informative if sympathetic introduction to the prophet and his context

books:


	• Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time Karen Armstrong HarperOne, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews
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A Much Needed Look at a Very Contemporary Man

Karen Armstrong's Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time directly addresses the central conflict of our times, "Some Muslim thinkers regard the jihad against Mecca as the climax of Muhammad's career and fail to note that he eventually abjured warfare and adopted a nonviolent policy. Western critics also persist in seeing the Prophet of Islam as a man of war, and fail to see that from the very first he was opposed to the jahili arrogance and egotism that not only fueled the aggression of his time but is much in evidence in some leaders, Western and Muslim alike, today."

Karen goes out of her way to present a balanced and fair perspective on the life of Muhammad. She does this by basing her biography on the Prophet's response to al-Jahiliyah: commonly translated as "an Islamic concept of 'ignorance of divine guidance.'" Karen examinees more than Jahiliyah's theological significance, going into its practical impact on the culture of the Arabian peninsula. The dominant jahili spirit of the time was arrogant, quick to take a offense, warlike and vengeful. Islam, as practiced and taught by the Prophet, Karen makes clear, was a rejection of all of these traits - usually to the great consternation of his followers:

"And the servants of Allah, Most Gracious are those who walk on the earth in humility, and when the ignorant (jahilun) address them, they say, `Peace!' " (Sura The Criterion 25:63 - translation from The Qur'an: Text, Translation & Commentary.)

The revelations that form the Qur'an came to Muhammad not always in dreams or trances, but were sometimes aggressive even terrifying experiences. Muhammad describes the nature of revelation as gently falling like rain" and, at other times, traumatically, where he feels his "soul ripped away."

After revelation, even the Prophet needed to take time to understand what had been revealed. Karen writes, "[Allah] instructed Muhammad to listen to intently to each revelation as it emerged; he must be careful not to impose a meaning on a verse prematurely, before it's full significance had become entirely clear."

"High above all is Allah, the King, the Truth! Be not in haste with the Qur'an before its revelation to thee is completed, but say, "O my Lord! advance me in knowledge." (Sura Ta-ha, 20:114)

Karen, like others, notes that the Qur'an itself has been structured as high-level Arabic poetry, a concept central to the impact of the Qur'an on its Arabic audiences. This is a point entirely missed by Western audiences. You can get some sense of it by listening to a good chanter reciting the verses, but it's a shallow appreciation at best. Karen describes how listening to "the rich, allusive language and rhythms of the Qur'an helped [the Muslims] to slow down their mental processes and enter a different mode of consciousness."

Karen portrays, through the biography, the Qur'an's shared vision of the "people of the book" - the Islamic concept of a shared heritage of monotheism between Muslim, Christian and Jew:

"Say: `We believe in Allah, and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Isma'il, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in (the Books) given to Moses, Jesus, and the prophets, from their Lord: We make no distinction between one and another among them, and to Allah do we bow our will [lahu muslimun].' " (Sura The Family Of 'Imran 3:84)

In addition to the creed that there's "no God but God" these three great religions believe in a similar destiny and consequently all deserve both tolerance and freedom to practice their faith:

"Those who believe (in the Qur'an), those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Sabians and the Christians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness,- on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve." (Sura The Table 5:69)

"To thee We sent the Scripture in truth, confirming the scripture that came before it, and guarding it in safety: so judge between them by what Allah hath revealed, and follow not their vain desires, diverging from the Truth that hath come to thee. To each among you have we prescribed a law and an open way. If Allah had so willed, He would have made you a single people, but (His plan is) to test you in what He hath given you: so strive as in a race in all virtues. The goal of you all is to Allah. It is He that will show you the truth of the matters in which ye dispute[.]" (Sura The Table, 5:48)

I have a couple of minor complaints. I wish that Karen had used the Qur'anic names for the characters that both the Holy Bible and the Holy Qur'an have in common. For example, Jibrl for Gabriel; Ibrahim for Abraham; Isa for Jesus; Musa for Moses, and so on. After all, Karen is telling the story of Muhammad and quotes extensively from the Qur'an. It just would have seemed more natural and less distracting to me.

Another problem is that the book is edited sloppily in a couple of places: for example on page 43 (of my paper bound edition) a footnote starts out explaining that "Arabs customarily take an honorary title known as the kunya [...] Muhammad was known as"

And the footnote ends right there. Whatever Muhammad was known as, was lost somewhere between Karen's word-processor and the printing press.

Karen's biography of Muhammad reveals a very human prophet; a man who struggled with his faith, culture, peers and enemies. She strikes a balance between the "easy" teachings of Islam (tolerance, generosity, etc.) and the "hard" teachings, contrasting "jihad" to Augustine's "just war" is a comparison most Christian minds would prefer to avoid.

Karen ends the book with some good advice, "If we are to avoid catastrophe, the Muslim and Western worlds must learn not merely to tolerate but to appreciate one another. A good place to start is with the figure of Muhammad [...]"

All in all, this was an interesting read, only occasionally "preachy" and a good introduction for those who may want to pursue deeper studies in Islam or the Islamic culture that has so dramatically shaped the Middle East. I wish I'd read it before tackling In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad. It would have made that book a lot clearer.

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May be a helpful introduction but be prepared to study more

It would be too much to expect that the founder of any of the world's major religions could be understood from one book, even at the introductory level (not counting sacred scripture, direct exposure to which may be essential). Consider Christianity, consider Buddhism. In the U.S., especialy after 9/11, it may be especially difficult to understand the life of Muhammad. Even before 9/11, even from the early times of Islam, Christian sources were critical of Islam and Muhammad. It is difficult to get a balanced read from any single source: if such a source exists, how to know which it is?

I had read the Qu'ran years ago but recently have read criticisms of Muhammad from conservative Christians. I had been impressed from my own reading of the Qu'ran and by my Muslim friends so was more than skeptical of the criticisms I read of both Islam and Muhammad. Not expecting to get to an answer easily but not wanting to spend too much time to get some perspective, I opted for this portrait which, by intent, set out to present Muhammad in a "balanced way". I had not read Karen Armstrong before. I knew she did not have a scholarly background in Islam ( excepting self-made), but that she seemed respected in the area of comparative religions, although not without critics. So I chose this book expecting it to have introductory value and to offset or put into perspective some criticisms of Muhammad I had heard from conservative Christians.

This is an exceptionally well-written book and it does not seem to dodge some of those aspects of Muhammad's life that others were critical of. It does, as Armstrong intended, appear to attest well to his contributions. I expect it will serve me well as I learn more about Muhammad and the formative history of Islam, which I mean to do.

Armstrong does bring alive the conditions under which Muhammad responded to challenges and made key decisions. The success of early Islam was far from a "done deal". On the other hand, it by no means seems that Islam was nearing any final form when Muhammad died [of course, think how far from any final form that was of Christianity or Buddhism when Jesus and the Buddha died].

Any impressions of Muhammad I have at this point are tentative but having read this book I feel better equipped to consider the impact of Muhammad on how women were treated in Islam, of the expectations on Muslims to care for one another, of how Muslims should treat others (Armstrong emphasizes the pluralism of early Islam), of how the fight for survival was mingled in to the efforts to reveal the sacred. Armstrong presents a complex and dynamic Muhammad, who changed and developed, leading his people while at the same time experience the revelations of the Qu'ran]. There is a lot to take in here and, for me, re-reading the Qu'ran seems on inevitable step.

It does seem most remarkable, as Armstrong makes quite clear, that Muhammad so strongly discouraged that he himself be regarded as divine. Armstrong writes, echoing Abu Bakr, who was close to Muhammad about a warning from Muhammad: "He was a mere mortal, no different from anybody else." Armstrong quotes Abu Bakr: "O people, if anyone worships Muhammad, Muhammad is dead. If anyone worships God, God is alive, immortal." [ Ibn Ishaaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, 1012 in Guillaume, Life of Muhammad]. How different Christianity would have been with such an understanding: the nearest Christian teaching have been as that of Arius and rejected by 4th century Christian orthodoxy.

There is plenty of information about historical events, revelations from the Qu'ran as they occurred, historical context that helped give me at the least a side of the picture of Muhammad's life. Is Armstrong's depiction too sympathetic? I can't decide yet. It will undoubtedly take time. There seems to be a struggle to control how we view Muhammad and early Islam: it would be surprising if I were otherwise but makes it difficult to expose biases and factor them out to the extent they can be.

As for the current situation, I plan to read Carl Ernst's Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks) soon. I recently read Alaa Al Aswany's Chicago: A Novel, an outstanding novel about Egyptian Muslims adjusting to life in the post 9/11 U.S. It provided me at least some sense of how Muhammad and Islam guide the day to day life of U.S. Muslims, fictional characters but perhaps seeming all too real.

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informative if sympathetic introduction to the prophet and his context

Karen Armstrong, noted religious historian, writes here her second biography of the prophet Muhammad, this time with the explicit intention of combating the rampant Islamophobia of the West.

I knew almost nothing of the prophet before reading this book, and so Armstrong's is a welcome (if not scintillating - she can be a bit dry) introduction. I appreciated the historical and cultural context she placed him in, the stories from his life, and her non-condescension towards the spiritual. That said, her bias seems clear by the end: This is a favorable portrayal. Muhammad eschews luxury ("not simply a waste of money, but ingratitude, a thankless squandering of Allah's precious bounty"), he champions religious tolerance, non-violence, and women's rights (the veil was only for his wives, to protect them from his enemies). Armstrong seeks to put his repeated marrying and his sometimes brutal actions (beheading several hundred Jews, for example) into an - again, sympathetic - cultural context. Of course, with books like The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion on the market, a sympathetic portrayal from a learned outsider is perhaps welcome. Yet I would have appreciated a more balanced-feeling book. And Armstrong gives no clues to the gap between the Muhammad she portrays and the perceptions of Islam by the West today (oppression of women, religious intolerance and violence among certain subpopulations). That said, as Laurie Goodstein writes, this may be a good way "to glimpse how the vast majority of the world's Muslims understand their prophet and their faith" [1].

With those caveats: I would recommend this to a novice desiring to learn of the prophet; but of course, since I haven't read any others, perhaps I'm not the one to ask. (Once I tried Introducing Muhammad but drifted on to other books.)

I located three professional reviews easily available on-line. One is positive: "Ms. Armstrong argues that he [Muhammad] prevailed by compassion, wisdom and steadfast submission to God. This is the power of his story and the reason that more parents around the world name their children Muhammad than any other name" [1]. The other two are negative, one on content (the book "is a thinly veiled hagiography" [2]) and the other on style ("Readers will find her style stilted" [3]).

[1] Laurie Goodstein, "Seeing Muhammad as Both a Prophet and a Politician," New York Times, 20 Dec 2006. [Also published in the International Herald Tribune.]
[2] Efraim Karsh, "The Perfect Surrender," The New York Sun, 25 Sep 2006.
[3] Ilan Stavans, "The path of the prophet," Boston Globe, 29 Oct 2006.

* I listened to the unabridged audiobook, narrated by the author. It was only six discs but took me a while, as this isn't exactly a page-turner (or track-turner, if you will).

** One aspect I found particularly interesting was that some stories paralleled stories from my own faith tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For example, when one antagonist went to attach Muhammad and was instead converted, followed by another; this is evocative of a story about early Mormon apostle Wilford Woodruff. And when an army of Muslims is slaughtered but their bravery leads to the conversion of many of the attackers, the story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis in the Book of Mormon comes to mind.

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Good book, next read The Great Theft by Abou el Fadl

"Islamic Sex Laws Are Easy to Break, Impossible to Enforce"
Los Angeles Daily Journal

August 5, 1999

By Khaled Abou El Fadl

Laws endeavor to resolve conflicts and regulate human behavior. However, often the real force of law is in making moral points, educating and indoctrinating. Some legal systems moralize explicitly, while other legal systems indulge in the fiction of moral neutrality. But all legal systems say something about the morality of right and wrong.

For example, in Islamic law, one of the world's oldest and perhaps most significant legal systems, sometimes morality is the only point - which is hardly surprising considering that Islamic law is also a religious system. But what is fascinating about Islamic law is the way it balances competing moralities at the expense of the possibility of enforcement.

For instance, Islamic law is reputed to be a rather strict, puritan legal system. This is both true and false. Consider the way Islamic law punishes illicit sexual relations. The punishment for fornication or adultery in Islam is rather harsh. A fornicator is flogged 100 lashes, and an adulterer is stoned to death. However, adultery or fornication can only be proven in two ways.

First, it can be proven by a free, uncoerced confession that is repeated three times on three separate occasions. If the alleged perpetrator confesses twice but recants on the third time, he or she cannot be punished.

The second way fornication or adultery can be proven is by the testimony of four adult males who witness the actual act of penetration. It is not sufficient for the witnesses to catch the couple naked in bed. Likewise, if the witnesses see an act of oral copulation, that is not sufficient. A videotape or pregnancy is also inadequate to prove fornication or adultery. Furthermore, the evidence is excluded if the witnesses violate the defendant's privacy. In other words, spying will not do.

A false accusation of adultery or fornication will result in punishment for sexual slander, which is 60 hard lashes. For example, if three witnesses say they saw the act of penetration while the fourth witness changes his mind at the last minute saying, "I am not sure I saw the penetration," then the first three witnesses are punished for slander.

Obviously, in Islamic law the crime of fornication or adultery is hard, if not impossible, to prove. So why have the punishment at all? There are two competing values here.

Illicit sexual relations must be condemned. At the same time, people should mind their own business, and spying or slandering cannot be tolerated. The solution was to make the moral point that fornication and adultery are terrible crimes, and only if they could be proven would they be punished severely. Nevertheless, the issue is generally between a person and God. Societal interests are implicated when these crimes are committed openly and publicly.

At the same time, an accusatory culture in which people spy and slander is reprehensible, and that will be punished as well. Unlike our legal system, making the moral point is a sufficient justification for the law, even with practically no chance of enforcement.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

The Man Who Inspired the World's Fastest-Growing Religion

Muhammad presents a fascinating portrait of the founder of a religion that continues to change the course of world history. Muhammad's story is more relevant than ever because it offers crucial insight into the true origins of an increasingly radicalized Islam. Countering those who dismiss Islam as fanatical and violent, Armstrong offers a clear, accessible, and balanced portrait of the central figure of one of the world's great religions.