Muhammad A Biography of the Prophet By Karen Armstrong. San Francisco: Harper, 1992, 290 pp.

Abstract

During the almost one thousand years of European obsession with
Islam, only a few authors have tried to rise above their contemporaries by
presenting a more balanced view of this religious ideology. Armstrong's
main aim is to encourage "this more tolerant, compassionate, and courageous
tradition" (p. 15). From the very beginning, it is apparent that this
book is written with an unsurpassed empathy and that it contains a degree
of dismay and resentment that the truth about the Prophet and Islam has
been compromised and hidden by ethnocentric European writers inspired
either by the Christian church and its missionaries or modem secularism.
The main strength of the book lies in the fact that the author is not
a run-of-the-mill orientalist With experience as a free-lance writer, commentator,
and television documentary producer, Armstrong does not avoid
the themes so dear to European critics of the Prophet, but deals with them
directly. For instance, rather than rationalizing the Prophet's polygamy, ...