Who Is Muhammad?

by Michael Muhammad Knight

Combining insights from the best published historical and religious studies scholarship, original research, and rich first-person perspective, this highly readable book offers a comprehensive yet concise introduction to the founder and central figure of the Islamic the prophet Muhammad. Narrating Muhammad's life story, teachings, and daily practices, and assessing how his legacy is received, interpreted, and applied around the world, Michael Muhammad Knight reveals how the prophet has become simultaneously one of the most beloved historical figures in the world and also one of the most contested, challenged, and disparaged.

Knight argues that there was never a singular Muslim vision of Muhammad but rather always multiple perspectives. While Muslims defend Muhammad's legacy against Islamophobic polemics, they also challenge each other regarding the proper authorities through which Muhammad's life and message become comprehensible and applicable in our world. Thinking across time and place, Knight argues that Muhammad is always contextual and contemporary.

198 pages, Hardcover

Published November 7, 2023

About the author

Michael Muhammad Knight (born 1977) is an American novelist, essayist, and journalist. His writings are popular among American Muslim youth. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as "one of the most necessary and, paradoxically enough, hopeful writers of Barack Obama's America," while The Guardian has described him as "the Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature," and his non-fiction work exemplifies the principles of gonzo journalism. Publishers Weekly describes him as "Islam's gonzo experimentalist." Within the American Muslim community, he has earned a reputation as an ostentatious cultural provocateur.

He obtained a master's degree from Harvard University in 2011 and is a Ph.D. student in islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reviews

[Michael Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A postmodern, inconclusive, critical theory, subjective take on Prophet Muhammad. It begins with the context of 7th Century Arabia, and gives you the Traditionist narrative, then it goes various hadith transmission networks and the differences there in how Muhammad is portrayed. The book also explores the Muhammad of Salafism, Mysticism, Philosophy, Statesmanship, Politics, and more. The author does not say that anyone version is the right version, but leaves explicitly leaves it inconclusive. Its great and humble.

[The New Arab]

Michael Muhammad Knight’s latest work is a thought-provoking literary expedition that takes the reader from Islam’s early times to modern-day debates.
Read our review here: https://www.newarab.com/features/who-...