More religious nonsense on PBS

Submitted by Mike McGlothlin (United States), Dec 29, 2002 at 18:44

I attempted to watch the PBS program on Muhammad, just as I had previously watched the program on the historical Jesus, but it was simply even more friendly to religious nonsense than that program had been. The problem is entirely encapsulated in the way that Karen Armstrong presents herself in explicating these subjects. Armstrong, and PBS following her lead, does not differentiate between things that actually happened, and their historical explanation, and presenting them the way that religious adherents like to imagine that they happened. For example, she would say something like "and then the Angel Gabriel told the Prophet blah, blah, blah." Now it is an empirical fact that there is no angel Gabriel and therefore no such "conversation" or "revelation" could take place. Some, such as Ibn Warraq, have argued that such an event is the result of some type of abherent psychological phenomenon, perhaps schezophrenia, but in no way was it nor should it have been presented as a "divine" interference in human history. This was the problem with the "Muhammad" program. Karen Armstrong should have her historian's license revoked.

I do not see that the program was necessarily created to convert individuals to Islam, but it certainly did have a political message intended by both the people who run PBS and the U.S. Government. That message was that Islam--and all other monotheistic religions--are acceptable, and that the current clash of civilizations is not that, but rather simply a battle between the "good" religionists and those who have "hijacked" Islam. Of course there are two problems with this: first, it is entirely debatable whether "Islam is peace" as the George W. Bush has repeated so many times, in which case the "clash of civilizations" thesis is not applicable, (which I think it most certainly is), and secondly, and even more importantly, PBS should not be in the practice of assisting the Government in promulgating any propaganda, even propaganda that they believe is important for swaying the minds of the American public. It goes without saying that the Government itself should not be doing this, but this is rather a very forlorn statement.

No doubt the next PBS program will be "Moses: Prophet of Aggression"

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