The First Muslims: History and Memory.

• Author: Halevi, Leor
• Position: Book review

The First Muslims: History and Memory. By ASMA AFSARUDDIN. Oxford: ONEWORLD, 2008. Pp. xx + 254. $60 (cloth), $19.95 (paper).

This book focuses on the moral values and political ideals of Muslim exemplars from the first and second centuries of the Islamic era, juxtaposing modernist and Islamist interpretations of their history. The book's central conceit is the premise that the history of these Muslims is, despite the contentions of western skeptics and Islamist believers, both knowable and in harmony with a progressive Muslim agenda. This premise gives the narrative great power, particularly because the author skillfully develops a sharp contrast between her historical account, which she describes as "judicious" and "realistic" (p. xx), and the false historical memory that she imputes to Islamists. In presenting her history, Afsaruddin often strikes the tone of the historian whose task it is to distinguish carefully reliable from biased evidence. But near the end of the book she freely admits what the reader senses throughout: that, like Muslim modernists, she has viewed the history of early Islam "through a liberal lens" (p. 197). Her book is, in fact, an unusual cross between a traditional historical monograph and a postmodern, openly subjective, liberal Muslim vision of Islam's past.

Accordingly, any assessment of The First Muslims: History and Memory must vary, depending on whether the book is evaluated as a professional, scholarly work of history or as a work of politics that makes strategic use of history. Taken as a work of politics, Afsaruddin's book is a remarkable achievement. A timely contribution to current debates about the nature of Islam, it argues passionately that the early Islamic tradition is perfectly compatible with a progressive agenda. In Medina, she explains, the first Muslims formed a single community (umma) with the city's Jews (p. 7). Men of low social status readily joined the new religion, drawn by its egalitarian ethos (pp. 3, 63, 71). Women, who lived on the margins of tribal societies in Arabia, also flocked to Islam in great numbers (p. 3). As converts, they came to play key roles: just like men, they transmitted oral traditions (pp. 60, 71), led households in prayer (p. 164), and even fought in battle (pp. 70, 161). Early Muslims valued jihad, yet frequently adopted non-violent definitions of this struggle in the path of God (pp. 111, 116). Similarly, they appreciated martyrdom, but conferred the status of...