Islam versus Europe

The Guardian has a "live blog" following reaction to the first off-air preview screening of the BBC's Life of Muhammad. Presented by the BBC, commissioned by the Muslim Aaqil Ahmed, and presented by the Muslim Rageh Omaar, no one in their right mind would expect this to be an unvarnished account of the con man Muhammad's life. Interestingly, though, they do touch on the episode in which Muhammad actually admitted that he was a con man: the Satanic Verses episode. In this, Muhammad made up some verses intended to help him reach an accommodation with some other tribe; then he changed his mind and declared that the verses weren't really from Allah at all, admitting that he had just made them up!

No doubt the programme will try and spin this away. Among the list of talking heads, though, are some that I wouldn't have expected, Robert Spencer of Jihadwatch foremost among them. Spencer is the author of The Truth About Muhammad, which is a terrific book. I don't believe Spencer will be given a fair crack of the whip, though. They no doubt roped him in so they could say it was balanced but will only show brief clips of him saying relatively innocuous things.

It seems a key part of the program involves some strategic deceit about the defining element of the ideology of Islam: that it is the simple embodiment of the whims, prejudices, deceits, crimes, predations, neuroses and assorted psychopathologies of just one man, the con man Muhammad who, Hubbard-like, realised that making up a bogus religion and fooling people into believing in it was a good way to get money, chicks and power.

He makes the point - fairly emphatically - that Muslims believe there is a difference between the message and the messenger and that is why there is "no shrine, no plaque to mark the place of his birth". Muslims are "following the messenger not worshipping him".

It is not for nothing that in the old days Islam was referred to as Mohammedanism. It represents the veneration of one flawed human being to a degree unprecedented in history. Whereas Jews and Christians have, in the Ten Commandments, an objective code of conduct analogous to a system of law, for Muslims there is only the example of Mohammed. Because this sick con man is referred to as "the Perfect Man", despite the fact that, even according to the foundational documents of the Muslim faith, he robbed, raped, murdered in cold blood, kept slaves, including sex slaves, had sex with infant children, broke his solemn word, commissioned assassinations of those who criticised him and authorised others to use deception, the record of his personal words and actions defines Muslim morality.

Muhammad was guilty of almost every iniquity of which human beings are capable. His example no doubt helps explain why today Muslims dominate group-based child abuse in Britain. The perpetrators don't really feel they're doing anything wrong. After all, they're just following the example of the Perfect Man.

The first reaction is in from an anonymous "Muslim opinion-former". "It's very well done," he says. Oh dear.