 MUHAMMAD: PROPHET FOR OUR TIME
By Karen Armstrong
Harper Press
Price: £12.99 Pages: 249 | Put it down to precise purpose on her part. Why else would Karen Armstrong produce two biographies of the Prophet within such a short period? Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet and Muhammad, Prophet for Our Time, are absolute gems and material overlaps. Few scholars in modern times have written with such authority on the Abrahamic faiths, particularly Islam. The biographies are not definitive in their sweep but are anxious interventions, distilled from all that has been written about the Prophet. The intended readability and clarity stands out. The first biography was written subsequent to Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses controversy. Ayatullah Khomeini's fatwa was fatally flawed, but so was the deadly diatribe against Islam. Medieval prejudice was being employed to support a liberal principle. Armstrong intervened with her biography to cope with that canard. Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time, is tailored to cope with the post-9/11 mindlessness, the seemingly unstoppable spiral of prejudice and unprecedented Islamophobia. The book does not spare Muslims. It exposes Arab (Muslim) regimes to utter shame as deviants from the pristine message preached by the Prophet. Armstrong holds up the Khutba of Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, (for Shias their first imam) as a mirror to Muslim rulers: not only must a ruler not be tyrannical but, "under God, on a par with his subjects and must take care to lighten the burden of the poor and the destitute." The widespread western willingness to fall back on ancient prejudices about Islam at the slightest provocation is in Armstrong's framework, a function of ignorance about the life of Muhammad, the man who strove to establish peace among the warring tribes of Arabia. During these spells of hospitality, the West itself appears to be afflicted by Jahiliya, the state of ignorance from which Muhammad sought to free the people of Arabia. Armstrong also touches on racism as a component of western prejudice. She pulls out a leaf from Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith: "Unless western civilisation and the Christian Church can learn to treat other men with fundamental respect, these two (Islam and Christianity) in their turn will have failed to come to terms with the actualities of the present century." A healthy, functioning Islam had for centuries "helped Muslims cultivate decent values which we in the West share, because they spring from a common tradition". Some Muslims, however, have problems with western modernity. "They have turned against the culture of the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) and have begun to Islamise their new hatred of these sister faiths, which were so powerfully endorsed by the Quran." Without taking sides, Armstrong has presented a portrait of the Prophet's life based on the Quran, the earliest sources of the "Ahdith", the stirring debates this extraordinary life generated in theological and political circles. There are two sides misreading the life of the only Prophet-the West and Muslims. Here is an invitation to correct our compasses about Muhammad, who had "a profound genius and founded a religion and cultural tradition that was not based on the sword (she explains Jihad at length), but whose name, Islam, signified peace and reconciliation." It is quite ironical that the lives of most individuals recognised as founders of great religions are shrouded in myth and miracle. Here comes a different Prophet with every detail of his life documented. There is the miraculous disclosure of verses from the Quran through the agency of Angel Gabriel or what the agnostics describe as the unlikely journey to Jerusalem, winged horse et al, but there is enough incontrovertible material in Armstrong's book even for sceptics to be riveted on with respect. Index |
