Important, readable and intelligent.

Named by "Time" magazine as one of the 100 most important innovators of the century, Tariq Ramadan is a leading Muslim scholar , with a large following especially among young European and American Muslims. In his first book written for a wide audience, he offers a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, highlighting the spiritual and ethical teachings of one of the most influential figures in human history. Capturing a life that was often eventful, gripping, and highly charged, Ramadan provides both an intimate portrait of a man who was shy, kind, but determined, as well as a dramatic chronicle of a leader who launched a great religion and inspired a vast empire. Underscoring the historical importance and meaning of Muhammad, "The Messenger" addresses the significance of the Prophet for some of today's most controversial issues, such as the treatment of the poor, the role of women, Islamic criminal punishments, war, racism, and relations with other religions. Selecting those facts and stories from which we can draw a profound and vivid spiritual picture, the author asks how can the Prophet's life remain - or become again - an example, a model, and an inspiration?

And how can Muslims move from formalism - a fixation on ritual - toward a committed spiritual and social presence? In this thoughtful and engaging biography, Ramadan offers Muslims a new understanding of Muhammad's life and he introduces non-Muslims not only to the story of the Prophet, but to the spiritual and ethical riches of Islam.

2008-04-12 Apologist!

As Ramadan himself concedes at the start of this work, biographies of Muhammad already exist and this work is not an attempt to supplant the work of others. It should be viewed rather as an attempt by Ramadan to explore and explain some of the episodes which are alleged to have informed the life of Muhammad, the accepted Prophet of Islam.

This is not a work which seeks to question the validity or the authenticity of the events which make up much of the traditional Islamic narrative, and Ramadan incorporates and draws upon the work of traditional scholars quite freely throughout the text. Indeed this book should be seen as a very slight commentary on the traditional Islamic narrative, but seasoned with the spirit of self-justification and self avowed piety. This latter point is important given Ramadan's familial links with the emergence of a revived Islamic fundamentalism.

This means that for a reader seeking to learn about the life of Muhammad, there are other, more informative works available from both Islamic and non-Islamic perspectives, and others which might be thought of as existing somewhere between these often highly antagonistic positions.

Arguably, the most worrying aspect of this book is the ready acceptance and endorsement of the text by various reviewers, which is highly likely to be linked to Ramadan being regarded as a 'moderate', a modern minded and apparently serious Academic, when he is considered within the present political and ideological discussions of Islam. Whatever the truth of this the fact remains that all of the gushingly supportive reviewers fail to consider the validity and authenticity of that which Ramadan presents and comments upon with such apparent piety, and one wonders whether any were actually qualified to do so.

So this book is, in my view, a perfect example of a case of the 'Emperor's New Clothes' - the text is accepted uncritically and presented as the work of an apparently liberal minded and throughly modern minded Muslim seeking to help Muslim and non-Muslim understand Muhammad within an Islamic context, whilst ignoring the fundamentally important questions regarding history, the inherent cultural and religious bias of Islamic narrative, and (most importantly of all) the value of facts.