The Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was one of the most influential men in human history — but there’s little we can say about his life with historical certainty. The details of his life have been debated and manipulated ever since he walked the earth in the seventh century.
Boston University professor Kecia Ali’s new book, The Lives of Muhammad, examines those divergent narratives. In it, she explores the different ways the prophet’s life story has been told and retold, by both Muslims and non-Muslims, from the earliest days of Islam to the present.
As Ali tells NPR’s Arun Rath, “There are a lot of ways in which Muhammad’s life has been understood and experienced and celebrated in the past 1,400 years” — including, but not limited to, a wealth of different versions of his life story.
Ali tells Rath how changing political and theological concerns have shaped how European Christians described Muhammad’s biography, and why the realities of life before the printing press led Muslims to use Muhammad’s life story as a lens through which to approach the Quran.
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