More on BBC2's The Life of Muhammad

A while ago I posted about Rageh Omaar's TV series The Life of Muhammad (and talked briefly about it on the Skepticule Extra podcast). My skepticism about Muhammad's revelations — and about his "Night Journey" as well as other aspects of Islam — provoked a series of comments from a user by the name of Walid, who essentially claimed that it was true because the Prophet said so. I did try to elicit some valid evidence for this claim, but to no avail.

Some days later Stuart Parsons responded to my post with a condemnation of the TV series, and to rescue his comment from the depths of Walid's justification attempts I reproduce it here:

As someone who has made a seious study of the Islamic religion, I can assure you that the BBC2 'Life of Muhammad ' series was a travesty. It was more noteworthy for what it chose to conceal about the life of Muhammad than what is was prepared to reveal.

Islam's own sources, the Quran, Sunnah and sirahs of Ishaq, Tabari and Kathir, reveal a very different life of Muhammad than that disingenuously presented to us by the BBC Head of Religious Broadcasting, Mr Aaqil Ahmed. We certainly were not told that the Quran and many hadiths call for ongoing holy war against ALL non-Muslims, until the religion is for Allah alone throughout the entire world. Instead it was mendaciously explained that Jihad is the struggle of individual Muslims to lead a good life. According to many Quran verses and numerous ahadith a Muslim is leading a good life if he is killing non-Muslims, forcibly converting them to Islam or subjugating them as inferiors under Muslim control. 

This does appear to be a damning indictment of Rageh Omaar's programme, and incidentally of Islam in general. To be fair though, I noticed a good deal of "equivocation by stealth" in the programme, with many hints of "interpretation" of scripture and much use of the phrase "according to Muslim tradition". Often these phrases slip by unnoticed, but they serve the same purpose as judicious use of "allegedly" when saying something that could be judged defamatory in a court of law.

And if we were in a court of law, could we say that the jury's still out?

The Life of Muhammad — BBC2

As discussed on Skepticule Extra 009, The Life of Muhammad is a three-part BBC TV documentary presented by Rageh Omaar. I've watched the first two — the final episode is next Monday at 9 pm.

It's engaging stuff, with eminent talking heads punctuating colourful location reports, but I've been struck by the singular lack of provenance for most of the events related. The story is fascinating, but it sounds like pure fantasy. For example, in the second episode we are told of the Prophet's so-called Night Journey, when he was apparently teleported to Jerusalem and then on up to heaven for a brief conflab with God. We know this happened because Muhammad said it happened. At night. When he was praying. When the Prophet returned from this extraordinary sojourn — to which there were no independent witnesses — he announced that God had told him that Muslims must pray five times a day.

Throughout his life Muhammad experienced a series of revelations from God — at least that's what the source says happened. And just who is the source of this "historical" information? (I'll give you one guess.) Some of these revelations were awfully convenient, to say the least. One of them, related in the second episode, was that Muslims should no longer pray towards Jerusalem, but towards Mecca. In discussing the significance of this change (regardless of whether or not it was a true revelation), much was made of how it marked Islam as being different and separate from previous religions, but nothing whatever was said about why the direction of prayers should matter. (Visions of some kind of inaccurately focussed prayer-beam spring to mind, with prayers dissipating ineffectually into space.) Presumably the direction of prayers is determined by which way the people praying are facing — except they aren't facing anything except the ground when their foreheads are touching it. It's all very confusing.

Rageh Omaar makes much use of the phrase "according to Muslim tradition" when talking about events that if they actually happened would be described as historical. I can't help concluding that this choice of words is probably an editorial decision to deflect possible accusations of making unsubstantiated factual claims.

The programme's website is here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012mkh7

Episode 1 & 2 are currently available on the iPlayer until 1 August 2011:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012mkg5/The_Life_of_Muhammad_The_Seeker/