{"id":1644,"date":"2013-01-06T16:23:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-06T16:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/interview-an-agnostic-biography-of-the-prophet-muhammad.html"},"modified":"2013-01-06T16:23:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-06T16:23:00","slug":"interview-an-agnostic-biography-of-the-prophet-muhammad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/interview-an-agnostic-biography-of-the-prophet-muhammad.html","title":{"rendered":"Interview-An Agnostic Biography of the Prophet Muhammad"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/543\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-lOq8MB-iRGc\/UOn4quuP8aI\/AAAAAAAAAx8\/i3UFa-8ameM\/s1600\/first+muslim.jpg\" style=\"clear: left;float: left;margin-bottom: 1em;margin-right: 1em\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/543\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-lOq8MB-iRGc\/UOn4quuP8aI\/AAAAAAAAAx8\/i3UFa-8ameM\/s320\/first+muslim.jpg\" width=\"213\"><\/a><\/div>\n<ul id=\"bookInfoContainer\" style=\"background-color: white;color: #555555;margin: 0px 0px 10px;padding: 0px\">\n<li id=\"bookTitle\" style=\"font-style: italic;margin: 0px 0px 2px;padding: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad<\/span><\/li>\n<li id=\"publisher\" style=\"color: #777777;margin: 0px 0px 2px;padding: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">by Lesley Hazleton<\/span><\/li>\n<li id=\"publisher\" style=\"color: #777777;margin: 0px 0px 2px;padding: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">Riverhead Books , 2013<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"dropcap\" style=\"background-color: white;color: #555555;line-height: 21px;margin-bottom: 15px;padding-bottom: 0px;padding-top: 0px\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">What inspired you to write\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/thefirstmuslim.com\/\" style=\"color: #f43940;text-decoration: initial\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">The First Muslim<\/a><\/em>?<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white;color: #555555;line-height: 21px;margin-bottom: 15px;padding-bottom: 0px;padding-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">Basically, frustration! I\u2019d read several biographies of Muhammad as background for my previous book,\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aftertheprophet.com\/\" style=\"color: #f43940;text-decoration: initial\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">After the Prophet<\/a><\/em>, but though they seemed to tell me a lot\u00a0<em>about\u00a0<\/em>him, they left me with little real sense of the man himself. There was a certain dutiful aspect to them, and this made them kind of\u2026 soporific. Which seemed to me a terrible thing to do to such a remarkable life.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white;color: #555555;line-height: 21px;margin-bottom: 15px;padding-bottom: 0px;padding-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">There was a terrific story to be told here: the journey from neglected orphan to acclaimed leader\u2014from marginalized outsider to the ultimate insider\u2014made all the more dramatic by the tension between idealism and pragmatism, faith, and politics. I wanted to be able to see Muhammad as a complex, multidimensional human being, instead of the two-dimensional figure created by reverence on the one hand and prejudice on the other. I wanted the vibrancy and vitality of a real life lived.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white;color: #555555;line-height: 21px;margin-bottom: 15px;padding-bottom: 0px;padding-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">But of course I was also impelled by a certain dismay at how little most of us in the West know about Muhammad, especially when Islam is so often in the headlines and there are so many competing claims to \u201cthe truth about Islam.\u201d This one man radically changed his world\u2014indeed he\u2019s still changing ours\u2014so it seemed to me vitally important that we be able to get beyond stereotypes and see who he really was.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white;color: #555555;line-height: 21px;margin-bottom: 15px;padding-bottom: 0px;padding-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">Read the rest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.religiondispatches.org\/books\/rd10q\/6741\/an_agnostic_biography_of_the_prophet_muhammad\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad by Lesley Hazleton Riverhead Books , 2013 What inspired you to write\u00a0The First Muslim? Basically, frustration! I\u2019d read several biographies of Muhammad as background for my previous book,\u00a0After the Prophet, but though they seemed to tell me a lot\u00a0about\u00a0him, they left me with little real sense of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Interview-An Agnostic Biography of the Prophet Muhammad<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammadby Lesley HazletonRiverhead Books , 2013What inspired you to write&nbsp;The First Muslim?Basically, frustration!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/interview-an-agnostic-biography-of-the-prophet-muhammad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Interview-An Agnostic Biography of the Prophet Muhammad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammadby Lesley HazletonRiverhead Books , 2013What inspired you to write&nbsp;The First Muslim?Basically, frustration!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/interview-an-agnostic-biography-of-the-prophet-muhammad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-06T16:23:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/files\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-lOq8MB-iRGc\/UOn4quuP8aI\/AAAAAAAAAx8\/i3UFa-8ameM\/s320\/first+muslim.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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