"Remember that the gates of Paradise lie in the shadow of the sword"
> Saying of Muhammad, as recorded by Salih Muslim
Today seemed as good a day as any to tuck into Tom Holland's self-consciously 'swashbuckling' and revisionist examination of early-stage Islam, set within the context of late-stage Roman and Persian power at the rear-end of what we Europeans call 'antiquity'...depending where you were at the time.
A Guardian reviewer called this book 'cavalier', 'unreliable' and 'most irresponsible', and particularly lambasted Holland for a failure to follow French scholarship, all of which right now sounds like a firm recommendation.
It has been flagged up lately as exactly the kind of serious, generally non-polemical historical work by a leading British author which might soon fall foul of the UK Labour government's approach to 'free speech' and Islamophobia.
If it's content that supports "the religion of peace" message (or indeed, the colonial victimhood narrative) that one is seeking, I'm supposing that this may not be the best title with which to start.
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