A complex but readable reinterpretation of Muhammad’s role as a warrior prophet.
Renowned military historian Hayward explores the war campaigns of the Prophet Muhammad in this sprawling historical study.
Perhaps no two people have influenced the world quite like Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad. And while their religious teachings are similar, Muhammad diverges in his dual role as a “warrior-prophet” who “fought militarily to fulfil [sic] the mission that he believed God had given him.” Central to Hayward’s impetus in writing this book is his belief that contemporary scholarship has inadequately addressed Muhammad’s militarism. Most studies on the prophet, for example, are written by theologians and religious scholars who fail to approach the topic with the methodology of trained historians and thus focus on issues of fiqh (jurisprudence). According to the author, many scholars are also plagued by “present-centeredness” and operate under modern assumptions that condemn warfare or rely on Western tropes that portray “Muhammad as a general” based on contemporary understandings of military organization. Eschewing these historiographic trends that attempt to speak to 21st-century issues, Hayward emphasizes the religious and military context in which Muhammad acted. Divided into three sections, the book begins by placing Muhammad in a historical context in which the “ordinariness of raiding” was the “norm.” A similar contextual approach guides the book’s subsequent sections: “Pitched Battles and Attacks on Settlements” and “Muhammad’s War With the Jews.” Arguing against allegations that Muhammad was antisemitic, the book notes that Jews were “under his sworn protection,” were given “certain freedoms,” and that there were even Jewish “strong warriors” serving as auxiliaries in his Khaybar campaign. Though Hayward is a self-described “committed Muslim,” he is uninterested in presenting religious history or defending Muhammad’s military competence. Instead, as a professor of strategic thought at Rabdan Academy in the United Arab Emirates and author of multiple books on military history, he seeks to further readers’ understanding of “the historical Muhammad” whose military actions are filtered through a seventh-century Arabic mindset. At more than 450 dense pages, the book may be overwhelming to those unfamiliar with Islamic history, though ample reading aids (from maps and charts to timelines and a glossary) are provided. With almost 1,500 endnotes, this is a remarkably well-researched book that has a solid grasp on both contemporary scholarship as well as Arabic primary sources.
A complex but readable reinterpretation of Muhammad’s role as a warrior prophet.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2022
ISBN: 9781800119802
Page Count: 457
Publisher: Claritas Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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