Muhammad: Forty Introductions
Product ID: 124728238
A “scholarly, hip, and digressive” primer on the life and teachings of the great prophet Muhammad—and the stunning diversity of Islam ( New Yorker ) “ Muhammad is perfect . . . a book designed to seduce, educate, and irritate its audience into curiosity about Islam and Muhammad, and on all three fronts it succeeds.” —NPR Books He ranks among the most venerated historical figures in the world, as well as among the most contested. Muhammad: Forty Introductions offers a distinct and nuanced take on the life and teachings of the prophet Muhammad, using a traditional genre of Islamic literature called the forty hadiths collection. Hadiths are the reported sayings and actions of Muhammad that have been collected by the tens of thousands throughout Islamic history. There is a tradition in which Muslim scholars take from this vast textual ocean to compile their own smaller collections of forty hadiths, an act of curation that allows them to present their particular understanding of Muhammad’s legacy and the essential points of Islam. Here, Michael Muhammad Knight offers forty narrations that provide windows into the diverse ways in which Muslims envision Muhammad. He also examines his own relationship to Muslim traditions while exploring such topics as law, mysticism, sectarianism, gender, and sexuality. By revealing the Prophet to be an ongoing construction, he carefully unravels notions about Islam’s center and margins. Review: Quality writing - Written by the GOAT Michael Muhammad Knight. Assigned for class but so well written that I read the whole thing and I'm not even that religion Review: A new way of looking at things - Michael Muhammad Knight is a scholar of our times! Very thought provoking book, well written and referenced; also good how it refers to other similar works on similar themes such as the works of Dr Shahab Ahmad
| Best Sellers Rank | #1,712,176 in Kindle Store ( See Top 100 in Kindle Store ) #259 in Islamic Theology (Kindle Store) #450 in Islamic Quran #453 in Islamic History |
J**S
Quality writing
Written by the GOAT Michael Muhammad Knight. Assigned for class but so well written that I read the whole thing and I'm not even that religion
D**U
A new way of looking at things
Michael Muhammad Knight is a scholar of our times! Very thought provoking book, well written and referenced; also good how it refers to other similar works on similar themes such as the works of Dr Shahab Ahmad
K**Y
A book not just about Muhammad but about the ways we imagine and reimagine faith
I have no personal connection to Islam or Muhammad, but am inspired by this book and by its author. It taught me not only about Muhammad—the real person who existed and whose message eventually spread to millions around the world—but about how Muhammad is remembered, imagined, contested, and rewritten in the story Islam tells about itself. The structure of it is clever. There are forty chapters, each looking at Muhammad through a different lens: as a prophet, a father, a grandfather, an orphan, a refugee, a statesman. Some chapters take leaps—showing a portrait of Muhammad (something that many people assume is forbidden in Islam), imagining Muhammad as queer, considering whether he could be called a shaman. Another takes on the topic of Muhammad's marriage to A'isha, who is said, in some histories, to have been a pre-teen when the marriage took place, and still another challenges our contemporary understanding of the word jihad. Knight puts himself into the work too, writing about how he grappled with the question of whether a person who died by suicide should be forgiven, about his relationship to prayer, "forbidden" substances and foods, and about how he has interpreted and learned from other religious scholars. In my university humanities courses there was often a book on the syllabus that wasn’t a straight academic textbook—the “cool smart” book written for a wider audience, which was fun to read but also permanently changed my worldview. I would have loved to have encountered this book as a college student, and in fact Michael Knight, who is a professor of religious studies, reveals in the book that he wrote it after looking around for the perfect textbook to use in his "intro to Islam" courses and not finding anything that fit his vision. I love that he wrote the book that he wanted to see exist in the world. There's a lot of misinformation and unexamined assumptions about Islam in culture today, and its practitioners are the target of discriminatory policies. I think this primer/textbook/memoir/record of devotion and faith could add so much to our public conversation about Islam. I loved living inside the continually questioning, daring, humble, and unique mind of Michael Muhammad Knight.
Trustpilot
1 week ago
2 months ago