Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time – by Karen Armstrong
Book Review
Title: Muhammad – A Prophet for Our Time
By: Karen Armstrong
249 pages. $21.95. HarperCollins/Atlas Books.
Reviewed by Laurie Goodstein – in The New York Times (International Herald Tribune)
The religion with the most adherents on the planet is Christianity, and few people would say they are unfamiliar with the story of its founder and prophet, Jesus. The second largest faith is Islam, and yet there is boundless ignorance among non- Muslims about the story of its founder and prophet, Muhammad, even after Sept. 11 caused unease about whether Islam fuels terrorism.
Since then Muhammad has been defined by his detractors, who have called him a terrorist, a lunatic and most colorfully — by the Reverend Jerry Vines, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention — a “demon-possessed pedophile.”
Several new biographies picture Muhammad through the lens of a suicide bomber, and ultimately these books reveal more about suicide bombers than Muhammad.
To glimpse how the vast majority of the world’s Muslims understand their prophet and their faith, Karen Armstrong’s short biography is a good place to start. The volume is part of a series called “Eminent Lives”: small profiles of big-name subjects by big-name authors.
Armstrong, best known for “A History of God,” is a scholar and a former nun with a genius for presenting religions as products of temporal forces — like geography, culture and economics — without minimizing the workings of transcendent spiritual forces.
She profiles Muhammad as both a mystic touched by God on a mountaintop and a canny political and social reformer. He preached loyalty to God rather than tribe; reconciliation rather than retaliation; care for orphans and the poor; and in many ways, empowerment of women, which will be a surprise to some. The Koran gave women property rights and freed orphans from the obligation to marry their guardians: radical changes at a time when women were traded like camels.
In a nod to her subtitle, “A Prophet for Our Time,” she argues that as of Sept. 11, 2001, we have entered a new historical era that requires an equally thorough re-evaluation.
This notion that we have entered a new era was one of the reasons that Armstrong decided to revisit a subject she had already covered in 1992 with “Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet.”
Muhammad (570-632) was born in a nouveau riche Mecca. Unlike most Arabs, the Meccans were not nomads but traders and financiers who profited from the caravans that stopped in Mecca for water from its underground spring. The site was holy to the Bedouin because it housed the Kabah, a cube- shaped granite building that was tended by Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh.
At 25, Muhammad married Khadija, a widow who hired him to manage her caravans. At 40, he declared he had been seized by a terrifying force and commanded by God to recite scripture. Khadija was his first convert. At first he shared his revelations with a small group of friends and family members, who became his disciples, “convinced that he was the long-awaited Arab prophet.” As Muhammad, who was illiterate, recited new passages, believers wrote them down: a compilation that became the Koran.
The Meccans were offended by Muhammad’s preaching that the ideal was submission. (“Islam” means submission.) He taught that the proper way to pray was to bow, forehead to the earth, “a posture that would be repugnant to the haughty Quraysh,” Armstrong notes.
Muhammad and his followers were exiled to Medina, 250 miles, or 400 kilometers, north of Mecca. He did not conquer Medina so much as form alliances and win converts. But there were epic battles with the Quraysh and other tribes, and Muhammad was a fighter and tactician. “Muhammad was not a pacifist,” Armstrong writes. “He believed that warfare was sometimes inevitable and even necessary.”
This is why some passages in the Koran are rules for warfare.
Terrorist groups cite these selectively — or contort or violate them.
Armstrong declines to stand in judgment of events that have scandalized other biographers; as when Muhammad falls for the wife of his adopted adult son and takes her as his fifth wife.
Muhammad ultimately took back Mecca and reclaimed the Kabah. Armstrong argues that he prevailed by compassion, wisdom and steadfast submission to God. This is the power of his story and the reason more parents around the world name their children Muhammad than any other name.
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With a few notable exceptions, like the few days when the market reopened after September 11th — Empirica has done nothing but lose money since last April. “We cannot blow up, we can only bleed to death,” Taleb says, and bleeding to death, absorbing the pain of steady losses, is precisely what human beings are hardwired to avoid. “Say you’ve got a guy who is long on Russian bonds,” Savery says. “He’s making money every day. One day, lightning strikes and he loses five times what he made. Still, on three hundred and sixty-four out of three hundred and sixty-five days he was very happily making money. It’s much harder to be the other guy, the guy losing money three hundred and sixty-four days out of three hundred and sixty-five, because you start questioning yourself. Am I ever going to make it back? Am I really right? What if it takes ten years? Will I even be sane ten years from now?” What the normal trader gets from his daily winnings is feedback, the pleasing illusion of progress. At Empirica, there is no feedback. “It’s like you’re playing the piano for ten years and you still can’t play chopsticks,” Spitznagel say, “and the only thing you have to keep you going is the belief that one day you’ll wake up and play like Rachmaninoff.”
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Recreating a historical figure, however, requires a re-imagining of the person one in which the received notions of what they were like have been stripped away. According to Mantel, the author must envision the character without the benefit of hindsight or the judgments of the historical record.
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“Texans are tough, and a crisp day won’t prevent us from marking this important time in history,” said Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, who is speaking at the ceremony.
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In the first Chamber Prom of 2014, Les Arts Florissants perform Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin en concertsmarking 250 years since his death and featuring harpsichordist Paolo Zanzu (21 July).
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Joseph Morgan: ‘The Originals’ Actor Talks About New TV Series, Sneak Peek at the Masquerade Ball in Episode 3 ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ [PHOTOS, VIDEOS, SPOILERS] – []”The Simpsons” will be saying goodbye to a major character as the long-running animated show reaches another year. Executive producer Al Jean revealed that a character who is voiced by an Emmy Award-winning actor will die in season 25 or 26.
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Medecins Sans Frontieres or Doctors Without Borders in a new report Tuesday says health facilities are being targeted in the violence caused by inter-communal cattle rustling, fighting between government and rebels and a government disarmament process.
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