Faces of Muhammad

Faces of Muhammad PDF Author: John Tolan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691270988
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Heretic and impostor or reformer and statesman? The contradictory Western visions of Muhammad In European culture, Muhammad has been vilified as a heretic, an impostor, and a pagan idol. But these aren’t the only images of the Prophet of Islam that emerge from Western history. Commentators have also portrayed Muhammad as a visionary reformer and an inspirational leader, statesman, and lawgiver. In Faces of Muhammad, John Tolan provides a comprehensive history of these changing, complex, and contradictory visions. Starting from the earliest calls to the faithful to join the Crusades against the “Saracens,” he traces the evolution of Western conceptions of Muhammad through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and up to the present day. Faces of Muhammad reveals a lengthy tradition of positive portrayals of Muhammad that many will find surprising. To Reformation polemicists, the spread of Islam attested to the corruption of the established Church, and prompted them to depict Muhammad as a champion of reform. In revolutionary England, writers on both sides of the conflict drew parallels between Muhammad and Oliver Cromwell, asking whether the prophet was a rebel against legitimate authority or the bringer of a new and just order. Voltaire first saw Muhammad as an archetypal religious fanatic but later claimed him as an enemy of superstition. To Napoleon, he was simply a role model: a brilliant general, orator, and leader. The book shows that Muhammad wears so many faces in the West because he has always acted as a mirror for its writers, their portrayals revealing more about their own concerns than the historical realities of the founder of Islam.

Faces of Muhammad

Faces of Muhammad PDF Author: John Tolan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691270988
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Heretic and impostor or reformer and statesman? The contradictory Western visions of Muhammad In European culture, Muhammad has been vilified as a heretic, an impostor, and a pagan idol. But these aren’t the only images of the Prophet of Islam that emerge from Western history. Commentators have also portrayed Muhammad as a visionary reformer and an inspirational leader, statesman, and lawgiver. In Faces of Muhammad, John Tolan provides a comprehensive history of these changing, complex, and contradictory visions. Starting from the earliest calls to the faithful to join the Crusades against the “Saracens,” he traces the evolution of Western conceptions of Muhammad through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and up to the present day. Faces of Muhammad reveals a lengthy tradition of positive portrayals of Muhammad that many will find surprising. To Reformation polemicists, the spread of Islam attested to the corruption of the established Church, and prompted them to depict Muhammad as a champion of reform. In revolutionary England, writers on both sides of the conflict drew parallels between Muhammad and Oliver Cromwell, asking whether the prophet was a rebel against legitimate authority or the bringer of a new and just order. Voltaire first saw Muhammad as an archetypal religious fanatic but later claimed him as an enemy of superstition. To Napoleon, he was simply a role model: a brilliant general, orator, and leader. The book shows that Muhammad wears so many faces in the West because he has always acted as a mirror for its writers, their portrayals revealing more about their own concerns than the historical realities of the founder of Islam.

Tripping with Allah

Tripping with Allah PDF Author: Michael Muhammad Knight
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1593764995
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Get Book Here

Book Description
If Tripping with Allah is a road book, it’s a road book in the tradition of 2001: A Space Odyssey, rather than On the Road. Amazonian shamanism meets Christianity meets West African religion meets Islam in this work of reflection and inward adventure. Knight, the “Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature” seeks reconciliation between his Muslim identity and his drinking of ayahuasca, a psychedelic tea that has been used in the Amazon for centuries. His experience becomes an opportunity to investigate complex issues of drugs, religion, and modernity. Though essential for readers interested in Islam or the growing popularity of ayahuasca, this book is truly about neither Islam nor ayahuasca. Tripping with Allah provides an accessible look into the construction of religion, the often artificial borders dividing these constructions, and the ways in which religion might change in an increasingly globalized world. Finally, Tripping with Allah not only explores Islam and drugs, but also Knight’s own process of creativity and discovery.

The Praiseworthy One

The Praiseworthy One PDF Author: Christiane Gruber
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253025265
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the wake of controversies over printing or displaying images of the Prophet Muhammad, Christiane Gruber's aim is to bring back into scholarly and public discussion the 'lost' history of imagining the Prophet in Islamic cultures. By studying the various verbal and visual constructions of the Prophet's character and persona over the course of more than one thousand years, Gruber seeks to correct public misconceptions and restore to Islam its rich artistic heritage, illuminating the critical role Muhammad has played in Muslim constructions of self and community at different times and in various cultural contexts. The Praiseworthy One is an exploration of the Prophet Muhammad's significance in Muslim life and thought from the beginning of Islam to today. It pays particular attention to procedures of narration, veneration, and sacralization. Gruber stresses that a fruitful approach to extant textual and visual materials is one that emphasizes the harnessing of Muhammad's persona as a larger metaphor to explain both past and present historical events, to build and delineate a sense of community, and to help individuals conceive of and communicate with the realm of the sacred. The Praiseworthy One shows that Muhammad has served as a polyvalent symbol rather than a historical figure with fixed significance.

Memories of Muhammad

Memories of Muhammad PDF Author: Omid Safi
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061231347
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
From a professor of Islamic studies comes this look at the prophet of Islam who stands as the role model for millions of modern Muslims.

The Muhammad Avatāra

The Muhammad Avatāra PDF Author: Ayesha A. Irani
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190089245
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 457

Get Book Here

Book Description
In The Muhammad Avatara, Ayesha Irani offers an examination of the Nabivamsa, the first epic work on the Prophet Muhammad written in Bangla. This little-studied seventeenth-century text, written by Saiyad Sultan, is a literary milestone in the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural history of Islam, and marks a significant contribution not only to Bangla's rich literary corpus, but also to our understanding of Islam's localization in Indic culture in the early modern period. That Sufis such as Saiyad Sultan played a central role in Islam's spread in Bengal has been demonstrated primarily through examination of medieval Persian literary, ethnographic, and historical sources, as well as colonial-era data. Islamic Bangla texts themselves, which emerged from the sixteenth century, remain scarcely studied outside the Bangladeshi academy, and almost entirely untranslated. Yet these premodern works, which articulate Islamic ideas in a regional language, represent a literary watershed and underscore the efforts of rebel writers across South Asia, many of whom were Sufis, to defy the linguistic cordon of the Muslim elite and the hegemony of Arabic and Persian as languages of Islamic discourse. Irani explores how an Arabian prophet and his religion came to inhabit the seventeenth-century Bengali landscape, and the role that pir-authors, such as Saiyad Sultan, played in the rooting of Islam in Bengal's easternmost regions. This text-critical study lays bare the sophisticated strategies of translation used by a prominent early modern Muslim Bengali intellectual to invite others to his faith.

Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam

Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam PDF Author: Nabil Matar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231156642
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
Henry Stubbe (1632–1676) was a revolutionary English scholar who understood Islam as a monotheistic revelation in continuity with Judaism and Christianity. His major work, An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism, was the first English text to positively document the Prophet Muhammad’s life, celebrate the Qur’an as a divine revelation, and praise the Muslim toleration of Christians, undermining a long legacy of European prejudice and hostility. Nabil Matar, a leading scholar of Islamic-Western relations, standardizes Stubbe’s text and situates it within England’s theological climate. He shows how, to draw a positive portrait of Muhammad, Stubbe embraced travelogues, early church histories, Arabic chronicles, Latin commentaries, and studies on Jewish customs and scriptures, produced in the language of Islam and in the midst of the Islamic polity.

On Islam

On Islam PDF Author: Rosemary Pennington
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253032563
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the constant deluge of media coverage on Islam, Muslims are often portrayed as terrorists, refugees, radicals, or victims, depictions that erode human responses of concern, connection, or even a willingness to learn about Muslims. On Islam helps break this cycle with information and strategies to understand and report the modern Muslim experience. Journalists, activists, bloggers, and scholars offer insights into how Muslims are represented in the media today and offer tips for those covering Islam in the future. Interviews provide personal and often moving firsthand accounts of people confronting the challenges of modern life while maintaining their Muslim faith, and brief overviews provide a crash course on Muslim beliefs and practices. A concise and frank discussion of the Muslim experience, On Islam provides facts and perspective at a time when truth in journalism is more vital than ever.

Truth about Ahmadiyyat

Truth about Ahmadiyyat PDF Author: B. A. Rafiq
Publisher: Islam International Publications Ltd
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 115

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ever since God Almighty has instituted the system of prophet-hood for the guidance of mankind, the opponents of these holy prophets, peace be on them, have always charged them with falsehood and untruth. They were called sorcerers and madmen and were described as disorderly and rebellious. Every prophet and God’s elect was treated in that manner. The same was the case with the Promised Messiah, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, peace be on him. when he put forth his claim of being the Reformer of the age and the Promised Mehdi, not only Muslim divines, but the leaders of other religions also, rose up against him and assailed him with false charges and insupportable objections. Muslim divines proclaimed that his teaching was opposed to Islam and the practice of the Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and showered false charges upon him.

How to Be a Muslim

How to Be a Muslim PDF Author: Haroon Moghul
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807020745
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
A searing portrait of Muslim life in the West, this “profound and intimate” memoir captures one man’s struggle to forge an American Muslim identity (Washington Post) Haroon Moghul was thrust into the spotlight after 9/11, becoming an undergraduate leader at New York University’s Islamic Center forced into appearances everywhere: on TV, before interfaith audiences, in print. Moghul was becoming a prominent voice for American Muslims even as he struggled with his relationship to Islam. In high school he was barely a believer and entirely convinced he was going to hell. He sometimes drank. He didn’t pray regularly. All he wanted was a girlfriend. But as he discovered, it wasn’t so easy to leave religion behind. To be true to himself, he needed to forge a unique American Muslim identity that reflected his beliefs and personality. How to Be a Muslim reveals a young man coping with the crushing pressure of a world that fears Muslims, struggling with his faith and searching for intellectual forebears, and suffering the onset of bipolar disorder. This is the story of the second-generation immigrant, of what it’s like to lose yourself between cultures and how to pick up the pieces.

The Pseudo-historical Image of the Prophet Muhammad in Medieval Latin Literature: A Repertory

The Pseudo-historical Image of the Prophet Muhammad in Medieval Latin Literature: A Repertory PDF Author: Michelina Di Cesare
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110263831
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 557

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring and understanding how medieval Christians perceived and constructed the figure of the Prophet Muhammad is of capital relevance in the complex history of Christian-Muslim relations. Medieval authors writing in Latin from the 8th to the 14th centuries elaborated three main images of the Prophet: the pseudo-historical, the legendary, and the eschatological one. This volume focuses on the first image and consists of texts that aim to reveal the (Christian) truth about Islam. They have been taken from critical editions, where available, otherwise they have been critically transcribed from manuscripts and early printed books. They are organized chronologically in 55 entries: each of them provides information on the author and the work, date and place of composition, an introduction to the passage(s) reported, and an updated bibliography listing editions, translations and studies. The volume is also supplied with an introductory essay and an index of notable terms.