Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources

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Therefore, it must be understood that his rendering of the Prophet's (PBUH) narrative was a work of piety, and not necessarily one of historical scholarship. Or perhaps, people were fascinated by the miraculous nature of Muhammad and his numerous "miracles" presented in this book.

You may be more knowledgeable and say, "No no, it happened, it is in the Sira, the biography of Muhammad".In the end it might not be so important that this or that prophet did not actually do something that religious traditions mention. The first line was acceptable to Muslims, but Uthman ibn Mazun of Jumah took strong exception to the second. Muhammad: His Life Based to the Earliest Sources was given an award by the government of Pakistan, and selected as the best biography of the Prophet in English at the National Seerat Conference in Islamabad in 1983. The prophet was supposedly a good orator whose incising criticism so rattled the Quraysh that they exclaimed that ‘our fathers insulted, our ways scoffed at, and our gods reviled’. Muhammad’s legacy consisted primarily in knitting the clans and tribes together into a homogeneous society.

Overall, the book by Lings is very easy to read and is brilliantly written, very informative and accessible. Highly recommend people to read this book by Betty Kelen as an independent account from a non-Muslim. This book will be read with equal enjoyment by those already familiar with Muhammad's life and those coming to it for the first time.Muhammad is a true work of art, as enthralling as the best novels with the difference that this is not fiction but fact. If you have forgotten, your idea of Muhammad was that he did this mainly for economical and political reasons rather than any spiritual reasons. He put them off with a conciliatory answer; but when they saw that he had done nothing they came to him again and said: "O Abu Talib, thine is a high and honorable position amongst us, and we have asked thee to hold in check thy brother's son, but thou hast not done so. Don't read the book because there are too many major mistakes but listen to the amazing lectures based on the book by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.

It's a reminder of the sacrifices made by Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم and his companions, and most of all to be in constant gratitude for the gift that Allah has bestowed on the Ummah. Lings illustrates these examples from the start of Islam, which he states to be founded “on the basis of the ritual purification and prayer” (47) through the establishment of the ideal community at Medina.

However, don't forget to remember the acts of barbarity committed by him: the exiles of Jews, followed by the massacre of all the men of an entire tribe named the Banu Qurayza; the way he and his companions divided up the women between them, as if they were mere objects; the words he had spoken in favor of military actions against nonbelievers; his insatiable thirst for wives; his even greater insatiable thirst for power and grandiose; his behavior which resembled that of a violent cult leader; his actions towards the Jews, Christians, and the Arab pagans; the Quranic revelations, which on more than one occasion seemed to you to be giving Muhammad exactly what he would want if he was acting out of purely political and economical interests; and finally, his marriage with Aisha when she was six years old.