Critical Lives: Muhammad

by Yahiya Emerick
Critical Lives: Muhammad
Author: Yahiya Emerick
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2002-04-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1440650136
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Muhammad was a religious visionary and political leader. Raised in the harsh Arabian Peninsula and orphaned while still a child, this unlikely leader and military genius received a calling to transform his society from a collection of raiding tribes into one of the world's most progressive societies. His message of monotheism and righteousness motivated an entire people to abandon idolatry and spread the word of God to surrounding nations. Although he was a military genius, his greatest accomplishments came from the religion he preached: Islam, which called its adherents to lead a life of prayer, charity, and contemplation. The second largest religion in the world, both Islam's prophet and its values are today often misunderstood by adherents and outsiders alike. This concise, informative biography explores: • Muhammad's background and boyhood, as well as the culture and society in which he lived • A look at Muhammad as a family man, and how his personal life was a testament to his high regard for women • Muhammad's mission as a prophet and his new religion's philosophy on topics ranging from monotheism to interfaith relations • The Qur'an and how it was revealed, how Muslims view it in their religious life, and the concept of Jihad from Muhammad's perspective The Critical Lives series takes a biographical look at pivotal, fascinating people and a critical look at the work and accomplishments that, rightly or wrongly, made them unique, influential, and enduring. Discover the events that shaped their lives and how they came to shape our world.

The Lives of Muhammad

by Kecia Ali
The Lives of Muhammad
Author: Kecia Ali
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674050606
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Kecia Ali delves into the many ways the Prophet’s life story has been told from the earliest days of Islam to the present, by both Muslims and non-Muslims. Emphasizing the major transformations since the nineteenth century, she shows that far from being mutually opposed, these various perspectives have become increasingly interdependent.

Jesus and Muhammad

by F. E. Peters
Jesus and Muhammad
Author: F. E. Peters
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010-11-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199780048
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Jesus and Muhammad are two of the best known and revered figures in history, each with a billion or more global followers. Now, in this intriguing volume, F.E. Peters offers a clear and compelling analysis of the parallel lives of Jesus and Muhammad, the first such in-depth comparison in print. Like a detective, Peters compiles "dossiers" of what we do and do not know about the lives and portraits of these towering figures, drawing on the views of modern historians and the evidence of the Gospels and the Quran. With erudition and wit, the author nimbly leads the reader through drama and dogma to reveal surprising similarities between the two leaders and their messages. Each had a public career as a semi-successful preacher. Both encountered opposition that threatened their lives and those of their followers. Each left a body of teaching purported to be their very words, with an urgent imperative that all must become believers in the face of the approaching apocalypse. Both are symbols of hope on the one hand and of God's terrible judgment on the other. They are bringers of peace--and the sword. There is, however, a fundamental difference. Muslims revere Muhammad ibn Abdullah of Mecca as a mortal prophet. Although known as a prophet in his day, the Galilean Jew Jesus was and is believed by his followers to have been the promised Messiah, indeed the son of God. The Quran records revelations received by Muhammad as the messenger of God, whereas the revelations of the Gospels focus on Jesus and the events of his life and death. A lasting contribution to interfaith understanding, Jesus and Muhammad offers lucid, intelligent answers to questions that underlie some of the world's most intractable conflicts.

The Life and Work of Muhammad

by Yahiya Emerick
The Life and Work of Muhammad
Author: Yahiya Emerick
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780028643717
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-- Given the current prominence of Islam, it has become more important than ever that Westerners -- and Muslims -- gain an accurate look at who Muhammad was and what he stood for.-- Provides a fascinating picture of both Muhammad and the world in which he lived.Rather than settling in to the comfortable life of a merchant, Muhammad had a vision of himself bringing the message of the one God to his idolatrous people. Coverage includes: the claim to prophethood -- Muhammad's teachings, and his first coverts; the Muslim flight to Medina, Muhammad's battles, and the eventual bloodless Muslim conquest of Mecca; Muhammad's political victory in the Arabian peninsula, and wars with Byzantium and Persia; the death of Muhammad, and the ways in which his message lived beyond him, and Muhammad's place in history -- his role in Muslim theology and cosmology, the ways he is viewed in different Muslim sects and regions, and the influence of Muhammad today in Islamic movements, both peaceful and fundamentalist.

Black Muslims and the Law

by Malachi D. Crawford
Black Muslims and the Law
Author: Malachi D. Crawford
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2015-02-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 073918489X
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Black Muslims and the Law: Civil Liberties From Elijah Muhammad to Muhammad Ali examines the Nation of Islam’s quest for civil liberties as what might arguably be called the inaugural and first sustained challenge to the suppression of religious freedom in African American legal history. Borrowing insights from A. Leon Higgonbotham Jr.’s classic works on American slavery jurisprudence, Black Muslims and the Law reveals the Nation of Islam’s strategic efforts to engage governmental officials from a position of power, and suggests the federal executive, congressmen, judges, lawyers, law enforcement officials, prison administrators, state governments, and African American civic leaders held a common understanding of what it meant to be and not to be African American and religious in the period between World War II and the Vietnam War. The work raises basic questions about the rights of African descended people to define god, question white moral authority, and critique the moral legitimacy of American war efforts according to their own beliefs and standards.

Muhammad

by Martin Lings
Muhammad
Author: Martin Lings
Publisher:
Total Pages: 361
Release: 1991
Genre: Muslims
ISBN: 9780946621255
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Acclaimed worldwide as the definitive biography of the Prophet Muhammad in the English language, Martin Lings' Muhammad: His Life Based to the Earliest Sources is unlike any other. Based on Arabic sources of the eighth and ninth centuries, of which some important passages are translated here for the first time, it owes the freshness and directness of its approach to the words of men and women who heard Muhammad speak and witnessed the events of his life. Martin Lings has an unusual gift for narrative. He has adopted a style which is at once extremely readable and reflects both the simplicity and grandeur of the story. The result is a book which will be read with equal enjoyment by those already familiar with Muhammad's life and those coming to it for the first time. Muhammad: His Life Based to the Earliest Sources was given an award by the government of Pakistan, and selected as the best biography of the Prophet in English at the National Seerat Conference in Islamabad in 1983.

Muhammad and the People of the Book

by Sahaja Carimokam
Muhammad and the People of the Book
Author: Sahaja Carimokam
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 567
Release: 2010-09-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1453537856
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Muhammad and the People of Book by Sahaja Carimokam asks the question, what was the nature of Muhammad’s relationship to non-Muslims, particularly Jews and Christians, and how did it change over time? This work is based on a chronological reading of the chapters of the Qur’an supplemented with Muslim commentary literature and biographical materials on the life of Muhammad. Carimokam traces Muhammad’s evolving religious viewpoint based on his borrowings of primarily Jewish and some Christian traditional/apocryphal materials. He shows how Muhammad’s inaccurate and anachronistic rendition of Jewish traditional literature ensured that the Jews would reject him as a Prophet. This rejection lead to his ultimatum to the Jews early in the Medinan period of the Qur’an and culminated with his call to Jihad against all non-Muslims, including those Jews and Christians who refused to acknowledge his Prophethood. The origins of takfir, declaring Muslims to be non-Muslims, are considered. Comparisons are made of moderate and traditional interpreters of the Qur’an. Historical-critical issues regarding the background provided by Muslim historical propaganda is considered in one chapter. The book concludes with a controversial issue for the interpretation of Islamic law in the 21st century based on the actual canonical practices of Muhammad.

The Qurʾan, Morality and Critical Reason

by Muhammad Shahrur
The Qurʾan, Morality and Critical Reason
Author: Muhammad Shahrur
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 636
Release: 2009-03-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047424344
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This book presents the work and ideas of the Syrian writer Muhammad Shahrur to the English-speaking world. Shahrur is at the moment the most innovative intellectual thinker in the Arab Middle East. Often described as the ‘Martin Luther of Islam,’ he offers a liberal, progressive reading of Islam that aims to counter the influences of religious fundamentalism and radical politics. Shahrur’s innovative interpretation of the Qur’an offers groundbreaking new ideas, based on his conviction that centuries of historical Islam, including scholarship in the traditional Islamic religious sciences, have obscured or even obliterated the Qur’an’s progressive and revolutionary message. That message is one that has endured through each period of human history in which Islam has existed, encouraging Muslims to apply the most contemporary perspective available to interpret the Qur’an’s meaning.

The Generalship of Muhammad

by Russ Rodgers
The Generalship of Muhammad
Author: Russ Rodgers
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2012-03-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0813042844
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His campaigns, military thought, and insurgent strategy There are many biographies of the Prophet, and they tend to fall into three categories: pious works that emphasize the virtues of the early Islamic community, general works for non-Muslim or non-specialist readers, and source-critical works that grapple with historiographical problems inherent in early Islamic history. In The Generalship of Muhammad, Russ Rodgers charts a new path by merging original sources with the latest in military theory to examine Muhammad's military strengths and weaknesses. Incorporating military, political, and economic analyses, Rodgers focuses on Muhammad’s use of insurgency warfare in seventh-century Arabia to gain control of key cities such as Medina. Seeking to understand the operational aspects of these world-changing battles, he provides battlefield maps and explores the supply and logistic problems that would have plagued any military leader at the time. Rodgers explains how Muhammad organized his forces and gradually built his movement against sporadic resistance from his foes. He draws from the hadith literature to shed new light on the nature of the campaigns. He examines the Prophet's intelligence network and the employment of what would today be called special operations forces. And he considers the possibility that Muhammad received outside support to build and maintain his movement as a means to interdict trade routes between the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanid Persians.