Reddit reviews Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time
We found 13 Reddit comments about Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
HarperOne
Reddit reviews Muhammad: A Prophet for Our TimeWe found 13 Reddit comments about Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I suggest finding out about the Prophet Muhammad because he is the best living example of Islam.
Karen Armstrong's biography is a very engaging read: https://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Prophet-Time-Karen-Armstrong/dp/0061155772
In terms of visiting a mosque, its best to go to the biggest one in your area because they'll have the most resources to welcome you and answer any questions you have. You can just turn up, but there might not be anyone available to meet you. If you call ahead most mosques will make sure someone is there to greet you, make you feel comfortable and answer any questions you might have.
As others have mentioned, a prophetic biography is one of the best places to start. I prefer Karen Armstrong's book on the prophet Muhammed as the starting point for pretty much everyone, but especially those from a nonMuslim perspective.
I unfortunately don't have good reading recommendations about daily routines and their association with belief. If you feel comfortable doing so, that may be something you can get from your local mosque. They tend to be well-equipped, at least where I have lived in the US, to be able to deal with people who have questions about Islam.
The one thing I'll note here is that I think a lot of people are surprised by the level of diversity within the religion and the way that practice changes from one culture to the next. While there are many core shared elements, Islam definitely means different things to different people when you look across the totality of belief and practice across the whole world.
I recommend these books:
and Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time
Side note on Quran translation:
Stay away from
Try:
Misc:
Movie:
Please, please, as an introduction to the life of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), do not read sealed nectar. It's more of a compilations of facts, which deters the reader from the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Even though I'm Muslim, I got lost in all the names and lineages... something better would be Karen Armstrong's biography of the Prophet.
link to the amazon page
As far as Islam goes I'd recommend Karen Armstrong's Islam or Muhammad, or Reza Aslan's No God but God. Slightly more academic is Carl Ernst's How to Read the Qur'an, Michael Sells' Approaching the Qur'an, and Fazlur Rahman's Major Themes of the Qur'an.
>Inshallah I want to read about the life of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh), but it's hard to trust random online sites from Muslims, who will naturally praise him, and sites from Christians/atheists who only want to slander him. I honestly don't know what to believe.
Karen Armstrong is not a Muslim and has written a biography of the Prophet ﷺ, see: Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time. We do not need her to praise the Prophet ﷺ in order for it to be the case however.
>Was he truly the final prophet of God? This question has been bothering so much that I can't sleep a night. The past few night I've been up till the sun came up researching.
Rest assured, the Prophet ﷺ was the final prophet. Here is a helpful video on the matter: The Prophetic Truth: Proving Prophet Muhammad's ﷺ Prophethood.
>I've briefly read about the supposed miracles he did, but how do we know these are true? Please help me!
The miracles took place in the past, so we can't see them happen in front of us right now, we can trust the sources which tell us he did do them, however. But the miracle which is still here today is the Quran: God’s Testimony: The Divine Authorship of the Quran.
I enjoyed this book.. http://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Prophet-Time-Karen-Armstrong/dp/0061155772/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292408210&sr=1-6
I read "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes" in College, that was a pretty good book. I can also recommend: "Muhammad, a prophet of our time" I read this also in college.
Sorry for the late response! I had a very busy week at work.
> Devils may be swift but it is not reasonable that they possess the ability to be all-seeing and all-present. Those can only be attributed to God. If a devil did to the sun what appeared to happen, this would have been a phenomenon reported all over the globe and would have had measurable impact on temperature, gravity, tides, etc. That did not happen. If it was a devil that worked via the mind, then this would have to have been done to everyone there. Such a feat is less credible than it happening to a single person or a small group of persons because of the finite number of devils available. So I'm not saying it is impossible but if we take the expected value of a situation, the situation with vastly larger numbers becomes more believable, ruling out delusion and making less credible the possibility of a devil.
> > And we haven't even consider what if there's multiple demon working together.
> This is possible but in the history of humanity, I'm not aware of any recorded demonic activity on this level. I am aware of many such cases with one or a small number of individuals.
The scenario I'm imagining is more like a magic trick, the real sun behind a curtain while a demon conjures a sun like disk and perform the show. So it still only need a single apparition. If the sun really did dance, it would've been observed everywhere, not just from a specific location. I actually even think that for a mere human, with a enough funds, those things are achievable with our current level of technology.
> Well we can add to the list that they lack a corporal body. Really, we should brainstorm this list. I'd also include that the devil hates God. If you have any input on this, let's have it. It seems relevant to the question of if Mohammed was under influence of a devil.
I don't agree that they lack a corporal body, actually. They main essence maybe non corporeal, but they seem to have the ability to shapeshift into a corporeal form. Off the top of my head, doesn't the Devil appear in the garden as a snake in the book of genesis?
I don't have much else to brainstorm.. sorry! If you want to read more of the Islamic view, see the wikipedia articles for Devil in Islam and Jinn (demons are basically an evil jinn). Likewise, I'll use Demon in Christian for reference. Unless you have a better source, which then please share.
> The devil wants you in hell. I think he will attempt to get a person there any way he finds possible. I once was told a sermon about a man who used sorcery to conger the devil. He asked the devil, "Are the 10 commandments true?" The devil replied, "Yes, every one except the 6th." This was enough for the man to fall into sin and build a wall around his heart.
> If what Christianity teaches about Jesus is true, then the message of Mohammed would be enough to ruin a vast number of souls. If the devil says, worship one God and do not steal or kill, but that Jesus is not God, then the devil has a small victory. There are also differences in teaching about what constitutes a moral family life (or sins related to family relationships) between the two religions -- and I think we could both agree that the devil would desire to seek the ruin of man through an attack on the family.
> Likewise, if Islam is true, then Christianity may be a tool of the devil (or corrupt men) to ruin souls. Or it could be that they are both false and the truth eludes us both.
OK, I'll try to go along with you on these 3 possibilities. No, actually lets ignore the possibility that they're both false, that won't go anywhere. Christian or Islam, I think we can agree that either is a tool of the devil as possible.
My argument for Islam's validity would be that Islam theologically is the most consistent with the previous revelations(eg. Judaism). All the previous prophets before Jesus preach about the absolute oneness of God. Given that Trinity is the central belief of Christianity, I would expect that such an important concept would be covered by the previous messengers of God. I know Jesus technically isn't born yet, but the Holy Spirit should still be mentioned as God. The Trinity tenet itself isn't officially adopted until the Council of Nicaea 3 centuries later, right?
My premise is that since God has revealed a string of revelations from various prophets, a corrupted one most likely be one that deviates the most of the others. The Muslims believe that actually Jesus is a prophet, born of virgin that preaches the absolute oneness of God too. But over time, his message got corrupted. So then God sends down another revelation by another prophet, Muhammad PBUH to straighten it. Some even claim that Muhammad PBUH coming was foretold in the bible
Please tell me and forgive for any factual errors btw, especially regarding the Christian ones. I'm not a scholar, just a guy that sometimes read stuff on the internet :)
> If Islam has any possibility of moving me, it needs to address the question of angel Gabriel to Mohammed as being delusion, devil, or true and then it needs to establish for me why God cannot be said to be humble (unless Muslims who've told me this is false were wrong).
For the question of Gabriel -> Muhammad PBUH, I'm having trouble finding an argument that would 100% convince you. We know that the event is, like most other prophets, occurs in relative isolation and personal fashion, with no outside witnesses. That's just how it's done. The people then judge the message authenticity by the contents and the messenger's character.
I would suggest to just read the Al Qu'ran, and a biography about the prophet so you can get a better understanding of his life to make a conclusion. His life are fairly well documented, and not just the rosy bits, some of his mistakes are even recorded in the Al Qu'ran! The most popular ones are The Sealed Nectar: Biography of the Noble Prophet by Safi and Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources by Martin Lings, or if you prefer a secular author you can checkout Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time by Karen Armstrong
For the "Prove that God is not humble".. well actually I don't even know until now that Christianity teaches that God is humbling himself to us. Please give me a source about this, I want to know more.
In Islam, as far as I know, God is not humble, but pride. And it is actually sinful for us to be prideful of things cause everything we have(wealth, knowledge, even our own virtues), it is all thanks to God and He can give or take it away at any time if He wills. He is the only one worthy of pride.
He gave us free will, but what we do that God let it happen doesn't mean that He submits to our will, He just let it and gave us the time for now. But everything that we've done would be held accountable at judgement day.
> Thank you for your writings so far. You have shown to be reasonable and not emotionally reactive. I find that conversations like this sometimes get nowhere because an adherent finds a question of theological principles to be also a personal attack, which it is not, but some have a hard time distinguishing. So thank you.
Thank you too! I also try to question your principles but so far you're level headed and doesn't get too emotional. It's great that we can have a civilized discussion on the internet. The other users in this subreddit are actually also pretty cool too! Some of them are actually much more knowledgeable than me. They just doesn't seem to want to engage in a discussion that at first glance, would go nowhere. This sub are riddled by trolls on a regular basis, and a tendency of trolls is to dwell stubbornly on a single point so I'm afraid some may mistaken you for one. Sorry!
I will obviously defer to people who study this part of history full time, but as a person interested in studying the historical foundations of Islam more casually, I found Karen Armstrong's Muhammad:A Prophet For Our Time to be compelling, unbiased, and well researched.
So, how would you know if Quran is authentic without even reading it or without Knowing about Muhammad(pbuh)? You have already negated the Historical evidence i posted in my 2nd post.
Why would you think that Muhammad (pbuh) himself wrote Quran and then attributed to Allah?, Because if he was really that devious then he would have taken all the money, power and comfort offered from Quraish when they asked him to stop preaching.
Quran is regarded as highest work of arabic, so if a person was to write it, why would he give this credit away.
If wordly gains was Muhammad's (pbuh) desire then he was doing a poor job at it, leaving a comfortable noble life with a rich wife.
Now when i try to prove it to you with historical context, you state that the historians plagiarized the events and can't be trusted, when you have overwhelming evidence of Muhammad's(pbuh) life in great detail, from various accounts. I think you have already made up your mind to not believe anything about islamic history written by muslims.
Perhaps you would trust a non-muslims, islamic view?
I can refer to you some books:
All these are studies of non muslims about prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and Islam.
You may want to try Karen Armstrong's Muhammad: A Prophet for our Time. It is not without its biases, however. Although Armstrong isn't quite fawning, she's certainly sympathetic and apologetic, as is her wont. It is quite well researched and written, though.
I think sermons would be in English, but prayers are always in Arabic as the language is important to the prayer. Here is a review of Masjid al Iman which says that they provide transliterated prayers which would help you follow along.
On Nov 6, the ICCNC is having an Eid festival which may be a great time to go along and see what things are like (Eid is sort of like the Muslim Christmas). I'd email them ahead of time and say you are interested in Islam and will attend. They seem friendly and seem to do mostly everything in English. link
I would also read the following:
No God But God by Reza Aslan
Muhammad by Karen Armstrong
What Everyone Needs To Know About Islam by John Esposito.
These are good intro books from a Western perspective.