In a response issued by Channel 4, Holland said: "The origins of
Islam are a legitimate subject of historical enquiry and ... the
programme was in keeping with other series on the channel where the
historical context of world religions were examined."
The unsurprising irony of it is that Tom Holland is decidedly soft on Islam:
We were of course aware when making the programme that we were
touching deeply-held sensitivities and went to every effort to ensure
that the moral and civilizational power of Islam was acknowledged in our
film, and the perspective of Muslim faith represented, both in the
persons of ordinary Bedouin in the desert, and one of the greatest
modern scholars of Islam, Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
It is important to stress as we do in the film that this is a
historical endeavour and is not a critique of one of the major
monotheistic religions.
As I've noted time and again, such groveling at the feet of the PC
MCs and their Muslim clients doesn't seem to do much good -- Tom Holland
is still accused of "bias" of not, by insinuation, bigotry.
Though in Holland's case, it may not be groveling: he may really believe
that Islam actually has "moral and civilizational power" and that it is"one of the major monotheistic religions" as though that's a packaged
box-set, and Islam is to be automatically included, for $39.99 at
Amazon.com.
In his video interview on his latest book, In the Shadow of the Sword (where "the Sword" does not mean, as it should, uniquely Islam, but all the "Imperialist Monotheists" of the Ecumenic Age),
it sounds like he "contextualizes" Islam in a broader context of
ancient Imperialism, and puts the political exploitation of the new
monotheism by Constantine (and no doubt the Persian Emperor of the time)
on a par with Mohammed.
I.e., Holland is more or less an
Equivalencist, and wouldn't dream of noticing that Islam is unique in
its imperialist expansionism, its ideological supremacism, and its
violence in the name of the aforementioned. Just because Holland
"deconstructs" Islam and Mohammed, that doesn't mean he's not an
Equivalencist. In fact, it seems that Holland's project is to restore
Equivalencism in a PC MC milieu where lip service is given to that, but
where what's really going on is a one-sided privilege and respect for
Islam not accorded to other religions and cultures.
(Sure, Holland
alludes to noticing that Muslims, unlike many modern Christians, seem to
regard their holy book as impervious to deconstructionism, but he
doesn't seem to go beyond that very tepidly gingerly dip of a little toe
in the raging ocean of Islamic evil, simply regarding it as a curiously
distinct inlet of the same body of water he is historically probing --
and no doubt otherwise chalking up the mountain of violent and hateful
data that impinges on him daily as a news watcher as data that would
indicate a confirmation of the usual explanatory mechanism of the TMOE
(Tiny Minority of Extremists) -- lest, heaven forbid, he should step
outside of his Box and have to revise his historiography of Islam as
part of the Box Set of Imperialistic Monotheisms.)
Needless to say, however, Equivalencism simply won't do, for those of
us who have come, unremarkably yet still extraordinarily, to "know more
than @tom_holland".
