It’s All About Muhammad

Title: It’s All About Muhammad – A Biography of the World’s Most Notorious Prophet
Author: F W Burleigh
Publisher: Zenga Books, 2014 (First)
ISBN: 9780996046930
Pages: 554

As the title implies, this is an explosive book for the believer as well as non-believer but its relevance cannot be doubted. It is an unabashed criticism and the onus is now on the believers to come out refuting the claims in this book. The world is wracked by Islamist violence on an unprecedented scale in its history. This book claims that every thirty minutes or so, a murder is happening somewhere in the world committed by jihadis, of people who refuse to pronounce the first pillar of Islam – the kalima (p.12). This book was published in 2014, but its continued significance is attested by the Pahalgam terror incident in Kashmir two months ago where terrorists gunned down 26 Hindu male tourists in front of their wives for refusing to, or more probably, being ignorant of the kalima. In fact, this gory incident was a reason to read this book in order to understand why the jihadis go on such bloody rampages for the last fourteen centuries. This book asserts that Islam was imposed by violence, because it has no other way to sustain itself. This is claimed to be a biography of Prophet Muhammad compiled from original sources. It is not clear whether the author has used the Arabic versions or later translations. The author’s name, F W Burleigh, is evidently a pseudonym as no search on the Internet could extract any info on his identity (I believe the author to be a male). He claims that he had examined 20,000 pages of original Islamic texts for the research of this book. He was motivated by the 9/11 attack to delve deeper into the question of why hard-line Muslims resort to such violent measures.

His life and times are well chronicled by early Islamic writers and biographers and an extensive corpus of literature is available on this topic. It also surveys the socio-religious milieu of pre-Islamic Mecca. The town was the centrepiece of Arabian polytheism which housed the temple of moon worship by importing a human-like statue of the Nabatean moon good Hubal. This temple was without a roof and had a rectangular wall about the height of a single storey building. The walls were often breached by flash floods and the Meccans rebuilt it with a raised platform and roof and named it ‘the cube’, that is, kaba. There were people protesting against various aspects of the religion and a polytheistic apostate named Zayd ibn Amr believed in an idealized Abrahamic religion founded on belief in one true god and total submission to it. Meccans drove Zayd out of the town and he took up residence in a cave on Mount Hira. He used to come to the town at night and had discussions with Muhammad and other people who shared his interests.

Paganism is inherently tolerant. So it is with some astonishment that we read about why the Meccans drove him and his disciples away from the town. The narrowness of the new religion’s dogma was offensive to the Meccans who were traditionally tolerant of everyone’s god concept. Our protagonist ridiculed their idols and statues; he condemned each and every polytheist to the fires of hell. This was in no way acceptable to the Meccans who tolerated everything except intolerance. He performed his prayer routines in the open in front of their temple as a challenge at which the Meccans seethed in anger, but they could do nothing about it because such freedom was granted to everyone by default. Allah was one of the gods the Meccans worshipped. What was different in the new religion was its repudiation of all other deities. He branded the people of Mecca as idol worshippers whereas none of them disputed the existence of a supreme deity. They thought that the idols were only representations of higher powers and not the powers themselves. While most of his own Hashemite clan rejected him in the early stages, they supported him against any harm by other groups as a show of clan loyalty. This tribal affinity prevented the Meccans from dealing a severe personal assault. The new religion used the Meccans’ customs such as providing safe passage in specific months to good advantage even though they had little respect for the traditions. He was exploiting their openness and tolerance. The temple was open to worship for anybody to worship whatever they wished but he tolerated only his own idea of god. This was a bone of contention with the Meccans.

He and his companions were forced to leave Mecca as their lives were at risk. Yathrib (present day Medina) was the preferred destination because the Khazraj and Aws tribes which resided there were more receptive to monotheism. They had exposure to the Jewish faith who constituted nearly half of the population. Prophets guided the Jewish religion. Besides, the warring tribes in Yathrib needed a strong leader to unify them. Polytheism was weak there and no communal worship was in place. After the alliance with the Yathrib tribes was sealed, revelations were received to fight for the cause since peaceful proselytization could not make much impact. Once the group relocated to the new desert oasis, there began plunder of caravans and he claimed a fifth of the booty which made him and many of his followers rich beyond their wildest dreams. The victory at the battle of Badar gave them confidence to take on his enemies in Yathrib. All criticism was silenced; several poets who mocked him in verse were assassinated. After the base was secured, hostile tribes in Arabia were targeted. Heavenly sex or terrestrial booty was promised to the loyal fanatics who fought on his side. If they did not fall in line, the threat of perpetual hellfire was an effective clincher.

The consolidation and empowerment of his reign in Yathrib is explained in quite some detail. The string of assassinations and expulsion of Qaynuqa Jews brought about a rapid expansion of his religion and it included much of the non-Jewish population of Yathrib. The book provides a graphical description of the massacre of Qurayza Jews in which 900 men and grown up boys who surrendered were beheaded five or six at a time and dumped into a trench dug nearby for that purpose. The author claims that this was exactly what the ISIS did in Iraq and Syria and concludes that terror was a convincing missionary. Boys were killed if they had reached puberty. If there was any doubt about their age, they were checked for pubic hair. If so, they too were beheaded. Men with clothes worth preserving were forced to remove them so that some of them died naked (p.311). Their women and children were forced to watch this ordeal and were then sold into slavery. He was ferocious than any of his opponents and overwhelmed them until his very name caused fear. Though his enemies were able to inflict occasional setbacks on him, they ultimately saw the embrace of his religion as the only refuge from the pain and misery he was able to impose on them. Thus his religion grew. Proactive attacks on enemies, real or imagined, were carried out through numerous raids, forceful conversions, fundraising through plunder and spreading terror. He invited the people to convert to his religion. If they refused, he proclaimed them guilty of turning their back on truth. They were then subject to god’s punishment; attacking them was rendering divine justice (p.380). The book contains a vivid description of the brutal interrogation of the leader of Khybar Jews named Kinana regarding the places where he had hidden his wealth.

Burleigh makes a character sketch of our protagonist which has some positive and mostly negative aspects. He is alleged to possess some psychiatric problems and is claimed to have gained control of anxiety disorder by ‘elaborating and practising a complex prayer ritual marked by repetition and precise, time-consuming body movements. He is also said to be a control freak. Creating rules was fundamental to his controlling nature and he never passed up an opportunity to create laws about matters as they arose, no matter how trivial. It also went into areas he did not comprehend fully. For instance, he prohibited intercalation of the Arabian calendar which added a month every three years to keep the lunar calendar in sync with the solar cycle and seasons. With this omission, the Muslim calendar began to slip the sun by eleven days each year. This act was contrary in spirit to what Gregory XIII did nearly a millennium later. His family life is treated in a gentle manner throughout the book and a chapter titled menage-a-quatorze is reserved for a detailed analysis which is surprisingly devoid of harsh recriminations. Such allegations are reserved for the personality assessment. Very harsh terms like epileptic psychopath, deluded mass murderer, revelations were hallucinations, etc. are included in the book. At the same time, some qualities are also indicated. He is said to be a creative genius, masterful at reading his audience, gift of eloquence, astute leadership, make others die for him, ability to convince people he had the truth etc. He is also credited to have created a trans-tribal super tribe of believers.

The book is claimed to be entirely based on the original literature of the religion. If the readers find the protagonist of this biography disturbing, it is asserted to be because what is written about him in the original literature is disturbing. The lay followers of the religion are obliged to follow the protagonist’s practice and they are violent to non-believers because he was so. Burleigh declares this book an antidote to what the protagonist created and to facilitate the ‘the aggressive, relentless and unapologetic exposure of the truth about him, particularly through dramatization in film’ (p.477). The book contains several illustrations of the protagonist contrary to the dictates of the religion not to personify him in any way and also as committing or superintending violent acts. The author advocates the production of a movie depicting these events. If such a movie is ever produced, it would be the ultimate expose of the religion and is sure to produce a violent backlash all over the world. Probably, it could be distributed only in the electronic format but would spread to every corner of the globe like wild fire. The book is dedicated to Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film director who was assassinated in 2004 in Amsterdam by a Muslim who resented his film Submission, Part 1 which criticized the treatment of women in Islam.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star