Islam: The Untold Story - TV programme

[HEPZIBAH]

I've just noticed this programme which may be of interest to some. It is to be shown Tuesday 28 August 9PM Channel 4 (UK TV)

Islam: The Untold Story Presenter - Tom Holland

Historian Tom Holland explores how a new religion - Islam - emerged from the seedbed of the ancient world, and asks what we really know for certain about the rise of Islam.

The result is an extraordinary detective story.

Traditionally, Muslims and non-Muslims alike have believed that Islam was born in the full light of history. But a large number of historians now doubt that presumption, and question much of what Muslim tradition has to tell us about the birth of Islam.

As a result, Tom finds himself embroiled in what, for 40 years now, has been an underground but seismic debate: the issue of whether, as Muslims have always believed, Islam was born fully formed in all its fundamentals, or else evolved gradually, over many years - and in ways that Muslims today might not necessarily recognise.

So who was the historical Muhammad, and where - if not from God - might the Qur'an, the Holy Book of Islam, actually have come from?

By asking these questions, Tom - as a non-Muslim - has no choice, over the course of the film, but to negotiate the fault-line that runs between history and religion, between doubt and faith.

[Bullet Magnet]

I was told the Vatican created Islam.
But then I do not believe everything I hear until I have researched the probability..

[Ra-Mont]

I watched the programme and found it very interesting. The presenter raised some valid points, though perhaps it's not unreasonable that Islam didn't make its mark on coins and written records immediately after its formation. About sixty years, I believe, was the time lag cited in the programme. Even so, I began wondering whether Mohammed himself might have been based on a biblical patriarch and teachings already in existence were attributed to him in order to provide a stablizing religion. So far as religion is concerned, anything is possible.