I remember Karen Armstrong at the Islamophobia conference in Istanbul, telling us how Americans rushed to the bookstores after the notorious 9/11 events and swept the books they could find on Islam off the shelves, including her own. A Prophet for Our Time holds a critical ground, as attention turns to Islam and the Prophet with every scandalous event, whenever certain persons with “Arabic names” are engaged in violent acts, or some impudent remark or drawing to offend Muslims comes up in the West. Unfortunately, shock waves seem bound to keep coming, for as long as we wait for them to awaken us to the necessity of making an attempt to understand the “other.” As for Armstrong, this is what her efforts are all about: not only understanding the other, but also learning to respect them in order to live in a peaceful world.

A Prophet for Our Time is not a first. In fact, Armstrong published her earlier study Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet in 1991, ten years before 9/11. Armstrong had seen that Western people were in no position to revise their negative impression of the Prophet. She writes that Western culture has a long history of Islamophobia that dates back to the Crusades, and that Christian monks of the twelfth century in Europe insistently defamed him. In her own words, “This distorted version of the Prophet’s life became one of the received ideas of the West, and Western people have always found it difficult to see Muhammad in a more objective light.” After 9/11, things got worse as some sectors of the Western media continued this tradition of hostility, and went so far as to make provoking insults. Her response in the face of this unfair attitude is virtually her mission statement on writing about the Prophet:

“We can no longer afford to indulge this type of bigotry, because it is a gift to extremists who can use such statements to ‘prove’ that the Western world is indeed engaged on a new crusade against the Islamic world. Muhammad was not a man of violence. We must approach his life in a balanced way, in order to appreciate his considerable achievements…”

A Prophet for Our Time is a short biography, but not in the classical sense. The author informs the reader about the culture and conditions of the time, with the awareness of addressing a Western audience. As the events unfold, the book focuses on different aspects of the Prophet’s life such as the underlying reasons behind his wars, marriages, and so forth. We have a portrait of a decent person who made certain decisions and acted in a certain way for fair and understandable reasons. Rather than a holy figure, we are presented with a moral and social reformer who, in the face of a new situation, falls into a deep trance and then comes up with what he “believes” to be revelations to settle the issue. It should be noted that the overall narration reflects in many ways the tradition of Orientalist scholarship in which elements of Islam are explained by reference to the pre-Islamic society of the Arabian peninsula.

Here, one cannot help but remember Said Nursi challenging the critics of the Prophet. He wrote that if a person claims to bring messages from God, he is either telling the truth, or is the greatest liar. What we see in A Prophet for Our Time however, is an attempt to find a position in between. A comment in The Economist about the earlier biography summarizes the author’s stance: “respectful without being reverential…”

The Muslim audience may find the book a bit disappointing. In fact, the book has various points on which Muslims will agree, beg to differ, oppose, and even find offensive. Take the Prophet’s marriages for instance. They are explained in quite an agreeable way. However, Muslim scholars reject the account of the Prophet’s marriage to Zaynab as given in the book. Muslims believe that God Almighty willed people to understand that an adopted son (Zayd) was not like a real son, and the revelation about this marriage simply shattered a pre-Islamic taboo. Although the book notes this dimension, it rather makes the case sound like a love affair. At this point, we had better turn our attention to the sources of the book.

Some Western critics praise A Prophet for Our Time for being based on early Islamic sources such as Tabari and Ibn Ishaq. However, those who are familiar with Islamic studies know that the significance of these scholars of the early period was their compilation and recording of verbal reports which varied in reliability. Their works provided precious material for the next generation’s scholars, like Bukhari and others, who meticulously refined these reports and included the authenticated ones in their books. However, Orientalist researchers have felt very easy about referring to the early period compilations, taking the weak and unauthenticated reports as true, and rationalizing everything in their own way. Thus, most of the narrations from Tabari and Ibn Ishaq in A Prophet for Our Time are actually taken from just such an commentary by Alfred Guillaume.

The gharaniq issue can be given an as example. A Prophet for Our Time repeats the claim that the Prophet did not at first condemn the worship of the cult of the three gharaniq-the idols which pagans believed to be the three “daughters” of God. Different Muslim academics have indicated why such claims are impossible, so it will suffice to draw attention to a simple fact. Belief in one God, with absolute rejection of any idols, daughters, or sons to be ascribed to Him, was essential in Islam from the very beginning: the first martyrs of Islam, Sumayya and Yaser, preferred to die than to accept the idols of the Quraysh.

A Prophet for Our Time useful book from different aspects. Above all, Armstrong’s powerful language is especially commendable for its success in reflecting the author’s positive approach and dedication to mutual understanding between members of different faiths and to promoting a sense of “compassion” across the world. In this regard, Muslims as well as non-Muslims should respond to her call with their support. With due respect to her decent cause, I would still encourage those who would like to learn more about the Prophet to look for publications that are based on more authentic sources of Qur’anic exegesis and Traditions, and to be cautious about information derived from other sources that simply narrates narrations without any filters of authenticity.

Korkut Altay is a staff editor for The Fountain.

Lawrence first provides a summary of Prophet Muhammad’s life (peace be upon him) in chapters 1 and 2. In the following chapters, he offers succinct summaries of divergent interpretations of the Qur’an throughout history. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with examples of earlier interpretations of the Qur’an, by the Shi’ite scholar Jafar as-Sadiq and the Sunni Abu Jafar at-Tabari, respectively. The next two chapters cover rather mystic interpretations of the Qur’an. Chapter 8 surveys probably the greatest Islamic mystic Ibn al-Arabi, “a deep sea diver in the ocean of the Qur’an” (p. 109). Chapter 9 is about another mystic, Jalal ad-Din Rumi (or Mawlana), who sought to display the “everyday wonders” of the Qur’an in his Mathnawi. The last four chapters cover four different modern interpreters of the Qur’an. Chapters 11 and 12 deal with two Indian/Pakistani scholars. Ahmad Khan of chapter 11 offers an early rationalist (“militantly rationalist” in Lawrence’s words) critique of traditional interpretations in the face of Western intrusion into the Muslim world. By contrast, Muhammad Iqbal of chapter 12 makes a case for a redefined spiritual Islam in the late-colonial period and calls for revivification of moral Islamic values among Muslims. In chapter 13, the American interpreter W. D. Muhammad offers yet another interpretation that stresses racial equality more than anything else. Lastly, in chapter 14, Lawrence depicts the mind of the notorious Osama bin Laden, in whose interpretations military jihad takes precedence over all other issues. Lawrence argues that bin Laden “selects only those verses that fit his message, and then cites them exclusively for his own purpose” (p. 180).

In one unusual chapter (chapter 7), Lawrence portrays a Christian interpreter of the Qur’an, Robert of Ketton, who was the first person to translate the Qur’an into a Western language (Latin) in the twelfth century. An Englishman, Robert of Ketton moves to Toledo and becomes part of a Christian group that translates scientific texts from Arabic into Latin. He eventually finds himself heading a team project to translate the Qur’an into Latin. In a time of heated and continuous warfare between Christians and Muslims, Robert of Ketton takes a more noble way of engaging with Muslims. Islam was to be approached “not by arms, but by words; not by force, but by reason” (p. 100).

In an era when both adherents and critics of the Qur’an make claims as to what “real Islam” is, Bruce Lawrence’s survey of Qur’anic interpretations reminds us that all interpretations of the Qur’an are but partial representations that favor certain sections and meanings over others. In so doing, The Qur’an: A Biography becomes a friendly reminder that it takes more humility than most of us assume to understand and appreciate the richness of the verses of the Qur’an.

As a final note, for the more academic reader the book has a significant flaw. Although he provides a “further reading” list which includes most of the books he cites, except for the verses from the Qur’an, Professor Lawrence does not provide direct references for other quotes or opinions. I hope he will remedy this gap in a future edition.