The First Muslim by Lesley Hazleton

The first Muslim by Lesly

Who is a Sunni?

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.