Combining vast erudition with a refusal to bow before the political
pressures of the day, Muhammad's Mission: Religion, Politics, and
Power at the Birth of Islam by Professor Tilman Nagel, one of the
world's leading authorities on Islam, is an introduction to three
inseparable topics: the life of Muhammad (570-632 CE), the
composition of the Koran, and the birth of Islam. While accessible
to a general audience, it will also be of great interest to
specialists, since it is the first English translation of Professor
Nagel's attempt to summarize a lifetime of research on these
topics. The Introduction, Chapters 1-2, and Appendix 1 provide
essential historical background on the Arab tribal system and
Muhammad's position within that system; the political situation in
pre-Islamic Arabia; the history of Mecca; and pre-Islamic Arabian
religions. Chapters 3-5 cover the beginnings of the revelations
that Muhammad claimed to be receiving from Allah, paying special
attention to the influence on Muhammad of the hanifs, a group of
pre-Islamic pagan monotheists attested in the earliest Islamic
sources. The hanifs claimed to trace their religion back to the
putative original monotheism of Abraham, from which they claimed
Jews and Christians had deviated by, among other things, abandoning
animal sacrifice. Chapter 6 explains how Muhammad's religious
message included a thinly-veiled claim to have the right to
political power over Mecca, a claim that exacerbated tensions with
his own clan and led eventually to his expulsion from Mecca, as
recounted in Chapter 7. Chapters 8-10 describe the impact of the
hijra on the evolution of Islam. Seeing himself as the true heir to
Abraham and the prophets who followed him, Muhammad would demand
allegiance from Jews and Christians, as recounted in Sura 2 and
other Medinan suras. He would initiate a war against Mecca, not in
self-defense, but in order to gain control over the Kaaba, the
central hanif shrine and the new qibla or direction of prayer for
the Muslims. The Muslim victory at the Battle of Badr in 624 would
help to shape a new ideal of a militarized religiosity in which
those who waged war under Muhammad's command would attain the rank
of "true believers," while those converts who refused to make hijra
and to fight for Muhammad were relegated to the lower rank of "mere
Muslims," as Suras 8 and 49 make clear. Muhammad's war against
Mecca alienated many of his Medinan followers, the ansar. The
refusal of the Jews to convert to Islam, combined with the close
connection of the Jews to the ansar, led Muhammad to make war on
the Jews as well as the Meccans. The surrender of Mecca in 630
(Chapter 11) did not lead to the end of war, for the aggressiveness
and military success of Muhammad's movement had made it attractive
to a slew of new converts whose desire for booty had to be
placated. Sura 9, promulgated near the end of Muhammad's life,
served as a broad declaration of war against polytheists, Jews, and
Christians. Chapter 12 describes the evolution of Islam late in
Muhammad's life into a "religious warriors' movement" that sought
to extend the rule of Islam over the entire inhabited world.
Chapter 13 covers the final pilgrimage and death of Muhammad, while
Chapters 14-20 describe the development of Islamic dogma
surrounding the figure of Muhammad and its implications for
politics in the Islamic world and interfaith relations with
non-Muslims up till the present day. The book concludes with
appendices in which Nagel summarizes the state of scholarship
regarding the life of Muhammad (Appendix 2) and the tensions
between competing varieties of Muslim recollection of Muhammad
(Appendix 3). Muhammad's Mission: Religion, Politics, and Power at
the Birth of Islam is an erudite and authoritative guide to events
of world-historical importance by a scholar who has spent a
lifetime mastering the primary sources documenting the birth of
Islam.
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