The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad Paperback – February 4, 2014

Most of us know about the lives of the prophets and most of what we know boils down to these simplicities: The prophet (Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammed) was born, he lived a thoughtful life, he was a great man and God chose him to be His prophet. Hazelton removes the screen to show who Muhammed the boy was, how he grew up and what his environment was like as he approached prophethood and after that.In this book Hazleton draws from historical writings and skillfully fills in gaps to create a picture of what Muhammed may have been like, how he may have been thinking and how he was influenced. To be sure, some of the material is pure conjecture, but it is intelligent conjecture with enough continuity to be convincing.Hazleton takes us into the prophet Muhammed's mind and his thinking. While it may be impossible to represent exactly what Muhammed may have been thinking, she drew sufficient material around certain events to help us understand the man. After reading The First Muslim, we can appreciate Muhammed better because he becomes more touchable; a man like us but better than us; a man who, while he was great enough to influence billions of people over time, to love him and his message, was still a man with very human reactions.A superbly written book that fills a gap that few books about the prophet Muhammed have been able to fill. I highly recommend reading this book because it will leave you with a better appreciation of who the leader of a great faith really was.

Muhammad's story so lends itself to hagiography. It follows then that anyone attempting to write it can take the easy road and yield to this wonderful temptation. After all, who doesn't like to hear (or tell) a super hero story once every while? But, all of us have to go home once the movie ends. And, that is where Lesley Hazleton's story begins.Building on the solid premise of an orphaned child's need for social acceptance and inclusion, she effortlessly provides a new window from which to view the Prophet's life and mission. She uses his various personality traits (detachment, integrity, steadfastness) to show why he was so exclusively suited to the role he played while also highlighting the weight of prophethood on even this strongest of shoulders. She presents us the man with all his frailties, idiosyncrasies and failures but with empathy and the understanding that hindsight is always 20/20. Lesley claims and does carefully avoid the mistake many historians (or history journalists as I like to call them) make - projecting the future into the past. She adamantly examines him in the backdrop of 7th century Arabia and remains true to Muhammad's early biographers, Ibn Ishaq and Al-Tabari.To a discerning Indian reader, especially to those exposed to Irawati Karve and M T Vasudevan Nair, this approach might not seem too novel. It is one thing to re-render a mythological story but it is totally another to reconstruct the story of a man who lived in flesh and blood and held dear by millions of people. That Lesley manages this with compassion and a lot of respect (for a scarcely understood man) is what makes this a compelling work.Some people (most people) like Tony Stark better than Iron man. Maybe you are one of them.

Based on early biographies of Muhammad, this is a secular but unbiased look at what we know about the man. The author takes great pains to be fair and balanced while not overly judgmental -- this book makes no qualitative claims about the relative good or bad of Islam, and instead presents Muhammad as a surprisingly human historical figure, deeply flawed and yet also highly influential. The narrative is an indispensable historical guide to understanding the religion and the man. The reader is left with a fuller understanding of the conflict between Islam and Judaism, the motivation behind Islamic jihad and learns not only about a religion started by a man, but about the man himself and his motivations; the politician, the husband, the war lord and the mystic. The author does an admirable job presenting the story without editorializing the existence or non-existence of miracles, the supernatural and divine, instead allows the reader reach his own conclusions on these topics as one witnesses the path of Muhammad transgress from non-violent spiritual guru to military rebel, from loving spiritualist to vengeful despot. Of course, this is my own interpretation of the man based on the book and the story it provides -- the brilliance in the author's style is her ability to present a narrative of events without sullying the expose by providing assumptions and emotional interpretations. She provides the proper 7th century context vital to understanding the often violent story of Islam's birth, warts and all, and it makes for a refreshingly human story.A must read for any American looking for a broader context to understanding current events impacting western civilization.