The Truth About Muhammad (2006)

The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion is a biography by American anti-Muslim author Robert Spencer about the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Written from a critical perspective towards its subject, this book examines the life of Muhammad in ten chapters based on the sources provided by his early biographers, together with the Quran and the hadith, while also challenging their historical authenticity.

The book was released on 15 September 2006 by Regnery Publishing and appeared on the New York Times best-seller list for a week. The critical reception of the book was generally unfavorable, with Spencer being criticized for his selective use of sources, subjective interpretation and anachronistic reading of the historical context. Positive reviews were given mostly by Christian and conservative publications, with Human Events including it in its listing of "Top 10 Conservative Books of 2006".

Synopsis

A work of American author and counter-jihadist Robert Spencer, the book is a biography of Muhammad, who founded Islam (an Abrahamic religion that originated in the 7th-century Arabic Peninsula), where he is regarded as the last prophet sent by God. A highly critical work both towards Muhammad and Islam, it consists of ten chapters and begins with a chronology of Muhammad's life and the glossary of names and places related to it. In the first chapter, Spencer writes of the reasons behind writing this book. He writes that the book does not comprehensively detail Muhammad's life but providing insights into an outline of his career.

Chapter two presents Spencer's assessment of the earliest sources for Muhammad. He starts with the Quran, the religious text of Islam; he notes that it contains little details about Muhammad, and often the stories are told indirectly or incompletely. Next, he goes on to write about the hadiths, a record of the words and actions Muhammad transmitted through chains of narrators. Although presents great details about his life, Spencer observes that it is nearly impossible to know which parts of it that are true or not. The prophetic biography, the traditional Muslim biographies of Muhammad comes the last in Spencer's investigation.

Spencer's biography of Muhammad starts in chapter three. He begins with describing Muhammad's tribe, the Quraysh, the situation of the pre-Islamic Arabia, and the religions that were predominantly practiced there, with the Quraysh's was paganism. Spencer writes of Muhammad's early life, including his birth traditionally believed to be taking place in Mecca on April 20, 570. Spencer then describes the pivotal role of Muhammad's later-wife Khadija bint Khuwaylid, who would be the first one to convert to Islam; this took place after he reportedly received his first visitation by the archangel Gabriel in the cave of Jabal al-Nour.

Chapter four contains Spencer's theories that Muhammad borrowed teachings from other religions, mainly Christianity and Judaism. His arguments are based on, what he believed to be, the similarities between Islam and these religions, including their monotheistic conceptions of God and listing of prophetic figures. Spencer starts looking at the Quran; he notes many of its narratives resemble the Bible's, such as its human origin myth of Adam and Eve. Spencer also compares the accounts presented in the Quran with those in the apocrypha and other non-canonical works, including the Talmud and the Syriac Infancy Gospel. Other religions he assumes to have been influencing Islam include the Persian Zoroastrianism and the Indian Hinduism.

Chapter five details Muhammad's early preachings of Islam; Muhammad was met with objections from his own tribe, including his uncle Abū Lahab. Spencer talks about the incident of the Satanic Verses, in which Muhammad had allegedly mistaken the words of Satan to be those of God, and Muhammad's miraculous journey referred to as the Isra and Mi'raj. The next four chapters focuses on the military career of Muhammad. In chapter six, the Hijrah (his journey from Mecca to Medina) and his covenant with Christians and Jews are discussed. In the seventh chapter, Spencer examines the details of several wars that had Muhammad participating in, including the Battles of Badr and Uhud. The eighth chapter discusses points such as the Battle of the Trench, the Battle of Khaybar and the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, and the Conquest of Mecca, the Battle of Hunayn, the Expedition of Tabuk and the death of Muhammad in the next chapter.

Spencer dedicates the book's final chapter to Muhammad's "legacy". He accuses him of having motivated terrorism, pedophilia, misogyny, inhuman punishments (which includes stoning for adulterers and amputation for thieves) and religious intolerance.

Release

Through the conservative Regnery Publishing, The Truth About Muhammad was published on hardcover on September 15, 2006, and paperback on July 17, 2007. Blackstone Audio provided its audiobook version on 26 October 2006. The book has also been available on Amazon Kindle, narrated by James Adams. The book appeared in The New York Times Best Seller list on 29 October 2006. Due to containing "objectionable materials", it was eventually banned in Pakistan. Shahid Ahmed, the counselor of community affairs of the Embassy of Pakistan, Washington, D.C., deemed it "very, very damaging—let me tell you". In response, Spencer bemoaned that the entirety of the book was based on the traditional Islamic sources and found it "interesting that they would say the book contains 'objectionable materials' ... It manifests a certain cultural insecurity that, instead of having a fruitful dialogue or debate about what's in the book, the Pakistani government just bans and confiscates it."