Salam, this is a book review that appeared in the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Interesting to read how the Sirah/biography books about the Prophet SAW changed over time. Maybe we could invite Dr. Kecia Ali to give a book talk? October 6, 2014 A Muhammad for Every Age
Alamy An inscription on the Grand Mosque of Dubai cites the Islamic profession of faith: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” By Bruce B. Lawrence Orphan and merchant, prophet and statesman, the seventh-century Arab leader Muhammad ibn Abdullah inaugurated a new chapter in global history, crucial for Muslims but no less important for non-Muslims. Much has been written about his life, and The Lives of Muhammad (Harvard University Press), by Kecia Ali, surveys the entire field of classical and modern engagements with the central figure of Islamic history. The author, an associate professor of religion at Boston University, is known for her careful work on women, marriage, and Islamic law. The complexity of the task facing her becomes evident as soon as you go online: Amazon.com has more than 1,000 biographies of Muhammad. She does not review all these sources, instead opting to frame them into a sequence of stages: the sira (Arabic for "biography") of primitive devotion, the sira of canonical consensus (for Sunni Muslims), and the sira of contemporary debate. The Lives of Muhammad By Kecia Ali (Harvard University Press) It is that last category with which the author is primarily concerned. Highlighting work in English in the past 150 years, Ali offers a controversial thesis: Biographies of Muhammad have taken a Protestant turn. She focuses on Muhammad not as a source of metaphysical truth or personal piety but as a historical person with his own life story. Just as depictions of the historical Jesus are ever-changing, refashioned to fit new circumstances, so is the quest for the historical Muhammad. Since the late 19th century, those who laud and those who critique Muhammad, Muslims and non-Muslims, have focused on similar elements of his story. They have claimed to derive their data from the earliest period, yet they have switched from portraying the Prophet as the model for all believers, a hagiographic view, into evaluating his importance to their own world. Even more astonishing, family and women have taken center stage as proof of Muhammad’s mission, the narratives about them framed not in Arabia but in India, and not by those writing in Arabic but by those relying on English. The first efforts at biography, from the eighth to the 10th centuries, contributed to the broad contours of what was known, and later written, about Muhammad in Arabic. During the 19th century, those sources were translated, summarized, and commented on in a variety of European languages. The most influential biographies, however, were those written by British authors serving in India. It was a Christian Arabist from Bengal, William Muir, who changed the nature of biography about Muhammad in the modern period. Later biographers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, pious and critical, accepted the instances from the life of Muhammad prioritized by Muir in his magisterial four-volume The Life of Mahomet, from Original Sources (1858, 1861), later abridged (a "mere" 613 pages). Muir focused on three topics, which also parse as three questions about Muhammad: Was the Quranic revelation given to him authentic? Did his character change from Mecca to Medina? And how did he behave toward women, especially his two most prominent wives, Khadija and Aisha? Central to Muir’s quest was whether Muhammad had received a true revelation (still being challenged, most [in]famously in Salman Rushdie’sThe Satanic Verses). Drawing especially from the writings of al-Waqidi and al-Tabari, Muir saw a kernel of historical truth, but with some reservations. While others dismissed even that minimal tarnish, most agreed with Muir’s accent on Muhammad the man, extolling him as an exemplar of human progress toward freedom: not just a Prophet, a major virtue in Muslim eyes, but also a harbinger of Islam as a superior civilization. In "Eminent Muslims," perhaps the most brilliant and certainly most densely argued chapter in the The Lives of Muhammad, Ali demonstrates how several Indian biographers writing in English, especially Ameer Ali, influenced the Egyptian modernist and essayist Muhammad Husayn Haykal, even though Haykal wrote his Life of Muhammad (1935), deemed to be a classic, in Arabic. Later, when it was translated into English, the parts relating to Muhammad’s two most prominent wives, Khadija and Aisha, were toned down, or deliberately mistranslated, to project the Prophet as "an enlightened man." Ali goes on to show how Muhammad continued to be refashioned in the late 20th century. Biographies began to compare the "enlightened" Muhammad not with Jesus and Moses, as in the eighth century, but with Jesus and Buddha. While Buddhist perspectives had entered the Prophet’s biography in the late 19th century, some recent scholars, along with a noted popularizer, Deepak Chopra, have taken up the effort of comparison with zest. Others, like Karen Armstrong, according to Ali, have changed their accounts to suit the latest mood, in Armstrong’s case dodging debates about Aisha’s age and also shifting from pre- to post-9/11 sensibilities in her best-selling biographies to emphasize compassion in Muhammad’s teachings. Ali also points out that women like Khadija, Aisha, and Muhammad’s other wives were a major part of the life of the seventh-century Prophet, but that through the centuries, their role has been assessed mainly by male biographers. She draws attention to a major exception: the 20th-century Egyptian scholar Bint al-Shati’, who died in 1998. Her intention was "to give another perspective on Muhammad through exploring his relationships with women," whether wives, daughters, or his mother. Is that biography? Some critics of Bint al-Shati’ have said no, but Ali reminds us that "it is worth thinking about what forms of life story count as biography." No one can finish Ali’s book without a renewed curiosity about reading, interpretation, and authority, the central concerns of the author. Her goals are to understand how Muhammad has come to be seen as a modern man of action since the late 19th century, and to herald new ways of thinking about him in the 21st century. She concludes with another startling provocation: "Can Muhammad be seen as a model CEO? Perhaps," she writes. "Why should a businessman not write about him as the epitome of executive skill?" And she notes a multivolume encyclopedia depicting Muhammad as supermanager, published in Jakarta in 2010. Ali could also have mentioned Mirza Yawar Baig, author of Leadership Lessons From the Life of Rasoolullah (2012). An Indian entrepreneur who trains other businessmen, he depicts Muhammad as extraordinary in his development of deep faith, unswerving commitment, focus on goals, moral quality, and team management. While not a conventional biography, Baig’s book transforms Muhammad into a fresh model, "cast in modern language and idiom, to be understood by us all, Muslim and non-Muslim." To me, that’s reminiscent of Bruce Barton’s 1925 best seller, The Man Nobody Knows, which cast Jesus as supersalesman, the embodiment of the Protestant work ethic. The portrait of Muhammad as a man for all ages will continue to be written and rewritten. Ali’s Lives, laced with insight and not a bit of irony,helps us understand how this thoroughly modern image came to dominate, and how women and men, non-Muslim and Muslim, have a stake in its continuing iterations. Bruce B. Lawrence is a professor emeritus of religion at Duke University. Among his books is The Qur’an: A Biography (Grove Press, 2006) and Who Is Allah? (forthcoming 2015, University of North Carolina Press). ---------------------------------------- Ermin Sinanović Director of Research and Academic Programs International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) 500 Grove St, Suite 200 Herndon, VA 20170 Tel: (703) 230-2854 Email: ermin@iiit.org / Web: www.iiit.org |
