Don't Know Much About History

Acclaimed historian Simon Shama presumes to explain the Koran to literary kafirs, even though he hasn't bothered to read it:

The Muslim adherence to the Koran and utter certainty in its tenets is depressing, according to Simon Schama,

“Have I read the Koran? Absolutely not. I have read bits, but it’s like saying you’ve read bits of Shakespeare and think you know it,” he told an audience at the Telegraph Hay Festival.

While the Koran is “sane and compassionate and merciful” in parts, strict adherence to it can be at odds with modern society, Schama argued.

He said: “I suppose like bits of the Old Testament it is really immoderate. Islam, as I understand it, means submission. And there is a kind of adamant, utter certainty about the Koran.

“In the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible which I know well, people are constantly arguing with God. The Quran isn’t really quite like that. It has a lyrical softness combined with a fierce sword-sharpened intemperance which you can’t help but register.

“In some sense the notion that anyone holds up a book based on revelation as an absolute law around which the entirety of civil society be constructed is still depressing.”

Schama made his remarks in a talk entitled An Historian’s Alphabet. He joked: “F is for fatwa. S is for security detail. This will be my last appearance at Hay.”...

D is for do your homework, Simon (for starters, by reading the "soft and fierce" revelation all the way through). Building a "civil society" based on the savage incivilities of sharia law isn't merely "depressing". It's moronic--both with and sans an "oxy."