Muhammad

by Maxime Rodinson

Book Overview

Maxime Rodinson's Muhammad has long been regarded as one of the touchstones of scholarship on the founder of Islam. Thirty years after its first publication in English, it remains the definitive introduction to the Prophet's life. Drawing on wide-ranging scholarship and imaginative insight into the Prophet's personality, family, background, and wider society, Rodinson's Muhammad offers a vivid account of how he spread the word of Islam, created a...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394738225
• ISBN13: 9780394738222
• Release Date: May 1980
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 362 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A balanced pre 9/11 view

This book was written much before 9/11. It is a great advantage as it is not tainted by a reinterpretation of what we know about the life and teaching of Prophet Muhammad in light of what 19 moslems did in 2001. The book provides a good background on the culture of Arabia at the time of Muhammad and why the teaching of the prophet became so attractive to his many followers. Rodinson write as a fair minded agnostic, and try to be as objective as possible when writing about religions. Rodinson shows also that Islam, like most religions, contain a lot of concepts and ideas, often contradictory. Evolving cultures reinterpret and selectively focus on some aspects of the original teaching to adapt to their surroundings. A good scholarly book, recommended to all who want to have a fair but not faith based view of the origin of Islam.

Good bio of one mean dude.

If you are looking for an opinionated but fair-minded sketch of the prophet Mohammed in the context of his times, by a historian who is not out to portray his subject as the devil incarnate, but is still gamely willing to relate events and interpret them in a straightforward way that might lose him his head in some countries -- this could be the book for you. This book is lively, surprisingly balanced for a work by a Marxist, keeps the tangents short and sweet, and strikes me as generally judicious history. I don't share the author's materialism, and sometimes his attitude strikes me as a bit patronizing and cynical. But the story is well-told and insightful. And even when the author may be (in my view) wrong, his error usually consists of useful insights that are spread too thin. Politicians, the media, and academics have been diligently trying to persuade us, of late, that Islam is a religion of peace. The terrorists are "traitors to their faith," which is "good and peaceful."Mr. Rodinson does not set out specifically to tear down this viewpoint. He does warn, in his straightforward way, that "Muslims have every right not to read the book or to aquaint themselves with the ideas of a non-Muslim, but if they do so, they must expect to find things put forward there which are blasphemous to them." But later he notes disapprovingly of Christian critics that "the accounts given of (Mohammed) by his disciples were taken and twisted to make a hideous portrait of a cruel and lascivious individual, steeped in every kind of viciousness and crime. . . " This comment comes towards the end of the book. He seemed not to have noticed that in the previous 200 pages, he had painted a very similar portrait. It appears, strangely enough, that the facts themselves may have something to do with the "image." But read the book for yourself, and tell me if Mohammed was a good man or bad. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man

Critical view of the prophet and Islam

This is a book that a devout Muslim, if he bothered to read it, would rail against, because it treats the founder of Islam as nothing more than a mortal, although a very complicated one. I read it during the years I lived in Morocco and I found it an invaluable tool for understanding Islam from the inside, and also understanding how Muslims view people of other religions. I don't think it is the most balanced account of the prophet's life you'll find, but it's one of the best researched ones and it doesn't pull any punches.

Excellent explanation of the birth of a religion

I've actually read the italian version of this book (edited by Einaudi). I found it incredibly interesting to help to understand how a religion and culture is born. The author is atheist, and I think that it is a good precondition for the book's objectivity.

Excellent, unbiased historical summary

I cannot promote this book more. Rodinson explores the prophet's life from birth to death, in an un-biased, open-minded manner. Translation: she explores everything, the unsavory moments, to the acts of ultimate courage and commitment.