No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam

36 No god but God chant like Muhammad would have been unable to read and write the receipts of his own business. Obviously he wa ...

The Keeper of the Keys 37 passed along the way would say, “Peace unto thee, O Apostle of Allah.” When this happened, Muhammad “w ...

38 No god but God used to hearing the gods speak in poetry, which elevated their lan- guage to the realm of the divine. But much ...

�� The Keeper of the Keys 39 inal Hanifs before converting to Christianity. Waraqa was familiar enough with the Scriptures to re ...

40 No god but God worthy of gratitude and worship. “How many favors from your Lord will you deny?” Muhammad asked his kinsmen. N ...

The Keeper of the Keys 41 prayed to the gods while remaining oblivious to their moral duties, and who withheld things of common ...

42 No god but God Bakr’s first act after accepting Muhammad’s message was to spend his wealth buying and freeing the slaves of h ...

�� The Keeper of the Keys 43 IN 613, THREEyears after the Revelation had begun, Muhammad’s message underwent a dramatic transfor ...

44 No god but God have enraged the Quraysh far more than his monotheistic beliefs. First, unlike Luqman and the Hanifs, Muhammad ...

The Keeper of the Keys 45 of the heavens and the earth required no intermediaries whatsoever, but could be accessed by anyone. T ...

46 No god but God was dividing the families of Mecca. Recall that in pre-Islamic Arabia, a person’s social identity was derived ...

The Keeper of the Keys 47 its economy. After all, if religion and trade were inseparable in Mecca, no one could so brazenly deny ...

48 No god but God cloak and hold him in her arms until the terror subsided must have been an unimaginable sorrow for the Prophet ...

The Keeper of the Keys 49 him back to Mecca. The unusually high reward attracted dozens of Bedouin tribesmen who combed the surr ...

������ 3. The City of the Prophet THE FIRST MUSLIMS IN THE EVENING, the sun in the desert is a glowing white orb set low in the ...

The City of the Prophet 51 ney through the barren wilderness. The few possessions they brought with them have become communal pr ...

52 No god but God drying dates, then stops and kneels, lowering its neck for the Prophet to dismount. Of the owners of the land, ...

�� The City of the Prophet 53 Egyptian writer and political philosopher Ali Abd ar-Raziq (d. 1966) pointed to Muhammad’s communi ...

54 No god but God dominated by some twenty Jewish clans of varying sizes. Unlike the Jews who had settled throughout most of the ...

The City of the Prophet 55 but among the Arabs themselves, and more specifically between Yathrib’s two largest Arab tribes: the ...