![]() ![]() He states that Muhammad could not have been illiterate, making the Qur'anic revelation less miraculous that the egalitarian Medina Constitution-the symbol of Muhammad's great statesmanship-was actually revised in hindsight to hold such values and the death of the Prophet's grandson Husayn at the Karbala massacre was, post-death, recast as a gesture of martyrdom by Shi'ite Muslims and not a conscious, self-sacrificial decision by Husayn himself. ![]() ![]() Moreover, Aslan quietly challenges various "myths" dear to the average Muslim. Unfortunately, charging through more than 1,400 years of Islamic history in 300 pages means that some nuances are lost. Aslan's brief but accurate analyses of polygyny (or polygamy), the veil, jihad and the devastating effect that European, particularly British, colonialism had on the Islamic world convey deep insight. He astutely recognizes that the struggle between arch-conservative Wahhabi Islam and the innovative, reform-oriented Islam of the Prophet Muhammad are at war, dragging the United States and the West along. Aslan, a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Iowa and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, argues in this informative but uneven study that a reformation of Islam is already underway. ![]()
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