Images of muhammad: narratives of the prophet in islam across the centuries.

AuthorKatz, Marion Holmes
PositionBook review

Images of Muhammad: Narratives of the Prophet in Islam across the Centuries. By TARIF KHALIDI. New York: DOUBLEDAY, 2009. Pp. ix + 342. $27.

Although the life and image of the Prophet Muhammad are central to Islamic piety, until recently few accessible studies of the religious dimensions of the figure of the Prophet were available to academic teachers of Islam. An early contribution, Tor Andrae's Die Person Muhammeds in Lehre und Glauben seiner Gemeinde (1918), remains unavailable in English. After a long hiatus, Annemarie Schimmel's And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (1985) offered an erudite and charming overview, yet one that devoted little attention to chronological development or to the specificity of different Islamic subcultures and agendas. The large body of scholarship devoted to historical reconstruction of the Prophet's biography published over the last thirty years often offers analysis of the evolving theological and ideological agendas informing the earliest renditions of the Prophet's life. However, these works are often highly technical and may present revisionist views that, whatever their factual merits, diverge from the beliefs about Muhammad that have informed Muslim piety over the centuries. Monographs such as Frederick Colby's Narrating Mulyamtnad's Night Journey (2008) offer deep insights into specific facets of the Prophet's image, but are too specialized for many teaching contexts.

At the same time, current events--most notably the Rushdie affair of 1989 and the Danish cartoon controversy of 2006--have attracted attention to Muslim veneration of the Prophet, evoking large volumes of punditry on issues such as visual representation and blasphemy in Islam. Tarif IChalidi's Images of Muhammad is both a deeply learned work and, as stated in the book's introduction, in part a response to the widespread perplexity aroused among outside observers by Muslim responses to the Danish cartoons. Khalidi notes that, while Western coverage of the controversy focused extensively on the issue of freedom of expression, "little was said ... about the love of Muhammad among his community" (pp. viii--ix). While reflecting a formidable level of erudition, the book is an accessible one that will be attractive to educated readers with no prior knowledge of Islamic studies as well as to undergraduate and graduate students. Although based on a wide range of primary texts, it provides only the...

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