Reddit reviews Muhammad: Man and Prophet

Edit 2: Please read this right now. I pulled the relevant appendix from the epub doc and made it into a PDF for everyone. I don't usually steal people's writing but this is IMPORTANT and I don't think the scholar in question would mind this use.


Aisha was NOT six (or seven or eight or nine). Many, many scholars are now conceding that the historical evidence supports her being much older. She was probably in her late teens/early 20's. But DEFINITELY of a marriageable age by all standards, up until quite recently when we started extending our adolescence into our 20's, as life got easier. (I think we can all agree that being a teenager then was incredibly different from being a teenager now. Nobody should be marrying a teen these days. Ugh.) That aside:

A while back we tried forming a book club here in r/hijabis and one of the books we read was Muhammad: Man and Prophet by Adil Salahi. I don't know how many of us finished it, but I did. The book is reputable, scholarly, lots and lots of footnotes, sometime a little dense and hard to get through. Sometimes it leans on preaching the perfection of Islam rather than sticking to the biographical details. A bit conservative overall. Nothing Islamically that anyone could find any fault with, no matter how strict the Muslim.

With all the footnotes and proselytizing etc: there is only ONE appendix. What's in the appendix? (Edit: I misremembered the tone a bit. It's not apologetic.) It is a quite firm defense of the argument that Aisha was older, a denunciation of the idea that Aisha was six and a condemnation of anybody who still believes it. IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO BE THE ONLY APPENDIX.

This is not some sketchy website, this is a reputable, mainstream, impeccable publication we're talking about and a respected scholar speaking up to correct the record. How ANYONE can still believe otherwise boggles the mind. Either they just don't know, or they WANT her to be six because they're disgusting pedophiles.

PS, as others have said, you should leave your husband, he has no right to treat you that way.

You may not like my answer, but in the end it's up to you how you feel about this issue. First let me say that wikiislam is a propaganda islamophobic website. If I were to want information on Christianity, I would ask a Priest or a scholar of Christianity. So please don't read what you find on propaganda websites, some things are outright fabrications, others are taken out of context, others are misattributed etc. etc. So please don't read from those websites, but read from Muslim sources. If you are really sincere in what you say, you can do various things.

Read ''In the Footsteps of the Prophet'' by Dr. Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University. He's a Muslim. He's well versed. He writes amazingly.

Read ''Muhammad: Man and Prophet'' by Adil Salahi. Book is somewhat expensive, but just read the top review by 'Mary' and I think that will tell you everything you need to know, haha. A biography on the life of the Prophet SAW! What more would you want!

You can always read the Qur'an - but that can be taken out of context. Muhammad Asad has a great translation of the Qur'an containing many footnotes describing the context of many verses. After all, in a book that was revealed over 23 years every verse has a context of its own.

The issue with all the above is that they cost money.

So in that case here is Dr. Yasir Qadhi's ongoing series about the life of the Prophet Muhammad SAW discussing many many things going on around his life from beginning to end. There are 98 videos and each has 1 hour.. And it's still going, so this can be really time consuming.

In the end I want to say: If you don't have the time to watch the series, or the money to buy and read the books (which are all sourced from Muslim scholars and even then the muslim scholars cite muslim scholars, the companions of the Prophet, and even the Prophet SAW himself) - then please hold your judgement on Muslims and do not let yourself be distracted by anti Islamic sources. To learn about vaccines, we learn from Doctors, not from anti-Vaccination supporters!

I personally prefer:

Translation: http://www.amazon.com/The-Quran-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199535957

Book on Prophet (pbuh) life: http://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Man-Prophet-Adil-Salahi/dp/0860373223/

Insha'Allah, the above two should suffice.

I read this one by Adil Salahi

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0860373223/ref=mp_s_a_1_14?qid=1452040266&sr=8-14&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=muhammad+prophet

https://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Man-Prophet-Adil-Salahi/dp/0860373223

There are a lot of decent books recommended below, but this one I feel is very under the radar to a lot of people. If you want a book that reads more easily, and less like a encyclopedia, this is the one. Warning, it is a long one, and may take you a couple of weeks, but it reads like a novel and provides context to all parts of his life.