Book: Muhammad
Aug. 22nd, 2011 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Karen Armstrong
Details: (c) Karen Armstrong 1991; Pub Orion Phoenix 2001; ISBN 978-1-84212-608-0
Verdict: Muhammad is interesting and readable but not quite what I was hoping for.
Reasons for reading it: I am a huge fan of Karen Armstrong, and I am definitely interested in good introductory resources on Islam.
How it came into my hands: I happened to mention toewt that I really wanted to read Armstrong's bio of Muhammad, and then she discovered an exciting independent bookshop in town that I hadn't known about, and decided to buy it for me. That wasn't quite the way it was supposed to go; mentioning I want a book is definitely not hinting for presents! (This is also why I don't have any online wishlists.) But still, I am very delighted, both by the bookshop discovery and by having a copy of the book I'd been wanting.
I am pleased that I now have an outline version of the origins of Islam in my head, and that I got it from a book that was enjoyable and painless to read, but that cites its sources properly. However this book wasn't quite what I was hoping for. It was written in response to the Satanic Verses incident, and it's rather polemical. I think it was a worthwhile enterprise to write a book pointing out that Rushdie's novel was fictional and not representative of what Muslims actually believe, and that calling for the death of authors who write critically about Islam was in fact a personal weirdness of Ayatollah Khomeini, not a mainstream Muslim way of behaving. But I kind of already knew these things, and I wanted something a bit more substantial.
The two big problems I had with Armstrong's account are that it comes across too much as apologetics, and that she basically doesn't cite any contemporary Muslim scholars. There's a lot of her earnestly assuring the reader that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, and that honestly truly the early Muslims only instigated wars and massacres when it was really truly necessary to prevent a greater evil, and anyway Christians are just as bad if not worse. Since I already take it as a given that Muslims are people, and Muslim institutions are human institutions, I found this extremely unsurprising and it undermined the book's credibility by over-protesting. Part of the issue is that Armstrong is (and she makes this quite explicit) addressing an audience of liberal Christians who were horrified by the fatwa against Rushdie but otherwise don't know very much about Islam. I'm not a liberal Christian, and I'm not inclined to clutch my pearls about how intolerant, fanatical and violent Islam is compared to nice cuddly Anglicanism, and I do know something about Islam beyond the rantings of Islamophobic op-eds. She keeps stressing the point that most western Christians can't make any sense out of the Qu'ran because they're not used to detailed reading of religious texts as a devotional practice, for example.
I was also hoping to use the book as a gateway into stuff actually written by Muslims (as I don't know where to start), and it really falls down on that score. I started to form the distinct impression that Armstrong doesn't have Arabic, or at least doesn't read it well enough to engage with the scholarly literature or make reasoned judgements about Qu'ran translation issues. It seems like her sources are almost exclusively mid 20th century translations of the Qu'ran and early Muslim writings by European Christians, and almost all her secondary sources are European Christian academics. It's perhaps unfair of me to be disappointed by this in what is after all a popular, introductory book, but I have so much regard for Armstrong as a real polymath that my expectations were high. Even if her Arabic isn't great, I'm sure there is some academic work coming from the Muslim context and published in English.
That said, the thing that Armstrong does well is to synthesize a lot of complex ideas and historical trends into a sensible, understandable narrative. She is very good at presenting religion both as a genuine mystical experience and as a product of human psychology and rational causes. She makes it clear when she's speculating and when she's recounting accepted facts. The other very useful thing that I gleaned from the book is that the standard Islamophobic cant you get from people like Hitchens actually has its roots in Mediaeval anti-Islamic propaganda, just as 20th century antisemitism traces its origins to Medieaval propaganda against the Jews. That's not really what the book is about, she sort of mentions it in passing in the introduction, but it's much more convincing to me than any amount of apologetics about "well, yes, Islam isn't great for women compared to modern feminism but it's pretty progressive compared to the 7th century context". The apologetics about how the Prophet's marriage to a 9-year-old girl isn't really paedophilia and how the veil was originally introduced to enhance the status of his wives rather than to denigrate women in general is stuff that I've heard before. I do pretty much accept both those arguments, but seeing them again didn't really improve my understanding of the history I was trying to extract from the book, and I think wouldn't have been convincing to someone who wasn't already inclined to accept that these aspects of Islam are in fact a product of their historical context and not nearly as sinister as usually portrayed.
So, I know something that I didn't know before I read this biography, but I'm still going to have to start from squre one in seeking out modern Muslim scholarship about the history of Islam. The stuff about the transition from a small sect within Mecca, to a fairly prominent, cross-tribal group expanding out from Medina, to a full-on world religion with a powerful military empire was really fascinating and helped me to understand some vague allusions I'd come across before.
Details: (c) Karen Armstrong 1991; Pub Orion Phoenix 2001; ISBN 978-1-84212-608-0
Verdict: Muhammad is interesting and readable but not quite what I was hoping for.
Reasons for reading it: I am a huge fan of Karen Armstrong, and I am definitely interested in good introductory resources on Islam.
How it came into my hands: I happened to mention to
ewt that I really wanted to read Armstrong's bio of Muhammad, and then she discovered an exciting independent bookshop in town that I hadn't known about, and decided to buy it for me. That wasn't quite the way it was supposed to go; mentioning I want a book is definitely not hinting for presents! (This is also why I don't have any online wishlists.) But still, I am very delighted, both by the bookshop discovery and by having a copy of the book I'd been wanting.I am pleased that I now have an outline version of the origins of Islam in my head, and that I got it from a book that was enjoyable and painless to read, but that cites its sources properly. However this book wasn't quite what I was hoping for. It was written in response to the Satanic Verses incident, and it's rather polemical. I think it was a worthwhile enterprise to write a book pointing out that Rushdie's novel was fictional and not representative of what Muslims actually believe, and that calling for the death of authors who write critically about Islam was in fact a personal weirdness of Ayatollah Khomeini, not a mainstream Muslim way of behaving. But I kind of already knew these things, and I wanted something a bit more substantial.
The two big problems I had with Armstrong's account are that it comes across too much as apologetics, and that she basically doesn't cite any contemporary Muslim scholars. There's a lot of her earnestly assuring the reader that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, and that honestly truly the early Muslims only instigated wars and massacres when it was really truly necessary to prevent a greater evil, and anyway Christians are just as bad if not worse. Since I already take it as a given that Muslims are people, and Muslim institutions are human institutions, I found this extremely unsurprising and it undermined the book's credibility by over-protesting. Part of the issue is that Armstrong is (and she makes this quite explicit) addressing an audience of liberal Christians who were horrified by the fatwa against Rushdie but otherwise don't know very much about Islam. I'm not a liberal Christian, and I'm not inclined to clutch my pearls about how intolerant, fanatical and violent Islam is compared to nice cuddly Anglicanism, and I do know something about Islam beyond the rantings of Islamophobic op-eds. She keeps stressing the point that most western Christians can't make any sense out of the Qu'ran because they're not used to detailed reading of religious texts as a devotional practice, for example.
I was also hoping to use the book as a gateway into stuff actually written by Muslims (as I don't know where to start), and it really falls down on that score. I started to form the distinct impression that Armstrong doesn't have Arabic, or at least doesn't read it well enough to engage with the scholarly literature or make reasoned judgements about Qu'ran translation issues. It seems like her sources are almost exclusively mid 20th century translations of the Qu'ran and early Muslim writings by European Christians, and almost all her secondary sources are European Christian academics. It's perhaps unfair of me to be disappointed by this in what is after all a popular, introductory book, but I have so much regard for Armstrong as a real polymath that my expectations were high. Even if her Arabic isn't great, I'm sure there is some academic work coming from the Muslim context and published in English.
That said, the thing that Armstrong does well is to synthesize a lot of complex ideas and historical trends into a sensible, understandable narrative. She is very good at presenting religion both as a genuine mystical experience and as a product of human psychology and rational causes. She makes it clear when she's speculating and when she's recounting accepted facts. The other very useful thing that I gleaned from the book is that the standard Islamophobic cant you get from people like Hitchens actually has its roots in Mediaeval anti-Islamic propaganda, just as 20th century antisemitism traces its origins to Medieaval propaganda against the Jews. That's not really what the book is about, she sort of mentions it in passing in the introduction, but it's much more convincing to me than any amount of apologetics about "well, yes, Islam isn't great for women compared to modern feminism but it's pretty progressive compared to the 7th century context". The apologetics about how the Prophet's marriage to a 9-year-old girl isn't really paedophilia and how the veil was originally introduced to enhance the status of his wives rather than to denigrate women in general is stuff that I've heard before. I do pretty much accept both those arguments, but seeing them again didn't really improve my understanding of the history I was trying to extract from the book, and I think wouldn't have been convincing to someone who wasn't already inclined to accept that these aspects of Islam are in fact a product of their historical context and not nearly as sinister as usually portrayed.
So, I know something that I didn't know before I read this biography, but I'm still going to have to start from squre one in seeking out modern Muslim scholarship about the history of Islam. The stuff about the transition from a small sect within Mecca, to a fairly prominent, cross-tribal group expanding out from Medina, to a full-on world religion with a powerful military empire was really fascinating and helped me to understand some vague allusions I'd come across before.
Life of Muhammad
Date: 2011-08-23 10:59 pm (UTC)Southernwood
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-24 01:21 am (UTC)http://islam-feminism.livejournal.com/profile, for example.
Re: Life of Muhammad
Date: 2011-08-24 07:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-24 08:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-24 09:10 am (UTC)Re: Life of Muhammad
Date: 2011-08-24 06:27 pm (UTC)When the first significant political action of the fledgling Muslim community was to massacre the local Jewish population, it's hardly propitious! I understand the temptation to provide apologetics, especially since so many people are ready to assume that Islam is all about mass killings of unbelievers, but still.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-24 06:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-24 06:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-24 06:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-24 08:22 pm (UTC)If you haven't picked it up by the next time you're in London I will be happy to meet up with you and hand it over!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-29 07:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-31 06:16 pm (UTC)(The Very Short Introductions site has annoying flash, sorry. Also, I think there's a U.S. version of these but I can't remember the company and those books are still unpacked.)