Not everything we learn we learn from personal acquisition. As children we are taught not only the ethics of the world, but also the world and everything – the things, the people, the history, the present, the deeds – that resides in that world. But while the intention behind this elementary education from our families is noble, since a child cannot make sense of this world without these guidelines, its application as we grow up ceases to be sufficient. Sometimes there are big gaps in what we were taught, other times, it is completely wrong.
The problem really occurs when as grown-up we fail to recognize this contrast between what we unlearnedly know and what really is the true story of things, the facts. So, either we become too fixated on our early education, as well as the education we get thereafter through the news, word of mouth and so on, and become naïve enough to defend what we know from others, or we become instinctively afraid and reluctant to unlearn the things that have guided us for so long, and supported so much of what we have done and spoke.
But unlearn we shall, only then would we be able to relearn the things as they presently and truly are; without relearning things, we never really grow up at all.
The biographies of Muhammad pbuh by the western authors, like Armstrong, Hazleton, Rogerson, that I have read in recent years have equipped me with my own sought and learned knowledge about the last prophet of God. Reading these biographies about the prophet and the man, who is ever so dear and central to the hearts and lives of us Muslims, helped me know him personally, which in its wake shed the traditional, unquestioned things said about Muhammad pbuh (good, overly good, or western bad) and instead give me a learned, solid, and defendable knowledge of the prophet and his life.
While Muhammad pbuh is dear and central to Muslims, to the west he might be portrayed as the earliest leader of the Muslims, not only of that era but of all eras, present-day included. With Islamophobia and terrorism in sight, biographies of Muhammad by the western authors are a definitive way of unlearning the hate-content and relearning the true ones.
Aslan’s biography of Jesus, the central figure of Christianity, allowed me to experience how it feels to read a biography of someone who’s central to a religion, other than yours. A Muslim covert to Christianity and back, Aslan presumably would be, as a religious historian, loaded with historical and worldly facts to write this both. And unmistakably historical this biography is!
From the very first pages up to the last lines, Aslan presents a factual and historically correct biography of Jesus of Nazareth, which of course contradicts with the pious preaching of Christianity. As a non-Christian, I wasn’t offended by the harsh but enlightening commentary of Aslan about Jesus the man of history, but was rather illuminated by it.
Aslan’s difficult to write biography with such scarce
sources about Jesus and the 1st century, when Christianity took hold,
presents a historically bridged life of Jesus and his incredible movement which
has since become the dominating religion. ‘Zealot’ is both sensibly true and equally
as charismatic, inspiring, and worthy as the religious biography of Jesus.
Ratings: 5/5 ***** April 27, 2021_