Typical methods like taking unrelated facts about the author of the book a couple of quotes are from and pretending it makes a difference to what he says is cheap polemics.
It was an accurate explanation of why Thomas Carlyle is not a highly regarded scholar in the field of academic Islamic studies. A scholar of 'truth' should be interested in such issues.
Based on a quick search, his 'research' is never cited as a source in any of the 600+ books/articles I have on my computer. By happy coincidence, I did find this though in one of the books:
Carlyle, deeply influenced by the German writer Goethe, linked ideas of genius with notions of
greatness. Muhammad’s unspoiled natural genius allows him to do things that will affect the world.
Carlyle emphasized the primitive, the lack of artifice and artificiality, in his thinking about
Muhammad’s relation to environment as well as to his inner self. Muslims were not his target
audience, though he became “the favorite author of all Islamic modernists in India.”22 Muslim authors
appropriated his praise for apologetic purposes, a trend that only increased after the 1911 translation
of his lecture into Arabic... Conventional wisdom deems his lecture, which includes its share of negative remarks, “a vehement and unusual rehabilitation of Muhammad.”24... [it should also be noted that] Carlyle was less interested in Muhammad himself than in what the Prophet allowed Carlyle to say about humanity as a whole... Carlyle synthesized the Romantic genius and the great man. (Kecia Ali - The Lives of Muhammad)
He is also mentioned in
Writing the Biography of the Prophet Muhammad: Problems and Solutions - Robert Hoyland (tl;dr: he reflected the post Enlightenment phase of scholarship that went past religious polemics, but swallowed Islamic narratives whole without a shred of critical thought and reflects an outdated perspective).
Other than that he only appears briefly in the Encyclopedia of the Quran making negative comments about said text.
Apart from him saying what you want him to say, why do you consider him a scholar of great repute?
Other than that you just ranted about stuff unrelated to my comments or just plain not accurate. It is easy to claim what popular opinion thinks is history (but isn't really) and you may convince someone, but I don't know what your point even is so I doubt it.
It's not popular opinion. Popular opinion tends to reflect the traditional Islamic narrative pretty closely. My point was that the conquests were less Islamic than is claimed, and played put in a similar way to other conquests of late antiquity.
It's also not a rant because I'll happily talk about this topic all day. Make a thread if you want to demonstrate the peaceful nature of the Arab conquests and I'll look up some sources for you. Don't assume that everyone who disagree with your 'peaceful conquests' narrative is dishonest and 'anti-Islam'.
If you want to read some of the oldest sources that mention Islam and the conquests you can start here though:
Seeing Islam as others saw it
A sample:
It tells us that in the year 945 of the Greeks (AD 634), “on Friday 4 February, at the ninth hour” a Byzantine force engaged “the Arabs of Muhammad” in Palestine, twelve miles east of Gaza. Nothing is said about the course of the confrontation, but it is simply noted that “the Byzantines fled, leaving behind their patrician,” whom the Arabs killed, and that “some 4000 poor villagers of Palestine were killed there, Christians, Jews and Samaritans, and the Arabs ravaged the whole region.” This would appear to correspond to an equally brief notice in Muslim sources about a battle in the spring of 634 at Dathin, described as one of the villages of Gaza, in which a general was killed.
from Hoyland, Robert G.. In Gods Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (Ancient Warfare and Civilization) (pp. 42-43). Oxford University Press.
