Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet - Softcover

Karen Armstrong

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1842126083 ISBN 13: 9781842126080

Publisher: Phoenix Press, 2001

Synopsis

Most people in the West know very little about the prophet Muhammad. The acclaimed religious writer Karen Armstrong has written a biography which will give us a more accurate and profound understanding of Islam and the people who adhere to it so strongly. Muhammad also offers challenging comparisons with the two religions most closely related to it ' Judaism and Christianity. 'Armstrong has a dazzling ability: she can take a long and complex subject and reduce it to its fundamentals, without over-simplifying' Sister Wendy Beckett, Sunday Times

About this title

About the Author

Karen Armstrong spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun, an experience she recollected in her bestselling autobiography, THROUGH THE NARROW GATE. She is the author of the worldwide bestseller, A HISTORY OF GOD (which has now appeared in more than thirty languages), the acclaimed HISTORY OF JERUSALEM and, most recently, BUDDHA in the Weidenfeld & Nicolson Lives series. She is a teacher at the Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism and, in 1999, she received the Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award.

From Publishers Weekly

In a meticulous quest for the historical Muhammad, Armstrong first traces the West's long history of hostility toward Islam, which it has stigmatized as a "religion of the sword." This sympathetic, engrossing biography portrays Muhammad (ca. 570-632) as a passionate, complex, fallible human being--a charismatic leader possessed of political as well as spiritual gifts, and a prophet whose monotheistic vision intuitively answered the deepest longings of his people. Armstrong ( The Gospel According to Woman ) refutes the Western image of Muhammad as an impostor who used religion as a means to power, an attitude encapsulated in a psychotic dream episode in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Denying that Islam preaches total intransigence, she finds in the Prophet's teachings a theology of peace and tolerance. The "holy war" urged by the Koran, in Armstrong's reading, alludes to each Muslim's duty to fight for a just, decent society. She draws significant parallels between the spiritual aspirations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Phoenix Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1842126083
• ISBN 13: 9781842126080
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288