The Phantom Time Hypothesis is the notion advanced by German crackpot Herbert Illig that the years between 614 and 911 AD never actually happened (meaning that this year is properly 1719, not 2016), with those years and all the events that supposedly took place in them and all the people living who supposedly lived during them are forgeries and fakes resulting from a conspiracy by Otto III, Pope Sylvester II, and Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII.
And for some reason, this theory seems to hold an inexplicable (to me) appeal to several pseudoscholars who have written polemical works against Islam that have received positive attention (and in the case of shorter works, publication) at a number of notable "antijihad" websites.
I first ran into this when a poster here cited Emmett Scott's Muhammad and Charlemagne Revisited, a book which resurrects Belgian historian Heni Pirenne's thesis, first published in 1937, postulating that Christian Europe (particularly regarding Mediterranean trade) did not decline after the Germanic invasions and the end of the Western Roman Empire, but was actually thriving...at least, until the Muslim conquest of the Levant and North Africa destroyed it all, truly plunging Europe into the "Dark Ages". Essays by Scott, including parts of what would become his book, were published at the far-right, nativist website New English Review (the book itself was published by New English Review Press), and a glowing review by none other than Breivik's hero Fjordman was featured on David Horowitz's FrontPage site.
It's fairly easy to see why Pirenne's thesis, despite being interesting but unconvincing to his fellow medieval scholars when it was released and only becoming less convincing over time as more research has been done in the intervening 80 years, would appeal to the anti-Islam crowd. After all, it represents at least a thin veneer of scholarly respectability for their convictions that Islam is nothing but bad and has worked tireless to destroy Western (and specifically Christian) civilization since the beginning.
However, little remarked upon is a section of Scott's book where he discusses and gives support to Illig's Phantom Time Hypothesis. He even later published a book promoting Illig's theory, A Guide to the Phantom Dark Age (this time published through a conspiracy-book-oriented vanity press). At the time, I just kind of rolled my eyes and sighed, thinking that he just happened to be an anti-Islam pseudoscholar who just so happened to ALSO be a crackpot.
Then, the other day while doing some research on the period during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (I've had a lot of time on my hands during my chemotherapy :blush:), I ran into essays penned by one John J. O'Neill (based on his book Holy Warriors - Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization) on the virulently Muslim-hating Gates of Vienna website. I confess I kind of did a double-take when I realized that O'Neill was not just also promoting Pirenne's thesis, but Illig's as well!
Now, either there's one guy writing essentially the same book under multiple pseudonyms, or there's more than one pseudoscholar making the rounds among anti-Muslim websites and publishing books about how both Pirenne's and Illig's ideas are correct. As I said, while I can understand the appeal of Pirenne's thesis among that crowd, the fact that there are at least two Pirenne-promoters who also just so happen to be disciples of Illig's deranged Phantom Time Hypothesis completely mystifies me. Not least because Illig's thesis utterly contradicts Pirenne's - as this professor put it,
This bizarre concatenation of opposing theories is like someone writing a book calling the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center an inside job while simultaneously asserting that New York City doesn't exist and never has.
So what gives? What is the apparent appeal of this self-contradictory chimaera among these anti-Islam pseudoscholars?
And for some reason, this theory seems to hold an inexplicable (to me) appeal to several pseudoscholars who have written polemical works against Islam that have received positive attention (and in the case of shorter works, publication) at a number of notable "antijihad" websites.
I first ran into this when a poster here cited Emmett Scott's Muhammad and Charlemagne Revisited, a book which resurrects Belgian historian Heni Pirenne's thesis, first published in 1937, postulating that Christian Europe (particularly regarding Mediterranean trade) did not decline after the Germanic invasions and the end of the Western Roman Empire, but was actually thriving...at least, until the Muslim conquest of the Levant and North Africa destroyed it all, truly plunging Europe into the "Dark Ages". Essays by Scott, including parts of what would become his book, were published at the far-right, nativist website New English Review (the book itself was published by New English Review Press), and a glowing review by none other than Breivik's hero Fjordman was featured on David Horowitz's FrontPage site.
It's fairly easy to see why Pirenne's thesis, despite being interesting but unconvincing to his fellow medieval scholars when it was released and only becoming less convincing over time as more research has been done in the intervening 80 years, would appeal to the anti-Islam crowd. After all, it represents at least a thin veneer of scholarly respectability for their convictions that Islam is nothing but bad and has worked tireless to destroy Western (and specifically Christian) civilization since the beginning.
However, little remarked upon is a section of Scott's book where he discusses and gives support to Illig's Phantom Time Hypothesis. He even later published a book promoting Illig's theory, A Guide to the Phantom Dark Age (this time published through a conspiracy-book-oriented vanity press). At the time, I just kind of rolled my eyes and sighed, thinking that he just happened to be an anti-Islam pseudoscholar who just so happened to ALSO be a crackpot.
Then, the other day while doing some research on the period during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (I've had a lot of time on my hands during my chemotherapy :blush:), I ran into essays penned by one John J. O'Neill (based on his book Holy Warriors - Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization) on the virulently Muslim-hating Gates of Vienna website. I confess I kind of did a double-take when I realized that O'Neill was not just also promoting Pirenne's thesis, but Illig's as well!
Now, either there's one guy writing essentially the same book under multiple pseudonyms, or there's more than one pseudoscholar making the rounds among anti-Muslim websites and publishing books about how both Pirenne's and Illig's ideas are correct. As I said, while I can understand the appeal of Pirenne's thesis among that crowd, the fact that there are at least two Pirenne-promoters who also just so happen to be disciples of Illig's deranged Phantom Time Hypothesis completely mystifies me. Not least because Illig's thesis utterly contradicts Pirenne's - as this professor put it,
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For example, Mohammed either died in 614, a decade before he began dictating the Koran and 18 years before the history books say, or he lived until 929 A.D. I think we'd have spotted that already. The Phantom Time Interval completely encompasses the explosive growth of Islam. So one day it's 614 and Mohammed is an obscure visionary trader in Arabia, the next it's 911, and somehow Mohammed's ideas have spread from the Atlantic to Central Asia. And Arabs have suddenly occupied Persia and Egypt, as well as Spain, and they've been in Spain for 200 years. They've also built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. |
So what gives? What is the apparent appeal of this self-contradictory chimaera among these anti-Islam pseudoscholars?
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1q0BvUs
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