AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Mohammed by Maxime Rodinson ISBN: 0-7139-0116-0 Publisher: Allen Lane Pub. Date: 1971 Format: Unknown Binding

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Good bio of one mean dude.
Comment: If you are looking for an opinionated but fair-minded sketch of the prophet Mohammed in the context of his times, by a historian who is not out to portray his subject as the devil incarnate, but is still gamely willing to relate events and interpret them in a straightforward way that might lose him his head in some countries -- this could be the book for you. This book is lively, surprisingly balanced for a work by a Marxist, keeps the tangents short and sweet, and strikes me as generally judicious history. I don't share the author's materialism, and sometimes his attitude strikes me as a bit patronizing and cynical. But the story is well-told and insightful. And even when the author may be (in my view) wrong, his error usually consists of useful insights that are spread too thin.

Politicians, the media, and academics have been diligently trying to persuade us, of late, that Islam is a religion of peace. The terrorists are "traitors to their faith," which is "good and peaceful."

Mr. Rodinson does not set out specifically to tear down this viewpoint. He does warn, in his straightforward way, that "Muslims have every right not to read the book or to aquaint themselves with the ideas of a non-Muslim, but if they do so, they must expect to find things put forward there which are blasphemous to them." But later he notes disapprovingly of Christian critics that "the accounts given of (Mohammed) by his disciples were taken and twisted to make a hideous portrait of a cruel and lascivious individual, steeped in every kind of viciousness and crime. . . " This comment comes towards the end of the book. He seemed not to have noticed that in the previous 200 pages, he had painted a very similar portrait. It appears, strangely enough, that the facts themselves may have something to do with the "image." But read the book for yourself, and tell me if Mohammed was a good man or bad.

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man

Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent, unbiased historical summary
Comment: I cannot promote this book more. Rodinson explores the prophet's life from birth to death, in an un-biased, open-minded manner. Translation: she explores everything, the unsavory moments, to the acts of ultimate courage and commitment.