On his book The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam
Cover Interview of April 23, 2012
A close-up
The introduction will give readers the best overview of the issues and questions that the book engages, as well as its broader intellectual context. Nevertheless, I attempted to write the book so that each of its four chapters could be read largely on its own.
For some readers the most interesting material may be in the third chapter, which deals with the question of imminent eschatology in earliest Islam, that is, belief that the end of the world was very near at hand. This topic raises fundamental questions about the nature of primitive Islam and its religious outlook and invites considerable suspicion regarding the traditional narratives of Islamic origins. It also challenges widely held contemporary views of Muhammad as primarily a social and economic reformer or the architect of a pan-Arab “nationalist” or “nativist” movement. Moreover, this investigation of early Islamic beliefs about the end of the world proceeds in a methodologically comparative fashion, drawing comparisons to study of the historical Jesus and primitive Christianity. This chapter thus will especially interest readers with expertise and interest in biblical studies or the comparative study of religion.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
A close-up
The introduction will give readers the best overview of the issues and questions that the book engages, as well as its broader intellectual context. Nevertheless, I attempted to write the book so that each of its four chapters could be read largely on its own.
For some readers the most interesting material may be in the third chapter, which deals with the question of imminent eschatology in earliest Islam, that is, belief that the end of the world was very near at hand. This topic raises fundamental questions about the nature of primitive Islam and its religious outlook and invites considerable suspicion regarding the traditional narratives of Islamic origins. It also challenges widely held contemporary views of Muhammad as primarily a social and economic reformer or the architect of a pan-Arab “nationalist” or “nativist” movement. Moreover, this investigation of early Islamic beliefs about the end of the world proceeds in a methodologically comparative fashion, drawing comparisons to study of the historical Jesus and primitive Christianity. This chapter thus will especially interest readers with expertise and interest in biblical studies or the comparative study of religion.