{"id":65979,"date":"2018-10-05T00:10:53","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T06:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=65979"},"modified":"2018-10-05T01:32:48","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T07:32:48","slug":"if-you-would-just-buy-enough-of-them-i-could-retire-sooner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/10\/if-you-would-just-buy-enough-of-them-i-could-retire-sooner.html","title":{"rendered":"If you would just buy ENOUGH of them, I could retire sooner!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>
For those who would like to read more about Muhammad, here\u2019s a book that may not be the world\u2019s worst on the subject.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A number of years ago, I published a biography entitled\u00a0Muhammad: Prophet of God<\/a>.<\/i>\u00a0 It was essentially my section from David Noel Freedman and Michael J. McClymond, eds.,\u00a0The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad as Religious Founders<\/i><\/a>, a hefty (and heftily-priced) volume that featured a foreword by the celebrated\/controversial Swiss theologian Hans K\u00fcng<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a simple narrative biography, on the whole, that doesn\u2019t pretend to break significant new historical ground, but seeks to tell the basic story of Muhammad as clearly as possible. \u00a0On the whole, I\u2019ve been gratified at the response to it. \u00a0I\u2019ve been especially pleased that the Muslims who have spoken to me about it seem overwhelmingly to have liked it. \u00a0(Unlike many anti-Mormons, I think it important that descriptions of other peoples\u2019 religious beliefs should be\u00a0recognizable<\/i>\u00a0to those people.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was also amused at some of the responses from conservative Christians. \u00a0One in particular. \u00a0A certain Protestant polemicist, based in Arizona, who opposes other faiths (principally Mormonism<\/a>, Catholicism, and Islam) as a kind of full-time job \u2014 in my judgment, he\u2019s something of a professional religious bigot \u2014 was especially incensed that a very respected and influential Evangelical publishing house (Eerdmans, in Grand Rapids, Michigan) was distributing a sympathetic biography of Muhammad written by . . . a\u00a0Mormon<\/i>. \u00a0Could anything possibly be worse than this? \u00a0(His indignation still brings a smile to my face.) \u00a0If such things are allowed to continue, why, people might begin to respect each other\u2019s religious beliefs, and who knows how\u00a0that<\/i>\u00a0might end?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, one of the functions of this blog is to advertise things. \u00a0Including, sometimes,\u00a0my<\/i>\u00a0things.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As biographies of Muhammad go, this one is surely not the worst. \u00a0I spent quite a few hours writing it. \u00a0The least you can do, if it\u2019s still available in such numbers, is to buy a few hundred copies. \u00a0Give them to all your relatives. \u00a0Pass them out to strangers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I spent nearly two hours this afternoon talking in my campus office to an editor and writer for the Christian Science Monitor<\/em>. \u00a0She\u2019s here in Utah in order to write an article about relations between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> and Islam \u2014 but in particular, I think, about the experiences of Muslim students at Brigham Young University.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 A number of years ago, I published a biography entitled\u00a0Muhammad: Prophet of God.\u00a0 It was essentially my section from David Noel Freedman and Michael J. McClymond, eds.,\u00a0The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad as Religious Founders, a hefty (and heftily-priced) volume that featured a foreword by the celebrated\/controversial Swiss theologian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIf you would just buy ENOUGH of them, I could retire sooner!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    A number of years ago, I published a biography entitled\u00a0Muhammad: Prophet of God.\u00a0 It was essentially my section from David Noel Freedman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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