Reddit reviews Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources
We found 7 Reddit comments about Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
Firstly, a caveat. I am not, nor have I ever been, a Muslim. I have, however, studied Islam at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
That being said, let me point out just a few huge blunders in this article:
>Mohammed was in Mecca preaching to any who would listen that he alone was the Divine Prophet of the One God, Allah
False. Mohammad claimed to be one in a line of many prophets. Islam also accepts Jesus, Moses, Adam, Noah and other as prophets.
>traveled to the Jewish city of Medina
Medina wasn't called Medina then. It was known as Yathrib. There were Jews living there, from the Jewish tribes of the Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayza and Banu Qaynuqah. But Arabs lived there as well. The name Medina is a contraction of the Arabic Medinat-ul-Nabi ( مدينة النبي ), meaning 'City of the Prophet'. It acquired this name only after Muhammad migrated there.
The author writes that, "Mohammed sneaked out of Mecca..." but also "Mohammed was consumed with rage over his being booted out of Mecca". Which is it? Did he sneak out or was he booted out? A serious contradiction.
>Even the Jews of Medina, who had shown him such kindness, were eventually driven from their homes while Mohammed's Muslim band pillaged the city
The three Jewish tribes I mentioned above were eventually driven out. This is usually based on betrayals of the conditions laid out in the Constitution of Medina, to which those tribes had agreed.
>In 630 A.D. Mohammed marched triumphantly into Mecca with 40,000 followers. His revenge was complete, but the horrors of Islam had only begun.
Inane. There were skirmishes between the Meccans and the Ummah (Muslim community) that culminated in the Battle of Badr, fought on March 13, 624 AD, when the Meccans attacked Medina. The Muslims won. A year later, in 625 AD, the Meccans attacked the Ummah in the Battle of Uhud, which the Muslims lost. In 627 AD the Meccans, allied with some of the Jewish tribes mentioned above, again attacked the Ummah in The Battle of the Trench. Ultimately the Muslims won the day and Mecca surrendered. To say all of this was 'revenge' for being driven out is simplistic, ignores the context of the event and shows no real understanding of the events leading up to the conquest of Mecca.
>In all, Mohammed had eleven wives, nine of them simultaneously, with the youngest being only ten years old. Eye-witness accounts claim that Aisha brought her toys with her when she was delivered to the Prophet of Allah.
Again, overly simplistic. Blood and family ties were--and are--central to Arab culture. We are familiar with marriage alliances in Europe, and in Arabia it was the same. Many of Muhammad's marriages were undertaken to cement alliances between tribes. Simply put, through this and other maneuvers, Muhammad united the Arabian peninsula in peace for the first time in its history. Yes, he married Aisha when she was young, but there is no real evidence to support sexual activity between them until she had reached the culturally-appropriate age for such according to Arab culture (this remains hotly debated...a debate beyond the scope of this post).
>Mohammed regarded women as nothing more than sexual toys and servants
Patently false. The Qur'an gives women rights they did not have before Islam. These included the right to initiate divorce; to inherit property; and to have their say in the governance of the Ummah. Additionally, the Qur'an forbade female infanticide, which was a common occurrence before Muhammad's prophetic career.
This entire article is full of invective, a lack of historical knowledge, and blatant fabrications designed to support an anti-Islamic agenda. It is fear and hate-mongering of the worst sort. It smacks of the kind of Bush-era paranoia and Islamophobia that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
You can find out more by following the links above. Also, the following books might be of interest:
Muhammad: his Life Based on the Earliest Sources by Martin Lings
A History of Islamic Societies by Ira Lapidus
A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani
Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong.
Hope this helps.
i recommend you read this book, wordy but pretty clear
http://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Life-Based-Earliest-Sources/dp/0892811706
Where to start? Why don't you read a good book by a non-Muslim historian, such as Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources by Martin Lings.
Since you're likely a lazy redditor, go read the Charter of Medina that Muhammad drew up that was its constitution. Or go watch the Hollywood movie The Message, which is old enough that the whole movie is on YouTube. He was actually a decent guy himself, like Jesus, who had his name smeared by people thousands of years later who did awful things in his name.
Some suggestions:
this book
I'm having trouble finding online sources. Maybe check the citations on Wikipedia.
If you don't want to read the Qur'an and you want to a book that is easy to read and understand. I would recommend Muhummad: His Life Based On the Earliest Sources by Martin Lings.
It's a well written biography of the prophet Muhammad. Besides the Arabic names I think it's a very easy and quick read. It gives context and is quite thorough.
> You're smart enough to know the distinction between atheism and antitheism.
In terms of beliefs they are one and the same to me. Antitheism as I've understood it refers to atheists who deliberately push an anti-theistic agenda in the political and social domain.
If you're talking about Agnosticism, that's something else. Theologians have had varying ideas about what happens to those.
> Most people are more forgiving. It baffles me how Allah can be so angered at his creation for refusing to accept the word of one man over the billions that have preceded and succeeded him. Clearly He has the power to communicate directly with humans, so why doesn't He do it? Why does He insist on communicating through illiterate human proxies, being angered when large groups believe one set of proxies instead of another (e.g. Hindusim)?
I've made an attempt to paraphrase the basics of Islamic theology in some posts before, here's a copy/paste of those attempts:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23878519/theol.rtf (Open in WordPad)
> Because as we're all aware, people back then were beyond historical revisionism. It's not like he's been lionized or anything. We even have [1] pristine copies of the first biographies, written by those closest to him. These offer a lot of highly [2] accurate information about him, right?
Your knowledge of Islam is lacking. If you had read those links fully, you'd understand better.
There are three sources of knowledge on the life of the prophet.
The Qur'an isn't specific, but does contain some valuable insight.
The Seerah is historical (like a biography) but is unauthenticated.
The Hadith are painstakingly verified narrations of the Prophet's words and deeds. These make up the bulk of what we know of him and how. It's not organized into a story form at all. It's organized by legal subject and spread across collections.
Modern day biographies (a decent one in English is by Martin Lings) combine all three.
> A (literate?) merchant/shepherd deserts his wife to spend 15 years as a recluse, meditating and whatnot in some nearby cave. Upon finally coming back to civilization, he starts spouting some rubbish about [3] hearing voices in his head. Apparently he's been talking to an imaginary angel for the better part of his self-imposed exile.
He was illiterate and he never abandoned his wife for 15 years. I've never heard that before.
http://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Life-Based-Earliest-Sources/dp/0892811706
If you're going to attempt to criticize Islam, it's a good idea to have a rudimentary understanding of it. I'd strongly recommend picking this book up because it unites the three sources. Other biographies utilize only one source.
> If this scenario were to play out today, he would be hauled away to a mental institution, and for good reason. But apparently he was sane back then, huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100
Alphonse Lamartine on the Prophet (saw):
> Never has a man set for himself, voluntarily or involuntarily, a more sublime aim, since this aim was superhuman: to subvert superstitions which had been interposed between man and his creator, to render God unto man and man unto God; to restore the rational and sacred idea of divinity amidst the chaos of the material and disfigured gods of idolatry, then existing. Never has a man undertaken a work so far beyond human power with so feeble means, for he (Muhammad) had in the conception as well as in the execution of such a great design no other instrument than himself, and no other aid, except a handful of men living in a corner of the desert. Finally, never has a man accomplished such a huge and lasting revolution in the world, because in less than two centuries after its appearance, Islam, in faith and in arms, reigned over the whole of Arabia, and conquered, in God's name, Persia, Khorasan, Transoxania, Western India, Syria, Egypt, Abyssinia, all the known continent of Northern Africa, numerous islands of the Mediterranean, Spain, and a part of Gaul.
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> If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astounding results are the true criteria of human genius, who could dare to compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples and dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls.
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> On the basis of a Book, every letter of which has become law, he created a spiritual nationality which blended together peoples of every tongue and of every race. He has left us as the indelible characteristic of this Muslim nationality the hatred of false gods and the passion for the One and Immaterial God. This avenging patriotism against the profanation of Heaven formed the virtue of the followers of Muhammad; the conquest of one-third of the earth to his dogma was his miracle; or rather it was not the miracle of a man but that of reason.
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> The idea of the Unity of God, proclaimed amidst the exhaustion of fabulous theogonies, was in itself such a miracle that upon its utterance from his lips it destroyed all the ancient temples of idols and set on fire one-third of the world. His life, his meditations, his heroic revilings against the superstitions of his country, and his boldness in defying the furies of idolatry, his firmness in enduring them for fifteen years at Mecca, his acceptance of the role of public scorn and almost of being a victim of his fellow countrymen: all these and, finally, his flight, his incessant preaching, his wars against odds, his faith in his success and his superhuman security in misfortune, his forbearance in victory, his ambition, which was entirely devoted to one idea and in no manner striving for an empire; his endless prayers, his mystic conversations with God, his death and his triumph after death: all these attest not to an imposture but to affirm conviction which gave him the power to restore a dogma. This dogma was twofold, the unity of God and the immateriality of God: the former telling what God is, the latter telling what God is not; the one overthrowing false gods with the sword, the other starting an idea with the words.
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> Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images; the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire, that is Muhammad. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he? -- Paris 1854, Vol. II, pp. 276- 277