The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad

I liked the style of the author, who weaves her narrative in a very easy to read manner and captures the attention of the reader by bringing the main character to life! Truly, this is a remarkable narrative written with authenticity and compassion. Lesley Hazelton does justice to this biography with facts and masterful story telling, which takes one through the life of Prophet Muhammad as though you were there with him during the time he lived. I read the book with riveted attention and could hardly put it down! Indeed a marvelous piece of writing as the author creates the awareness of his being fully human and the task ahead to convey God’s message to mankind as His chosen Messenger. She does justice to his life’s mission and why he is considered the most influential person in history.

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.

The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad Lesley Hazelton isn't just a seasoned reporter who's probed her subject like few others have, she's a elegant writer, able to craft a compelling and fluid story. And a story is what this is, considering that her subject lived some 1400 years ago and spent most of that time clouded by legend. That said, she's painstakingly researched the primary biographies of the prophet and Koran itself translating the original text word by word. With a reporter's zeal and a novelist's eye she pulls together the most realistic, thoughtful and entertaining story of Mohammed anyone could ask for. Nevertheless she will have her critics. Since it is nearly impossible to untangle Islam from the strife, the war, the land, the water supply, the oil, the fanaticism, racism and history that inextricably link it to Western thought, there are those who'll find her "off message" and, therefore, suspect. Look only as far as Hari Kunru in the New York Times, who seems stunned and confused that Ms. Hazelton managed to see beyond the prism of his own personal experiences. After all, some fundamentalist government banned him from speaking somewhere...shouldn't that be part of her story? For him, and those like him, the bigger story is problematic; personal experience matters, so long as it's his own. Fortunately reviewers like Kunru seem to be the minority, and a transparent minority at that. This book is strong enough to stand on its own merit, and its own quality.

I got this book since I knew very little about Muhammad or the origins of Islam. After the first few pages I had a hard time putting the book down. It was very informative and read like a novel, in a sense bringing the historical figures back to life. The author also connects some events and circumstances from the 6th and 7th centuries to current times which added to the book's relevance. It is interesting that Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and even Joseph Smith made their connections with God when going off to deserted places. The instances of great violence described in the book alongside attempts at peace and harmony created a theme throughout the book that, like in many religions, is perplexing to say the least. After reading this book I got Hazleton's book After the First Muslim which was written prior to the one I am reviewing. I hope Hazleton writes more on this subject as her style makes for easy, interesting, and informative reading. I strongly recommend this book if you are looking to learn about an important person and time with which you are not familiar.

The book provided an historical look at Mohammed, his humble up bringing, the mountain top visit form Angel gabriel, Abraham and Moses, endowing Mohammed to speak of the one true God. God id the only God. As the Nazarene came as a man of peace, Mohammed came a messenger of God, willing to go to battle for his belief. It is a remarkable story of what it took to establish Islam in the middle east. Mohammed came along 600 plus years after The Christ who was the foundation for the Christian faith which had spread throughout the middle east. Islam share many of the same prophet of the old testament. It was well written, and explained a great deal about the Islamic faith that i was unaware of at this time. I recommend it to any Religious info and history buffs.

I was trying to decide between 4 and 5 stars here and finally settled on 5 stars on the basis that there are a great deal of books that deal with religion in general, or specifically on Islam. However, these are either too academic or biased due to religiously biased authorship. Hazelton offers a very neutral, clear and honest narrative on the life of the Prophet Muhammad but more importantly, those close to him that raised him and gave him support until his final death in the house of his second great love: Aisha, daughter of one of the first Caliphs. Islam today is greatly misunderstood inasmuch as it is believed men stood by Muhammad and defended the faith but in fact he garnered support from the women in his life who stood by him with impressive resolve. These struggles or jihad continue today. I'm glad I read this book as it gave me a firm foundation into the man who is leader of the second largest faith on earth. Hazelton discusses Arabic terms central to Islam and spends a little time on the great Sunni / Shia schism after Muhammad's death which she also deals with in a following text. If you're interested in religion and philosophy or would like to read a solid academic work on Islam outside of web or newspaper articles - you can't go past The First Muslim.

Une description objective de la vie du prophète, comme il est difficile d’en trouver. Un chef d’œuvre à lire et à relire pour mieux comprendre ce personnage mythique qui continue d’inspirer des millions de personnes dans le monde. Merci Lesley.

Someone who believes in every 'suni sunai baat' (emotionally credulous believer of rumors of positive affirmation). Now there is nothing wrong in being religious, showing a longing for a great tradition is something which I cherish and treasure myself, as long as I am illiterate to the narrative. For a learned person should be at least be able to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. The issue is that it is almost impossible to break the shackles while being in the midst of propaganda protective dome. This is why works by non-Muslim academics is very important to establish incoherencies in the original narrative. These should be valued not castigated as unfortunately very few Muslim academics and so called Alims and Ulemas are brave enough to challenge the stereotypical status quo. Their apologist zeal end up creating myths and myths are unattainable and distant, eventually becoming obfusticated with age. Myths represent super human achievements which no humans can achieve in short. The Ulema in out of zeal or fear have managed to create the myth of Muhammad and stoked it regularly with constant and positive affirmation generation over generation, leading to the current state of Muslim perception as emotionally charged bigots ready to blow and riot at the slightest pretext. Lesley has for me challenged the Muhammad myth with Muhammad the person in flesh and bones, who suddenly becomes very interesting indeed, someone all Muslims can realistically hope to emulate. What Lesley has done here is to point out the facts as narrated by the great Persian historian Ibn Tabari and Ibn Ishq, about the life of the first Muslim, Muhammad. There is nothing new here as all of the narrative exactly the same. Lesley's value add is the subtle focus on well established facts about Muhammad's life like the doubt which he experienced when first visited by Allah's angle of revelation Gabrail. He was terrified by the first encounter with the other world. Why? Because he was only human and terror was the only sane human response. He even tried to kill himself which seemed too human for some Ulema who tried to downplay the incident, thus lending weight to the Mythical Muhammad inadvertently. maybe such questions are not really relevant in Muslim majority agreeable cultures as opposed to a apologist Muslim cultures of Muslim minority cultures where a much more sustained and solid argument has to be made. For as Lesley points out, 'the purity of perfection denies the complexity of a lived life.' Other questions worth pondering raised by Lesley are , how instrumental was Mohammad's foster upbringing critical in the concept of a later Ummah? What defines the meteoric rise of a mere trader to the heights of power among the very divisive Arabs? How did Muhammad's new religion rise to the top of the opposition among a number of similar rival movements? What was in his message which irked the Quraysh so much? What sets Lesely apart is her very addictive story-telling style which is a gift. This art of story telling is highly valued in the East at least, which makes the book a very easy read. A word of caution if you have read Lesley's earlier book on Shia and Sunni (After the Prophet) book though, as a few chapters have been cut paste into this book which is very cheeky indeed. I nearly had to take away one full star due to this gross misdemeanour, but fortunately not only does Lesley manage to portray Muhammad as a human but also does full justice to his very Arabic era. This is an invaluable book about history of the Arabs as well. A must read for all interested in Islam.

Lesley Hazleton (1945- ), the author of this book, is a Jew by faith, a psychologist by education and a journalist by profession. Her simple and elegant biography of Prophet Muhammed consists of three sections, namely “Orphan”, “Exile” and “Leader” – representing the major phases of his life. While this book focuses on facts rather than opinions, the author takes care to explain prevailing norms to provide context to the narrative. For instance, on the topic of polygamy she says: “This seeming muddle of marriages was part of the traditional and far-reaching Arabian web of kinship, one that beggars the modern Western idea of the nuclear family. It makes a mockery of something as simplistically linear as the family tree, becoming far more like a dense forest of vines. And a very strong one, since it would reach deep into the future…” The author also shares her knowledge of psychology which remains true to this day: “Every immigrant knows that leaving home is not simply a matter of geography. Whether the move is from a rural to an urban area, from one city to another or even one continent to another, it is often a wrenching experience. It means uprooting yourself – tearing out your roots and leaving yourself vulnerable…” While this is written in the context of the Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina, the author’s words can be understood by contemporary readers in the light of their own experiences. Apart from biographical details, the author shares many insights, e.g. “Instead of rejecting the pre-Islamic rituals, Muhammed now officially incorporated them. The sites of prayer, the circling of the Kaaba, the sacrifices, the head-shaving – all these and more were purified and re-dedicated to God by his example, in the final demonstration of his vision of unity.” A map of the Middle East in the 7th century has been provided in the beginning of the book. A large number of Arabic terms (e.g. Khalifa, Qibla, Hajj) have been explained in detail wherever they appear in the text, although there is no separate glossary. On the whole, I found this book to be excellent. Soon I intend to read “After the Prophet” by the same author, which describes the Shia-Sunni split that took place after the death of the Prophet.

Anyone who wants to know anything about Islam and the life of Muhammad should read this book. Lesley Hazleton is an agnostic, which allows her to view Muhammad and the religion he taught from a more neutral perspective than those writers who from the beginning regard him as a false prophet and thus find it difficult to write about him or his religion in a detached way. While showing a profound understanding of the times and circumstances in which Muhammad lived, quite different to those which Jesus experienced, Lesley Hazleton does not try to excuse the actions that Muslims later carried out in the name of a religion that was designed to bring peace. Highly recommendable.