To the Death

In the 1830s David Strauss, a German theologian on the margins of the Young Hegelian school of thought, published Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet – The Life of Jesus Critically Examined.  It was a sensation, the beginning of a quest for the real historical Jesus, as opposed to the miracle-maker of the gospels.  A lot of the reaction, as you may imagine, was hostile, some of it hysterically so.  In England the seventh earl of Shaftesbury, the highest of Tory Anglicans, described the 1846 English translation as “the most pestilential book ever vomited out from the jaws of hell.”

Now Channel Four, one of the terrestrial TV channels in England, seems to have produced the most pestilential documentary ever vomited out from the jaws of hell, or you might think so if you take heed of some of the Shaftesbury-like criticisms.  The show in question was called Islam: The Untold Story, presented by Tom Holland.  I’d never heard of him, either as a historian’s historian or a telly historian.  Well, now I have!  The long and the short of the Holland thesis is that the Arab Empire produced Islam; Islam did not produce the Arab Empire. 

I didn’t actually watch this when it was broadcast, principally because I did not know that it was on.  If I had I might still have given it a miss because, on the basis of past showings, I think that Channel 4’s history horse is kept in the same stables as that for shows like Big Brother. 

Now I have watched it on 4OD, the company’s catch-up service.  I simply had to before it was banned, censored, dropped down the memory hole or otherwise disposed of.  I read in the Mail that it had attracted nearly 550 complaints, which must surely count as a record for a documentary.  Holland himself has been subject to a deluge of abusive Tweets, not stopping short of physical threats.  Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of an organisation called the Ramadhan Foundation, wrote to the television company, saying that;

The Ramadhan Foundation calls on Channel 4 to apologise for this programme, withdraw it from online viewing and also order an immediate inquiry into why this was allowed to be broadcast.  How many Muslim Scholars, community leaders were given a copy of this programme before transmission?  Whether historic facts in relation to Islam were verified by the presenter and who his sources were. 

I have no idea what the Ramadhan Foundation is and I have no idea who Mohammed Shafiq is, but the suggestion that television programmes have to be submitted to him and his people for approval before transmission is absolutely outrageous.  Who on earth does this ridiculous man think he is, or where does he think he is living?  In case there is any confusion over the point this is England, not Saudi Arabia.  I expect, though, that there will be an attempt to have Holland indicted under the blasphemy laws, Saudi-style legislation introduced into our legal system by the wretched Tony Blair. 

Islam and the origins of Islam is a legitimate subject for historical enquiry.  Let’s get that straight to begin with, least this fundamental point is lost in the midst of the fuss.  Another thing in danger of being lost is that Holland’s documentary was a horse of a Big Brother colour.  In other words, it was telly history at its worst, glib and silly.  It may have dealt with a legitimate subject but there were too many preconceptions and unexamined assumptions to make it a legitimate enquiry. 

Dan Snow, another superficial showman, rushed to Holland’s defence on Twitter, in just as silly a fashion as his detractors – “Dear angry, mad people – it is conceivable that you know more than the world’s leading scholars, but very unlikely.”.  Gosh, I seriously hope that Holland, a sort of impoverished man’s Indiana Jones, is not being placed in the same category as the “world’s leading scholars.”  If he is then the world’s leading scholarship is in trouble.

All religions have sacred and syncretic roots.  Islam is no different in this regard from Judaism and Christianity, both of which drew on older traditions, both of which resist and are resistant to forms of empirical enquiry.  Here faith really does move mountains…and make empires.

That fundamental point was lost by the presenter.  In presentation, delivery and style, he seemed to be looking for sensation rather than substance.  There was silliness to the whole thing, fairly typical of Channel 4.  In some ways laughter would be the best criticism rather than hysteria, laughter over the superficiality of it all. It was full of visual absurdities, bogus images and vacant verbal gestures.  Overall it was appallingly disjointed.  The scene of Holland half bending in patently insincere ‘prayer’ among his Bedouin hosts was risible in the extreme.  What on earth was the point of it all? 

Then there are the questions.  It puzzled Holland that it took sixty years after Mohammed’s death for his name to appear on coins, those issued by the first caliph.  Sixty years – is that all?  The suggestion here is that Mohammed’s name is being used in the same way that Constantine used that of Christ, namely to provide a unifying focus.  But it took three hundred years for the Romans to become partial Christians, and that only after some fierce phases of persecution.  The reasonable deduction, the scholarly deduction, if you like, is that for Mohammed to have acquired such prominence so quickly he, and Islam, must already have had a substantial following.  This was not conjured out of the desert air on the fancies of Bedouins.   

Apparently, according to Holland, Mecca is not mentioned in the Quran, just a place ambiguously referred to as ‘Becca’.  But Mecca is there, in Sura 48:24 – "He is the one who withheld their hands of aggression against you, and withheld your hands of aggression against them in the valley of Mecca, after He had granted you victory over them. God is Seer of everything you do.”

I see in his statement of defence on the Channel Four website he writes that he did say on film that Mecca is mentioned.  Well, if I find the time, I shall have to watch the whole thing again, because I have no recollection at all about that, just lots of speculation about the possible location of ‘Becca.’ 

Look, the facts are simple enough: this was bad history badly presented.  It was history dancing to a preconceived tune, sensation for the sake of sensation; it really is no more complicated than that.  Christianity survived Strauss just as Islam will survive Holland.  The hysteria, the demands that TV shows dealing with a particular subject should be vetted beforehand by ‘community leaders’, gives him and his silly show far more significance than it deserves; it will only add to the sales of his forthcoming book.  Muslims really need to develop a greater sense of detachment, a suggestion that doubtless marks my card as just another infidel.  Here I am, caught by a classic paradox.  I disapprove of what Holland says but will defend to the death his right to say it. 

Jamie Oliver – the Nanny Cook

I've discovered that Jamie Oliver, a telly cook who could bore for England, not content with lecturing us on what to eat is now lecturing America in a show called Food Revolution. What follows is my response to this news, posted on a discussion thread. It’s been slightly adapted for use here.

I saw this thread yesterday and decided to hold back, for the simple reason that my first emotion was one of anger at the subliminal message that is being peddled by this ghastly cook, this frightful male Mary Poppins. The reference here is a deliberated one, but let me hold off on this for a bit until I've made some more general points.

So, his preaching from the culinary pulpit is being broadcast in the US as Food Revolution, is it? One should always try to understand revolutions, in politics or in food, by looking at previous examples, by looking at the route they have taken. In this regard America’s present is our past.

The last government here, the government of Tony Blair and latterly Gordon Brown, was one of the worst in our history, chipping away systematically at all sorts of civil liberties, seeking to micro-manage lives, right down to the most intimate and personal levels. Things got so bad that it was even the subject of a book - Philip Johnston’s Bad Laws. In the introduction he made the following points;

Yet despite the claim to represent the British people, New Labour actually felt like an alien interloper in an ancient land, preaching the fetish of modernism and despising tradition. It evinced a predisposition to micromanage individual behaviour and ride roughshod over liberties, both of which are very non-British traits.

I wrote my own gloss on this book, posted on 17 May last year (Bad Law), but for short here is one key passage;

We now have more CCTV cameras than any other nation in the world though there is no evidence at all that they are effective in reducing crime. We are observed even more closely than the citizens of such places as North Korea and Cuba. We are beset by armies of parking enforces and clampers, as well as being pestered by a growing army of health fascists. The smoking ban threatens to destroy the pub, one of the great British institutions. Latterly the nation’s health supremo has alluded to the deleterious effects of ‘passive drinking.’ Even school lunch boxes, an intimate bond between parent and child, can be investigated by the healthy eating brigade.

Yes, that's one dimension of this appalling onslaught - the fascists of the healthy eating brigade. And who do you think they adopted as an avatar, who do you think Tony Blair adopted as the food guru, one who would bring a 'revolution' in eating, focused on school lunches? I don't think I need to say, do I?

Oliver was sold as the food Poppins; well, he wasn't; that's just how I see it - a sanctimonious, hectoring Hector, who was out to 'reform' the nation's eating habits. Up and down the country schools, anxious not to appear out of step, anxious not to be victimised by the snoopers, the government inspectors and the do-gooders, adopted 'healthy lunches'.

People were even empowered, as I have said, to look at the contents of lunch boxes and send lecturing written warnings to parents if they did not like what they saw. Even in the worst days of Soviet tyranny I doubt things ever went that far. What was the result? 'Healthy' options went uneaten; children went hungry; mothers were seen at school gates, handing through emergency 'food aid.'

It really is appalling that this disease has now hit the States, this nannying Jamie-knows-best approach. I see from one recent news report that Chicago has even banned home made lunches. My God, what’s happened to America, what's happened to the Land of the Free, when this sort of state-tyranny is allowed to pass without major protest? How far are people prepared to allow things to go? What’s next: compulsory work camps for the deviant eaters?

Oliver is no more than the populist face of the nanny state, a lisping culinary megalomaniac and school-dinner obsessive, as Brendan O’Neil wrote in last week’s edition of the Spectator. If that's not bad enough he, so far as America is concerned, is a foreigner, a sanctimonious outsider. Actually if the American people like him so much I wish they would adopt him on a permanent basis. The sooner my country is free of this ass the better.

I'm annoyed; it's obvious I'm annoyed, but I do emphasise it's not at those who watch this show - it's at the lie they are being sold, that people can be corralled like sheep into adopting a 'healthy' lifestyle, the kind of lifestyle sanctioned by Oliver and his insufferable kind. For America to be seduced by this condescending and patronising food moralist is just too awful. If the price of freedom is fat kids then let it be.

My Favourite Cartoon Character

Is Eric Cartman; who else? He is the perfect anti-hero, the one person who flies in the teeth of all political correctness in a show that flies in the teeth of political correctness. And I hate political correctness almost as much as I hate the humourless harridans of sixties-style feminism. God-dammed hippies! :))