The work draws from the revisionist scholarship of Patricia Crone (and further refinements produced by John Wansbrough, Fred Donner, Andrew Rippin, Christoph Luxenberg et al) in applying rigorous textual analysis to the Hadithic corpus.

At the end, he posed the questions: "And if much of the history of early Islam is fabricated, then how to explain the consensus that exists across a range of texts from bitterly opposed sectarian communities (Sunni, Shia, etc)?

Bowersock also said that Holland was ignorant of decades of research on pre-Islamic Arabia, and that he failed to account for the recent discoveries of late-antique South Arabian inscriptions as well as early Qur'an manuscripts.

[8] Ziauddin Sardar, writing for the New Statesman, said that the book seemed to be tailored to suit the rise in Islamophobic sentiments around the globe, and presented a grand narrative based on works of a "largely discredited group of orientalists", whose ample criticisms Holland seemed to be ignorant about.

"[5] Nebil Husayn, formerly of Princeton University, wrote a sharply critical review of the book in the Journal of Shi'a Islamic Studies, in which he described the work as an epitome of orientalist history which was set upon to prove the intellectual and cultural aridity of 7th c.