Memories of Muhammad

by Omid Safi

[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.