When I Questioned the History of Muhammad
British scholar Tom Holland found himself in a firestorm—and under threat—when he raised doubts about the traditional account of the origins of Islam.
Ever since 1989, when the novelist Salman Rushdie found himself sentenced to death by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for the perceived blasphemy of “The Satanic Verses,” satirists in Europe have known that they were living on the edge of a volcano. Nervousness about mocking religious sensibilities has become more intense on the continent of Voltaire and Byron than at any time since the 18th century. That there are Muslims capable of taking murderous offense at blasphemy in a way that churches have long since outgrown is a reality that nobody who laughs at Islam can possibly forget. The cartoonists murdered Wednesday in the office of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo knew the risks they were running. That was the measure of their bravery. “What I am saying may be a bit pompous,” their editor had declared, “but I prefer to die standing than live on my knees.”
I had always admired such boldness, but I was far too pusillanimous to imagine that I might ever find myself in any danger of this sort. I was a historian, not a satirist—and, what’s more, a historian of classical antiquity. How could a book on ancient Rome offend anyone?
The answer only gradually began to dawn on me when I came to write not about Rome’s heyday but about her fall. By the 6th century A.D., the Roman Empire had been dismembered. The western half, including Italy itself, was ruled by barbarians; only the eastern half survived. In the early 7th century, that remnant was reduced, in turn, to a bleeding trunk. Provinces that had been Roman for centuries were lost for good to a new breed of imperialists: the Arabs.
How had this happened? The fall of the Roman Empire in the East seemed to me a fascinating, decisive and curiously under-discussed topic. In 2007, without really weighing up the likely consequences, I decided to make it the theme of my next book.
