Martin Bright - Career

Career

In 2001, Bright wrote "The Great Koran Con Trick", an article in the New Statesman about the work of the Islamicist scholars John Wansbrough, Michael Cook, Patricia Crone, Andrew Rippin and Gerald Hawting, associated in the 1970s with the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He reported the work of the scholars as "revisionist history" of Islam. They have developed new techniques of analysis, in some cases adopting methods from earlier biblical studies and using a wider range of sources, including non-Muslim, non-Arabic texts. Their conclusions have included:

• little is known about the life of the Muslim prophet Mohammad;
• rapid expansion of the religion could be due to its appeal "of conquest and jihad for the tribes of the Arabian peninsula;"
• the Koran as known was likely compiled, or written long after Mohammad's death in 632AD. (This is similar to what is known of the Gospels of the New Testament.)
• Arabs and Jews were allied against Christianity in the earliest days of Islam; and
• some scholars have suggested that Islam, like Christianity, may be considered a "heretical branch of rabbinical Judaism."

Bright’s arguments were ridiculed and debunked by the very scholars – including his own former SOAS tutor, Professor Gerald Hawting - whose work he drew upon to support his crude cover story.

New archeological finds, such as scraps of manuscript at the Great Mosque of Sana'a in Yemen, have supported suggestions of the development of the Koran over time. Some of the scholars reportedly disagreed with Bright's characterization of their work. The article was considered controversial among traditionalist Muslims. The Muslim intellectual Ziauddin Sardar argued the SOAS scholars approached the material from a Eurocentric point of view.

In a documentary, Who Speaks for Muslims? (2002), and When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries: The British State's flirtation with radical Islamism (2006), a report for the Policy Exchange, Bright has examined issues of the contemporary Muslim community in the United Kingdom and the government's relationship with its constituencies. This has been a focus of his journalism.

Bright left the New Statesman in January 2009, and began writing a blog, "The Bright Stuff – Dispatches from Enemy Territory," for The Spectator.

In January 2009, Bright formed New Deal of the Mind, a coalition of artists, entrepreneurs, academics and opinion formers working to boost employment in Britain's creative sector during the recession. The organisation was launched formally at Number 11 Downing Street on 24 March 2009. The launch seminar was attended by more than 60 of Britain's leading creative industry figures, as well as several ministers and politicians from across the political spectrum. Lord Puttnam called the event "a remarkable moment in history".

The New Deal of the Mind coalition has since founded a charitable company, now based at the Southbank Centre in London. New Deal of the Mind continues to work closely with government, all political parties, and leading cultural institutions to find ways of boosting employment in the creative sector.

In September 2009, Bright joined the Jewish Chronicle as political editor.