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 Get it at Amazon
Author and scholar Robert Spencer, in this insightful and revealing book, 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. In this highly informative book, Spencer examines the teaching and conduct of the prophet of Islam, as these are preserved in the Qur'an, in the Hadith and in the biographical works of respectable Muslim scholars like Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sa'd, At Tabari and Bukhari, amonst others.
From Muhammad's first "revelation" from Allah (which filled him with terror that he was demonpossessed) to his deathbed (from which he called down curses upon Jews and Christians), it's all here-told with extensive documentation from the sources that Muslims themselves consider most reliable about Muhammad. The Truth About Muhammad details Muhammad's development from a penny-ante preacher of hellfire and damnation into an unstoppable political and military leader who expanded his rule by force of arms, promising his warriors luridly physical delights in Paradise if they were killed in his cause. It explains how the Qur'an's teaching on warfare against unbelievers developed-with constant war to establish the hegemony of Islamic law as the last stage. Spencer also gives the truth about Muhammad's convenient "revelations" justifying his own licentiousness; his joy in the brutal murders of his enemies; and above all, his clear marching orders to his followers to convert non-Muslims to Islam-or force them to live as inferiors under Islamic rule. Before oil billions reanimated the Muslim drive to conquer the world, it may not have mattered that most available histories of Islam and biographies of Muhammad were largely written by Islamophiles, who ignored the actual history of Islam and conduct of Muhammad and instead presented a sanitized, soft-focus version of both; it was the Alhambra, beautiful Arab calligraphy and Muhammad's "spiritual quest." Now, with Islamic terrorists shouting "Allahu Akbar" as they cut off the heads of western captives, terrorists quoting the Koran and incidents in Muhammad's life to justify their slaughter of civilians, and many Muslim imams world-wide preaching jihad and hatred for Christians and Jews, it is imperative that we get a complete and accurate picture of Muhammad--who Muslims believe to be the "Perfect Man" to be emulated in all things--and the Koran. In The Truth about Muhammad, you'll learn The truth about Muhammad's multiple marriages (including one to a nine-year-old) How Muhammad set legal standards that make it virtually impossible to prove rape in Islamic countries How Muhammad's example justifies jihad and terrorism The real "Satanic verses" incident (not the Salman Rushdie version) that remains a scandal to Muslims How Muhammad's faulty knowledge of Judaism and Christianity has influenced Islamic theology--and colored Muslim relations with Jews and Christians to this day.
Recognizing the true nature of Islam, Spencer argues, is essential for judging the prospects for largescale Islamic reform, the effective prosecution of the War on Terror, the democracy project in Afghanistan and Iraq, and immigration and border control to protect the United States from terrorism. All of which makes it crucial for every citizen (and policymaker) who loves freedom to read and ponder The Truth about Muhammad. >> Get it at Amazon From a review: "The idea persists in Western and Eastern minds that Muhammad was a man of peace who established a world-wide religion of peace. It is generally assumed that only in modern times has a small faction of religious radicals committed crimes in the name of Muhammad. The gentle Prophet himself, if he were alive, would certainly not approve of these deadly deeds committed in his name. But Spencer's research leads to the opposite conclusion: Muhammad was primarily a man of aggressive violence and irrationality. He was himself the prototype of the modern day Islamofascist Jihad terrorist.
This conclusion is based on an exhaustive study of all the available Islamic texts. There exists an enormous body of "sacred" Islamic writing about the life and revelations of Muhammad. Spencer has spent years closely examining all these holy texts of Islam, using comparative analysis to arrive at the core beliefs about Muhammad, his life and works.
First are the Suras of the Qur'an, piecemeal revelations that Muhammad (570-632 AD) claims to have received from the angel Gabriel over a twenty-three year prophetic career. The first of these are poetic ramblings bearing close resemblance to passages from the Old and New Testament, the Talmud, Zoroastrianism, and heretical Christian sects such as the Nestorians, Gnostics and Manicheans. All these sources were extant in Arabia at the time of Mohammad's life.
Due to the fragmentary quality of the Suras early Muslims elaborated additional sources to provide context for the Qur'an: tafsir (commentary) and hadith (traditions about the Prophet). In the ninth century one of the most respected scholars collected over 300,000 ahadith (plural for hadith). He finally chose two thousand as authentic. His collection fills nine volumes. This is just one of six collections, some of even greater length.
In addition to the above mass of information is the sira, which is the biography of Muhammad, the first of which did not appear until 150 years after his death. There arose in the eighth and ninth centuries a number of Muslim jurists and scholars who wrote contrary accounts of Muhammad's life and quarreled amongst themselves as to which account was authentic. On one matter they all agree: Muhammad was virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Christian.
The last half of the Qur'an is filled with "ex post facto" revelations. For instance after Muhammad married his daughter-in-law he received a convenient revelation with Allah's approval. Then in his later years the prophet became increasingly engaged in wars of expansion; slaughtering and beheading people, gouging out their eyes with nails, cutting off their limbs, and capturing their wives and daughters as slaves. After each successful campaign he would receive a revelation with Allah's stamp of approval.
By using only sources approved by Islamic law as authentic Spencer has invited a rebuttal by Muslim scholars on their own ground. No argument has come forward. There has not been, and will not be, such a rejoinder. Spencer has built an irrefutable description of the "real" Muhammad from within the Islamic canon. "
Get it at Amazon From a review: "Since September 2000, at the beginning of the latest phase in the Arab Muslim jihad against the Jewish people in Israel, I have done extensive reading on the history of Islam in a concerted effort to determine the cause. During my early months and years of research, I felt confounded by Islam, which scholars often described as a faith, at its core, moderate and peaceful. Lord knows, I long believed them.
Unfortunately, the more I read, the more discouraged I have become as to the true nature of Islam, and its founder.
Much, though hardly all, of my expanding base of knowledge, has come from Robert Spencer, whose books I have read both with pleasure and dismay--pleasure, because he writes and researches so well, and dismay, because his books so discourage one regarding the onerous tasks that now face Western civilization. Like it or not, we are increasingly imperiled by, and simultaneously, oblivious to the global political ambitions of resurgent Islam.
These dangers appear genuinely contemporary after one learns the details of Muhammad's dealings with the Jewish Banu Qurayzah tribe of Yathrub (Medina).
After sending a secret Muslim convert, Nu'aym bin Mas'ud, to sabotage a Qurayzah alliance with the pagan Quraysh, Muhammad debased the Jews as "brothers of monkeys." This language, as Spencer dutifully notes, "also made its way into the Qur'an"--in chapters 2 (verses 62-65), 5 (verses 59-60) and 7 (verse 166)--and is routinely invoked by current-day Muslim leaders.
Citing the famed A. Guillaume's 1955 translation of Ibn Ishaq's Life of Muhammad (Sirat Rasul Allah), Spencer notes that Muhammad's forces "laid siege to the Qurayzah strongholds for twenty-five days, until... 'they were sorely pressed' and, as Muhammad had warned, 'God cast terror into their hearts'." At this juncture, the leader of the Qurayzah offered his people three choices--to accept Muhammad and Islam, to kill their wives and children and fight Muhammad unencumbered, or to ambush Muhammad on the Sabbath.
The Qurayzah ignored their leader's counsel and, instead, surrendered to the Muslims. Muhammad asked Sa'd bin Mu'adh to determine their fate--and he in turn ruled that "their warriors should be killed and their children and women be taken as captives." Muhammad himself then went into the Medina market and dug trenches into which some the heads of at least 600 or 700 Qurayzah men (possibly, 800 or 900) would be struck. One boy who had not yet "begun to grow hair" later reputedly explained that this factor determined whether a boy was deemed a boy--and spared--or a man, and killed.
Every drop of non-Muslim blood Muhammad spilled, he deemed to have set "a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the praise of Allah" (Qur'an, chapter 33, verse 21).
It's all too clear, five years after 9/11, that most Americans lack the motivation to read the Koran--which is neither long, nor impregnable. If they had it, the public would soon discover that even the mildest of translations, which omit the most offensive verses and explicit terms, prove enlightening.
But Spencer's 224-page biography of Muhammad, based entirely on the most important and authentic of Muslim sources, is well-positioned to fill the deficit for even those readers most devoid of educational motivation. " Get it at Amazon
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