For those who have heard about this book might mistake this for the biography of Prophet Muhammad, the same way I did, which it isn’t. Armstrong has written a biography of Muhammad, but this recent of book of hers is a reiteration of Prophet Muhammad’s life for the much-needed purpose of making the West understand and thereby judge fairly the religion of Islam.
Though Islam and Muslims have failed to, or denied to, keep up with the rapidly changing world ever since the dawn of Scientific and Industrial revolutions when the ‘god’ was announced dead, the attacks of September 11 by the terrorist groups, claiming to be true representators of Islam, really brought Islam under excruciating contempt of the West.
What is perfect becomes irrelevant when something or someone else is running the show so dominantly; so, while Muslims may claim to be the followers of a religion that is a complete code of life unto itself, in the real world, the West are clear the runners of the world right now, and have been for the past many centuries.
Of course, Islam had its golden era starting from the 10th century, when it had spread over most of the globe, and had its followers leading the sciences, arts, and morals of that day and age. The fall from glory, the tragic story of present-day Islam, was very well summed up by Reza Aslan in his book ‘No god but God’, in which the Ulamas, the owners and dictators of Islam, because of their traditionalist and stuck mindsets, became the demise of Islam.
The subtitle of this book ‘The Prophet for Our Time’ to me, seemed a bit too ambitious since the book itself lacked the knitted arguments to back it up. Maybe Armstrong wanted to present this book as extravagantly as the backlash against Islam is in the West, for people to at least notice this book and read it, but would they, after reading it, really feel that Muhammad is the prophet for this complexly troubled and harsh times?
Both as a Muslim, and as a reader who has read a few books on Islam by now, I can conjure up the pro-statements as well as the passion to reinstate the peace-preaching, pluralistic, and kind character of Muhammad and the inclusive, all-preaching, and illuminating lessons of Islam, but for someone opposite of me, reading this book alone might fail to change their position on Islam.
Although Armstrong’s book retells the story of Islam and its first Muslim, Muhammad, with honesty and diplomacy, there is just not enough supportive passages to turn, what is indeed an explanatory and illustrative account on its own, into a case for unbiased and pure understanding of Islam.
Not being a biography of Muhammad would’ve given Armstrong the room to really write this book for the urgent purpose of presenting a truer image of Islam and its last prophet, but for me, this attempt just fell short of being a strong, convincing, and decisive one. A subtitle as promising as this book’s, I believe, needed more justification and follow-through in its arguments.
But maybe because I started this book after reading Aslan’s most impressive book ‘No got but God’ which talks about this same subject, that I feel such a disappointed critic of this book. Maybe, for you this book will, and definitely could, do justice to its subtitle.
Ratings: 3.5/5 *** April 11, 2021_