Scrutinizing Muhammad's Example and Teachings (Review of Rbt Spencer's "The Truth About Muhammad")

...

A salient feature of "The Truth About Muhammad" is its exclusive reliance on pious Muslim sources: the earliest (and most respected) Muslim biographers of Muhammad, Ibn Ishaq (died 773), Ibn Sa'd (845), and the great historian al-Tabari (923); the "gold-standard" canonical hadith collections of Bukhari (870), and Muslim (875); and the Koran itself.

As Mr. Spencer notes, these are the same sources contemporary Muslim biographers have relied upon, both respected scholars (such as the late Martin Lings, aka Abu Bakr Siray Ad-Din), and popularizers (Javeed Akhter, Yahiya Emerick).

Despite his caveat that the book is "not a comprehensive biography" of the Muslim prophet, Mr. Spencer's concise, pellucid narrative (which includes both a succinct chronology and a glossary of key Arabic names and places) has remarkable breadth, chronicling Muhammad's evolution from a proselytizer, to a prototype jihad conqueror and ruler.

The final chapter is a brilliant analysis of Muhammad's disturbing modern legacy. Mr. Spencer provides understated, scrupulous documentation of the consequences of Muhammad's status as "an excellent example of conduct" (Koran 33:21), invoked by contemporary Muslim clerics, governments, journalists and jihadists alike: exploited child brides and general misogyny, sanctioned by law; Draconian, mutilating punishments such as stoning for adultery and amputation for theft; jihad violence against non-Muslims and Shari'a (Islamic Law)-sanctioned oppression of non-Muslims under Muslim rule.

He concludes with a series of logical, unflinching recommendations for non-Muslim governments, all of which hinge, ultimately, upon an honest recognition of Muhammad's bellicose example: Stop insisting that Islam is a religion of peace; initiate a full-scale Manhattan Project to find new energy sources; make Western aid contingent upon renunciation of the jihad ideology; call upon American Muslim advocacy groups to work against the jihad ideology; revise immigration policies with the jihad ideology in view.

...

Transcending even these seminal biographers, Robert Spencer's perspicacious modern analysis makes clear how Muhammad's sacralized behaviors continue to motivate and direct the contemporary global resurgence of jihad, in all its cultural as well as military manifestations. Policymaking elites must heed Mr. Spencer's urgent concluding admonitions:

"It is difficult if not impossible to maintain that Islam is a religion of peace when warfare and booty were among the chief preoccupations of the prophet of Islam. Sincere Islamic reformers should confront these facts, instead of ignoring or glossing over them, and work to devise ways in which Muslims can retreat from the proposition that Muhammad's example is in all ways normative. If they do not do so, one outcome is certain: bloodshed perpetrated in the name of Islam and in imitation of its prophet will continue . . .

"If no Western politicians can be found who are courageous enough to grasp this nettle, Western countries will eventually pay a stiff price, when the jihadists they have admitted carry out successful jihad attacks, or inspire native-born Muslims to do so -- or when they advance Shari'a [Islamic Law] provisions by peaceful means, as in the campaigns in the United Nations and several European countries for the adoption of Islamic blasphemy laws in the wake of the Muhammad cartoon riots."