Reddit reviews The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion)

You may be interested in Stephen Shoemaker's The Death of a Prophet.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Death-Prophet-Beginnings-Divinations/dp/0812243560/

It is pricey, so you may want to find it at an academic library. The research and writing is top notch, and everything is superbly cited and referenced.

It's been a while since I read the book, but at the time I had strong feelings against the book, and this hasn't changed in the year since. First of all, it has to be said that Holland is a very engaging writer and I enjoyed his other books thoroughly, though perhaps it was because I'm not so familiar with other periods of history. At the very least, he writes excellent popular history and though his arguments in this book is controversial, it in my opinion brought more public attention to a very exciting and interesting field, which is no bad thing! This is also a flaw though, since he can get a bit too into his rhetoric, which is great for the reader, but obscures the complexities of the problems he deals with.

The key element of Holland's argument, that Islamic sources are not reliable, is not contested in modern Western scholarship, but the problem is that some historians, such as Patricia Crone, go too far and argue that they should be dismissed altogether. Holland unfortunately followed this approach blindly even though he's not an expert in this field. The book Hagarism by Crone and Michael Cook is the most obvious example of the views of these ultra-sceptics. It is a fascinating read, suggesting that based on contemporary non-Islamic sources, Islam was a Jewish splinter sect (with Samaritan influences) that became its own religious force in the reign of Abdul al-Malik in the late seventh century; Muhammad was a secular leader who got turned into a prophet by his successors when they realised that they need an alternative form of legitimacy after their ties with Judaism became strained. However, even though Islamic sources were written down at least a century after the events they described and some were obvious forgeries, I still think that SOME facts about Muhammad's life were passed down orally. Hagarism also used a shoddy methodology and its main argument about Islam being a Jewish sect relies on three sources: a contemporary Armenian history, a Byzantine anti-semitic pamphlet and a Jewish apocalyptic work. The first two would obviously cast Islam as a brand of Judaism, because contemporaries were unbelievably anti-semitic and Jews were the obvious scapegoat for any Byzantine misfortune, whilst the last source is hardly a reliable one. As far as I'm concerned, I'm willing to concede that Muhammad's early followers formed some kind of an ecumenical group that included Jews and Christians (as Fred Donner argued) since there are plenty of evidence for inter-faith co-operation and influence, but Islam being a Jewish sect or Muhammad not claiming to be a prophet? They don't mesh well with our sources at all.

Most modern historians are aware of the flaws of Islamic sources and always take care to compare these sources with other contemporary writings. Two historians who used this approach recently, James Howard-Johnston and Robert Hoyland, both came to the conclusion that Islamic traditions are generally accurate, though some dates/events were fudged to suit the religious/political sensibilities of the chroniclers, which is hardly surprising. A few others still use these sources uncritically (such as Hugh Kennedy, whose book on the Islamic conquests is excellent, but I still cringe a bit at the uncritical approach to sources he used), but generally, I get the impression that the consensus is somewhere in the middle, with historians using Islamic sources carefully to reconstruct early Islam, rather than following blindly or dismissing them altogether.

There are still some exciting theories floating around, but they are based on hard evidence. Most recently, Stephen Shoemaker's Death of a Prophet argued that Muhammad led an ecumenical movement of followers of various Abrahamic religions and was involved in early attacks on Palestine (rather than dying in Medina before the Islamic conquest as conventional accounts have it) - controversial, but there are contemporary sources that suggest Muhammad did just that. Holland on the other hand did not argue from sources (part of the nature of writing a non-academic book) and was trying to summarise complex theories into one exciting argument. The impression I got was that he was basically re-phrasing Crone's argument by positing an alternate home-city for Islam and de-emphasising the role of Muhammad as a prophet, but it was an argument that has generally been dismissed in academia - even though Hagarism was an exciting book to read and was really important in changing historians' perception of early Islam, it had a flawed methodology and I much prefer Crone's later works, which were still sceptical, but were more nuanced and actually looked at more than three sources.

LOL!

To u/ACaulfield910, it is pretty clear you don't really understand what you are touting.

Just to point out a single example,

• I think you are an unintelligent ignoramus <-- This is not an ad hominem; this is an insult.
  
  
• I think you are an unitelligent ignoramus, therefore your belief X is false <-- This is an ad hominem
  
  For another example, when u/wazzym provided you with some links here; your glorious response was to say that they are by "a reddit keyboard warrior with no credibility".
  
  Now that is an ad hominem worthy of its name. To top that, you followed your ad hominem with an argumentum ad verecundiam.
  
  Please, get your thoughts straight before trying to teach others logic.
  
  Apart from that, you aren't doing yourself any favors on this forum if you think you can uncritically accept and merely regurgitate traditional Islamic narratives.
  
  From your romanticist views of early Islam, it is also clear that you are clueless as to what contemporary critical non-religious scholarship has to say about Islamic origins. I really recommend that you read this book by Stephen Shoemaker
  
  Good Luck

>Your objection to that statement shows your ignorance of history.

What in my comment is untrue, exactly?

>The prophet died during the year 632.

Numerous Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sources date Muhammad's death later, actually, and place him at the conquest of Palestine. There are lots of good reasons to doubt the traditional dating and narratives surrounding the life of Muhammad.

You were referring to this work?