In the documentary “Islam: The Untold Story,” English historian Tom Holland tried to
unearth the true origins of Islam. Being a Western scholar, Tom Holland never really
counted on the traditional accounts of the beginnings of Islam rather he went for logical
reasoning and archaeological evidences. According to Holland the lack of hard
archaeological facts posted a difficult problem to find out about the origins of Islam. In his
movie, Holland condemned the traditional explanation of the religion of Islam and its
beginnings by saying that it was mostly transmitted orally, even long after Muhammad’s
(PBUH) death. This statement has an implication that the message of Islam was
susceptible to errors and that the Quran was not to be trusted as an authorized religious
text. This also meant Quran came out to be in its current form only in the 8th century
which is during the period when the first biographies (Hadiths) came out. Further
statements made by Holland in the film, such as the cluelessness of the Jewish and
Christians regarding the religious faith of the Arab Muslim invaders during the conquest of
Jerusalem in the 7th century, indicate that a canonized Holy book of the Muslims was not
available and the whole religion didn’t have a definite shape until the 8th century.
In this essay I will try to prove that this is not actually the case and that Islam and its
official religious text did have a definite form from the early stages of its inception.
Moreover, from the movie we also get the idea that the place of origin of Quran was not
actually Mecca, rather some part of Northern Middle East region. I will refute that point as
well.
I will start off my argument by saying that Holland totally neglected the fact about the
crystallization of Quran within decades of Muhammad’s (PBUH) death. This negligence
led to much confusion about the distinctive religious beliefs of the Muslim community in
the 1st century Arabic Hijra. Furthermore, I feel that the western scholars of the 19th –
20th century completely mixed up between Quran and Hadith which resulted in the
adulteration of Quran’s authenticity as a source of Islamic origins in the minds of later
Western scholars.
Quran and Hadith differ significantly and the first difference among them is about
religious and political leadership. While the Hadith books are full of explanations about
what makes up quality hegemony, the Quran rarely talks about it (Donner, 40). The
