Muhammed

The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion

In this startling new book, New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer, provides a warts-and-all portrait of the Prophet of Islam and draws out what his life implies for reforming Islam and repulsing Islamic terrorists. Spencer relies solely on primary sources considered reliable by Muslims and evaluates modern biographies to show how Muhammad has been changed for Western audiences, lulling them into consoling but false conclusions.

Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources

A revised edition of the internationally acclaimed biography of the prophet

• Includes important additions about the prophet’s spread of Islam into Syria and its neighboring states

• Contains original English translations from 8th and 9th century biographies, presented in authoritative language

• Represents the final updates made on the text before the author’s death in 2005

Martin Lings’ biography of Muhammad is an internationally acclaimed, comprehensive, and authoritative account of the life of the prophet. Based on the sira, the eighth- and ninth-century Arabic biographies that recount numerous events in the prophet’s life, it contains original English translations of many important passages that reveal the words of men and women who heard Muhammad speak and witnessed the events of his life.

Scrupulous and exhaustive in its fidelity to its sources, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources is presented in a narrative style that is easily comprehensible, yet authentic and inspiring in its use of language, reflecting both the simplicity and grandeur of the story it tells. This revised edition includes new sections detailing the prophet’s expanding influence and his spreading of the message of Islam into Syria and its neighboring states. It represents the final updates made to the text before the author’s death in 2005. The book has been published in 12 languages and has received numerous awards, including acknowledgment as best biography of the prophet in English at the National Seerate Conference in Islamabad.

Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet

This vivid and detailed biography strips away centuries of distortion and myth and presents a balanced view of the man whose religion continues to dramatically affect the course of history.

In the Footsteps of the Prophet Lessons from the Life of Muhammad

Named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most important innovators of the century, Tariq Ramadan is a leading Muslim scholar, with a large following especially among young European and American Muslims. Now, in his first book written for a wide audience, he offers a marvelous biography of the Prophet Muhammad, one that highlights the spiritual and ethical teachings of one of the most influential figures in human history.
Here is a fresh and perceptive look at Muhammad, capturing a life that was often eventful, gripping, and highly charged. Ramadan provides both an intimate portrait of a man who was shy, kind, but determined, as well as a dramatic chronicle of a leader who launched a great religion and inspired a vast empire. More important, Ramadan presents the main events of the Prophet's life in a way that highlights his spiritual and ethical teachings. The book underscores the significance of the Prophet's example for some of today's most controversial issues, such as the treatment of the poor, the role of women, Islamic criminal punishments, war, racism, and relations with other religions. Selecting those facts and stories from which we can draw a profound and vivid spiritual picture, the author asks how can the Prophet's life remain--or become again--an example, a model, and an inspiration? And how can Muslims move from formalism--a fixation on ritual--toward a committed spiritual and social presence?
In this thoughtful and engaging biography, Ramadan offers Muslims a new understanding of Muhammad's life and he introduces non-Muslims not just to the story of the Prophet, but to the spiritual and ethical riches of Islam.

Jesus and Muhammed: Profound Differences and Surprising Similarities

Understanding Muhammad

Why are some Muslims intolerant, violent and supremacist? Why do they bully? What spurs them to riot and murder over the silliest things? To understand Muslims, one must understand their prophet. This psychobiography seeks to unveil the mystery of the prophet of Islam. Historians tell us Muhammad used to withdraw to a cave, spending days wrapped in his thoughts. He heard bells ringing and had ghostly visions. He thought he was demon possessed, until his wife reassured him he had become a prophet. Convinced of his status, he was intolerant of those who rejected him, assassinated those who criticized him, raided, looted, and massacred entire populations. He reduced thousands to slavery, raped, and allowed his men to rape female captives. All of this, he did with a clear conscience and a sense of entitlement. He was magnanimous toward those who admired him, but vengeful toward those who did not. He believed he was the most perfect human creation and the universe's raison d'être. Muhammad was no ordinary man. This book ventures beyond the stories. Focusing on the "why" rather than the "what," it unravels the mystique of one of the most enigmatic and influential men in history. Islam is Muhammadanism. Muslims worship and emulate Muhammad. Only by understanding him can one know what makes them tick. Understanding Muhammad begins with a brief history of his life. Muhammad had a loveless childhood. He then passed to the care of relatives who took pity on him and spoiled him. As the result he developed narcissistic personality disorder, a trait that made him a megalomaniac bereft of conscience. Muhammad believed in his own cause. Even when he lied, he felt entitled and justified to do so. Thanks to another mental illness, namely temporal lobe epilepsy, the prophet of Islam had vivid hallucinations he interpreted as mystical and divine intimations. He also suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, causing his fixations on numbers, rituals and stringent rules. In the addition, he suffered from acromegaly, a disease caused by excessive production of a growth hormone resulting in large bones and odd facial features. The combination of his psychological disorders and his unusual physiognomy made him a phenomenon that set him apart from ordinary people. His uneducated followers interpreted his differences as signs of his prophethood. Like devotees of all cults, they rose to champion his cause with dedication. By defying death and butchering others they made Islam the world's second largest religion, now the biggest threat to world peace. The author argues that Islam is incompatible with democracy and human rights, and the only way to avert the clash between barbarity and civilization, and a world disaster, is to expose its fallacy and demystify it. "Muslims must be weaned from Islam for humanity to live in peace," says Ali Sina.

The Life and Work of Muhammad (Critical Lives)

Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

Muhammad was born in 570 CE, and over the following sixty years built a thriving spiritual community, laying the foundations of a religion that changed the course of world history. There is more historical data on his life than on that of the founder of any other major faith, and yet his story is little known.

Karen Armstrong's immaculately researched new biography of Muhammad will enable readers to understand the true origins and spirituality of a faith that is all too often misrepresented as cruel, intolerant, and inherently violent. An acclaimed authority on religious and spiritual issues, Armstrong offers a balanced, in-depth portrait, revealing the man at the heart of Islam by dismantling centuries of misconceptions. Armstrong demonstrates that Muhammad's life—a pivot point in history—has genuine relevance to the global crises we face today.

Discover More Eminent Lives

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The Man Who Inspired the World's Fastest-Growing Religion

Muhammad presents a fascinating portrait of the founder of a religion that continues to change the course of world history. Muhammad's story is more relevant than ever because it offers crucial insight into the true origins of an increasingly radicalized Islam. Countering those who dismiss Islam as fanatical and violent, Armstrong offers a clear, accessible, and balanced portrait of the central figure of one of the world's great religions.

Muhammad

A definitive and fascinating introduction to the life, ideas, and impact of the founder of Islam. Maxime Robinson's Muhammad has long been regarded as one of the touchstones of scholarship on the founder of Islam. Thirty years after first being published 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 sect and state, and defeated his enemies, establishing the first great Muslim military power—a power which was soon to control territory stretching all the way from the Pyrenees to the borders of China. For anyone who wants to understand the historical roots of one of the world's great religions, Rodinson's Muhammad provides the ideal guide to a fascinating and timely subject.

Muhammad: Man of God