Review by New York Times Review
IN today's febrile cultural and religious climate, what project could be more fraught than writing a biography of Muhammad? The worldwide protests at "The Innocence of Muslims," 14 minutes of trashy provocation posted on YouTube, are a terrible reminder to the would-be biographer that the life story of the prophet of Islam is not material about which one is free to have a "take." Lesley Hazleton's "First Muslim" is a book written by a white woman of dual American and British citizenship, published in America more than a decade after the 9/11 attacks. For many believers it is already - even before it is read, if it is read at all - an object of suspicion, something to be defended against, in case it should turn out to be yet another insult, another cruel parody of a story such an author has no business telling. To others, of course, this book offers a welcome chance to read that life story in a more familiar and accessible form than the Islamic sources, a window into the parallel world where it is worth killing and dying to preserve the Prophet's aura of holiness. Bigots looking to confirm their prejudices will, by and large, find "The First Muslim" a disappointment: Hazleton approaches her subject with scrupulous respect. She blogs as "the Accidental Theologist," where she describes herself as "a psychologist by training, a Middle East reporter by experience, an agnostic fascinated by the vast and often terrifying arena in which politics and religion intersect." In 2010, she gave a TED talk debunking some of the more egregious myths about the Koran, notably the salaciously Orientalist "72 virgins." This is a writer who is working to dispel contradictions, not sharpen them. Where does this leave the reviewer? Embroiled, unfortunately. A few days after I was assigned this book, the Darul Uloom in Deoband, a conservative Islamic seminary, called for me to be barred from speaking at this year's Jaipur Literature Festival. At last year's event I read an excerpt from "The Satanic Verses," still banned in India, to protest the death threat that had forced Salman Rushdie to cancel his scheduled appearance. I was one of four authors who gave such readings. Lawyers and festival organizers advised us to leave town (and in my case India) immediately. Seven police complaints were subsequently brought against us under Indian laws protecting religious feelings from offense. Since I have, as another Muslim group put it in their own press statement, "hurt the sentiments of the community," some people will find my judgment of this book a priori worthless, or at least suspect. Reader, beware. The story of Muhammad is undoubtedly extraordinary. Orphaned in childhood in Mecca, an Arabian trading hub, he rose to be the trusted business agent and later husband of Khadija, a wealthy merchant woman. This respectable citizen took to climbing into the mountains overlooking the town, where he would spend nights in solitary meditation. Eventually he received a revelation, in the form of the voice of the angel Gabriel, who began to dictate the verses of the Koran. As the messenger of this radical new form of monotheism, he disrupted the power structure and eventually led his followers out of Mecca to nearby Medina, where he took full political control and began military operations against the rulers of his birthplace. By the time of his death, Islam had been embraced throughout the Arabian Peninsula and was spreading farther afield. "The First Muslim" tells this story with a sort of jaunty immediacy. Bardic competitions are "the sixth-century equivalent of poetry slams." The section of the Koran known as the Sura of the Morning has "an almost environmentalist approach to the natural world." Theological ideas and literary tropes are "memes" that can go "viral." Readers irritated by such straining for a contemporary tone will find it offset by much useful and fascinating context on everything from the economics of the Meccan caravan trade to the pre-Islamic lineage of prophets called hanifs, who promoted monotheism and rejected idolatry. In the terms it sets itself, "The First Muslim" succeeds. It makes its subject vivid and immediate. It deserves to find readers. However, its terms are those of the popular biography, and this creates a tension the book never quite resolves. Though based on scholarship, it is not a scholarly work. Factual material from eighth- and ninth-century histories is freely mixed with speculation about Muhammad's motives and emotions intended to allow the reader, in the quasi-therapeutic vocabulary that is the default register of so much mainstream contemporary writing, to "empathize" or better still, "identify with" him. Inevitably, a forest of conditionals surrounds such speculation, as Hazleton tries to intuit what Muhammad "must have felt" or "surely would have" done. "For an adolescent trying to cement a life from the shards of loss and displacement," we are told, "the monotheistic idea has to have been immensely powerful." One might equally be justified in saying that animism would have made him feel less alone. Elsewhere we are invited to appreciate "the sheer humanness" of his terrified reaction to the Koranic revelation. Occasionally a novelistic impulse takes over, as in a passage describing a flash flood where "you" "flail and fall" and try to pick yourself up because "the roar of it is on you now." Has Hazleton been in such a flood? Is she paraphrasing someone else's account? This is innocent enough as an exercise in style, but it makes one uncertain about the status of more substantial passages. Muhammad's transition from humble messenger to political leader, and from peaceful preacher to war leader, forms the substance of the story. The factional struggles, political assassinations, night flights and pitched battles that surround it are reminiscent of the experience of another prophet, the Mormon leader Joseph Smith, as is the role of revelation in exonerating sexual impropriety - in Muhammad's case to allay suspicions of infidelity surrounding his third wife, Aisha. Despite the orthodox Muslim insistence that Muhammad, while possessed of human failings, is irreproachable, some of his actions are deeply troubling. Even Hazleton finds it hard to put a positive spin on the mass beheading of up to 900 surrendered men of the Jewish Qurayza tribe, losers in one round of the factional battles for control of Medina. However accurate her book, however laudable her intention to bridge the chasm between believers and unbelievers, Hazleton still has to confront the question of the authenticity of religious revelation. Respect is not the same as belief: her interpretation of "whatever happened up there on Mount Hira" is to stress Muhammad's "experience" of revelation while sidestepping its objective existence. In various places, she hints that the Koran and the Hadith, like other holy books, have a textual history and that certain events in the life of Muhammad are best considered tropes. A fuller examination of these points would have been fascinating, but it would have forced her to embrace the perilous notion that the Koran, instead of being the revealed word of God, might be a text like any other. In evading such material Hazleton clearly hopes to avoid giving offense, but try as she might, she cannot escape the fact that in our time even a well-meaning and fundamentally decent book such as this can never be innocent, because it cannot stand outside our violent recent history. The advocate of a radical new form of monotheism, Muhammad disrupted the power structure. Hari Kunzru's most recent novel is "Gods Without Men."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 7, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
It is surprising how little most people know about the life of the prophet Muhammad. Hazleton sets out to rectify that in this eminently readable biography. Relying on two biographies from the eighth and ninth centuries, as well as other sources, she presents Muhammad's life as both history and story. It begins with a moving scene: Muhammad alone in the barren mountains, at night, praying and waiting. Who he is and how he came to be there are revealed in chapters that show him as an orphan in need of protection, as a young camel driver appreciated for his fairness, as a prophet touched by Allah, and as a political leader driven to bring the message to all those with ears to listen. The beauty of Hazleton's book is that she portrays Muhammad throughout his life as a living, breathing man with the hopes, fears, struggles, and the monumental blessing and burden of knowing he has received divine knowledge. Does she delve into psychology to bring about a fully realized portrait? Yes, but respectfully so, posing more questions than she answers. A highly readable, insightful biography.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Despite Islam's position at the forefront of the American consciousness, the general public knows little of its founder and prophet beyond platitudes and condemnations. Hazleton (After the Prophet) attempts to rectify this imbalance with her vivid and engaging narrative of Muhammad's life. The author portrays her subject as an unlikely and unsuspecting vehicle for the divine, "painfully aware that too many nights in solitary meditation might have driven him over the edge." Sympathetic but not hagiographic, her work draws liberally from a long tradition of Islamic biographical literature about the prophet; the nuanced portrait that emerges is less that of an infallible saint than of a loving family man, a devoted leader of his people, an introspective and philosophical thinker who reluctantly accepted the burden of conveying the word of God, and a calculating political strategist. Hazleton writes not as a historian but as a cultural interpreter, reconstructing Muhammad's identity and personality from the spiritual revolution that he sparked and the stories that his followers passed down. While the speculation is sometimes off-putting (as when Muhammad's final illness is confidently diagnosed as bacterial meningitis), the result is a fluid and captivating introduction that will be invaluable for those seeking a greater understanding of Islam's message and its messenger. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins/Loomis Agency. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Writings about Muhammad (570-632) often fail to show necessary objectivity; depending on the author's perspective, the prophet is depicted in an overly positive or overly negative manner. Hazleton (After the Prophet), a veteran journalist covering the Middle East, shows Muhammad as a very human figure, one who was sincere and generally acted appropriately as a leader. However, she also addresses his significant moral lapses, as when he forced the Qaynuqa Jewish tribe in Medina into exile without significant cause and when he oversaw the execution of more than 400 people of the Qureyz Jewish tribe who had resisted his leadership. More broadly, the book presents the story of one man's journey from humble beginnings to business success, to spiritual calling, and finally to religious leadership. The author draws on the seminal writings of two early Islamic historians, ibn-Ishaq and al-Tabari, as well as other early sources. This work is not, however, a scholarly or academic biography; Martin Ling's Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources would be a better choice for that. VERDICT Those interested in a balanced, readable biography of Muhammad for nonspecialists will find this book helpful.-John Jaeger, Dallas Baptist Univ. Lib., TX (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A longtime reporter on the Middle East, Hazleton (After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam, 2009, etc.) carefully delineates the great events in the life of the "first Muslim," who, like the Christian prophet Jesus, was chosen as the "translator" of God's message to mankind. The author sifts through and synthesizes many differing and conflicting sources for a gently reverential and ultimately winning study of a humble soul in search of his identity. Hazleton effectively fleshes out the iconic events of the messenger's life. Left fatherless as a baby, shunted to a wet nurse who cared for him and brought him up in the Bedouin ways, Muhammad grew into a capable, hardworking caravan agent for his uncle in Mecca before making an advantageous match with a wealthy widow 16 years his elder, Khadija, who would prove a steady companion and his first convert. Muhammad first made a name for himself as the arbitrator in the collective repair of the damaged sacred sanctuary of Kaaba; his altered state atop Mount Hira at age 40 was an experience of "poetic faith," Hazleton explains, resulting in beautiful verses flowing from his lips. He spoke urgently of social justice and reform, and he spoke in Arabic. Exiled from Mecca by the ruling elite, he again proved a natural, masterly negotiator among tribes in Medina, appealing to a higher authority to solve their disputes and drawing up a binding contract of monotheism. Hazleton explains that he resorted to violence only after a passive resistance got him nowhere--the troublesome precedent of jihad. The author writes poignantly of the evolution of the public messenger from the private man. A levelheaded, elegant look at the life of the prophet amid the making of a legend.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
