Karen Armstrong

I had read quite a few favourable reviews of Ms Armstrong so I really wanted to read her books, as it’s not everyday a non muslim gets favourable reviews for writing several books about Islam. The first one I’ve read is Muhammad (pbuh): A Biography of the Prophet. I was dubious about the front cover, it’s a bit ambiguous, at first I thought it was an image of the Prophet (pbuh) himself (which I’m sure is prohibited?), but on closer inspection the image has wings so perhaps it’s the Angel Gabriel?? Anyway to the book itself, I started it with gumption (that word has been in my mind for ages I really wanted to use it lol) it turned out that the book was a kind of response to the Satanic verses written by Salman Rushdie, a rectification of the downright rubbish that Rushdie had written about the prophet (pbuh). The first chapter is a short history of the hatred against Islam by the west starting from its earliest days to the present age, at first I found it interesting and the word applied to Muslims (Mohammedans) in the early days amused me. However it began to get repetitive and slightly boring, I was never one for history….. but once the book got back to the topic in hand, the book and the author redeemed themselves. One of the things I loved about the book was that, in discussing aspects of Islam the author also weaved in similarities between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, one of the things you never seem to see as much in books written by Muslim authors. Another thing which I found quite appealing was that the history and context of places is given before Islam touched the area, for example the history of medina post islam is given, which is rarely mentioned. However the author raised several points which really impressed me and will go far in clarifying Islam for non muslims, being mainly about the status of women in Islam and the idea that Islam is a “live by the sword, die by the sword” type of religion. I’m not going into detail here about it but will defiantly do a post regarding the points mentioned above. Overall I think the book is a brilliant asset to Islamic literature and I would happily read it over and over again. I definitely recommend everyone to read this book, muslims and non muslims alike