Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters

by Omid Safi

Presents a portrait of Muhammad that reveals his centrality in the devotions of modern Muslims, exploring the role of women in Islam, tensions with other religions, and the role of cyberspace in Islam's evolution.

• ISBN10: 0061959715
• ISBN13: 9780061959714
• Publish Date: 17 November 2009
• Publish Status: Active
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperOne
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[clementine]

I read this book for my Islamic Civilization class. It's not a book I probably would have read otherwise, mainly because I am not huge on non-fiction and will choose trashy novels or anything vaguely dystopian over anything else nine times out of ten. However, I thought that this was an intelligent, compassionate, well-written look at the life of Muhammad and the current state of Islam as it relates to the Prophet.

I am not one of those people who hates Islam and sees the entire, enormously populated "Islamic world" as some monolithic culture full of terrorism, fundamentalist religion, and human rights violations, so I was already open to Safi's message. I can't say for sure if this book would change the minds of any truly ignorant, rigid Islamophobes - but I do think that it would make people who were more on the fence think long and hard and what they think they know about Islam. This is a really fantastic perspective, and one that is needed in this world full of idiotic, inaccurate anti-Islam rhetoric.

So, again, this book didn't really change my mind on anything fundamental, since I am already a person who understands that Islam is not an inherently violent, awful religion. However, I certainly did learn a lot about the beginnings of Islam, Muhammad's life, and modern-day Islam. Safi managed to pack a lot of information into the book, but it didn't seem dense or overwhelming.

There were places where it lagged a bit, but, again, that could just be due to the fact that I am not generally a huge non-fiction person. In general, though, I thought this was a wonderful book, and one that more people should be reading.