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Sorry David, but I’m not sure which of the factual claims made in the paragraph you quote you think are untrue. The Islamic conquests in the Middle East, North Africa and Persia, and the conquest of Spain in the 8th century, then the Ottoman advance through the Balkans and on to the gates of Vienna on two occasions (1529 and 1683), and the conquests in India leading to the founding of the Mughal empire?

Do you deny any of that? Maybe you can produce a reading list of ‘solid respectable historians’ who dispute any of the above. And as for your silly embellishments about an ‘amalgam of Dracula and a zombie’ and so on, that reflects far more about what goes in your head rather than mine.

In his 2013 book Islamic Imperialism: A History, Efraim Karsh, founding director and emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at Kings College, London (is that solid and respectable enough?) says of Islam:

‘…the birth of Islam was inextricably linked with the creation of a world empire and its universalism was inherently imperialist. It did not distinguish between temporal and religious powers, which were combined in the person of Muhammad, who derived his authority directly from Allah and acted at one and the same time as head of the state and head of the church. This allowed the prophet to cloak his political ambitions with a religious aura and to channel Islam’s energies into “its instrument of aggressive expansion, there being no internal organism of equal force to counterbalance it” … within a decade of Muhammad’s death a vast empire stretching from Iran to Egypt and from Yemen to northern Syria had come into being under the banner of Islam in one of the most remarkable examples of empire-building in world history… Islam has retained its imperialist ambition to this day’

Karsh opens his book by quoting Muhammad’s farewell address, delivered just before he died: ‘I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah’.

David says Tom Holland is not a serious historian. I have read some of his exchanges with his critics, and I think he acquitted himself quite well. But in any case does that legitimize the torrent of vicious abuse and death threats directed at him and his family? Do you have anything to say about that at all? Do you think that is OK, or not a big issue – after all, he is just a ‘popular historian’. The issue here is the right to freely and safely debate these issues, not whether Holland’s claims are correct.