Muhammad, the World-Changer

This is a religious-leaning account of the prophet that does well at maintaining accuracy with historical sources. Jebara does not state explicitly that he's coming at it from a religious angle, but after he touches on his background it is very clear what frame of reference the book is assuming. The sourcing from traditional Islamic scholarship is clearly mentioned and transparent insofar as the process of Islamic scholarship allows (the author explains that there's not as clear-cut of a relationship of provenance that would make sense to someone not trained as a scholar), which allows you to best understand how the scholarship was woven to give this account.

I don't think the fact that this portrait is more religious in its framing is a bad thing - I think this interpretation gives a lot of meaning to the accounts of Muhammad that remain. The portrait that Jebara presents is intimate and clearly focused on the messages of blossoming that Jebara has decided to highlight in the Qur'an's multi-layered Quranic Arabic.

As an atheistic individual interested in religions in an anthropological sense, I almost always desire to peer beneath the belief in a divine creator to get at the principles of life that the religion desires to impart and how that affected its followers. This account offers a lot in the way of that, situating Muhammad among the people he preached to and how his word had far-reaching affects. It also muses on what the motivation behind the creation of the principles of blossoming were. Of course the narrative occasionally implies that polytheism inherently results in stagnation, but I think there was also a lot of reasoning about how stagnation happened in a couple of the mentioned societies that was not simply "they were polytheist" which I appreciate.

In summary, this novel has beautifully flowing prose and offers a lot of interesting ideas to mull over. Fully worth a read, just like the novel Jebara published after this: "The Life of the Qur'an."