Qur’an

By Emran El-Badawi | – ( Mizan) = When did Jews and Christians ever believe in the Qur’an? The first step towards answering this question is dispelling the myth that the Qur’an’s seventh century audience were “ignorant” pagans. On the contrary, the Qur’an’s audience had the same degree of literary, intellectual, and cultural sophistication that […]

Islam

Archeology and Early Islam: A Yemeni Inscription to “Wadd,” the love god Denounced in the Qur’an

Juan Cole

In the Qur’an, the chapter of Noah (71) contains a denunciation of the worship of a set of gods, most of which are not attested in northern and western Arabian inscriptions and the worship of which probably lapsed long before the era of the Qur’an (610-632 A.D.). One of them is Wadd, the god of […]

History

The First Inscriptional Evidence for the Wife of the Prophet Muhammad, Aisha

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Saudi archeologist Muhammad al-Maghthawi has published a photograph of an inscription in the vicinity of Medina that seems to be the first to mention the Prophet’s third wife, `A`isha. It seems to date from the first century of the Muslim era (A. H.), and is probably from the late […]

Islam

The Qur’an, the Prophet, and a Forgotten History – Juan Cole in conversation with Hamza Yusuf

Juan Cole

From the podcast of the journal Renovatio: Journal of Zaytuna College. Juan Cole’s Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires (2018) retells the history of the prophetic period in seventh-century Arabia through the context of a brutal war between the Iranian Sassanian Empire and the Roman Empire in the Near East. In this […]

Islam

Glowing Review of Cole’s “Muhammad: Prophet of Peace” in “American Diplomacy”

Juan Cole

Career foreign service officer, Benjamin Tua, who served in Brazil, Japan and Muslim-majority countries such as Kyrgyzstan, reviews my new book Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires for American Diplomacy. Tua writes, that it “is perfect for the reader who knows little about Mohammad’s life and origins as a member of a […]

Islam

Juan Cole on the Prophet Muhammad in War and Peace (Emir-Stein Center Video)

Juan Cole

Emir-Stein Center | Juan Cole on Muhammad | – Click below to go to YouTube and watch a 7-minute video–with maps, historical graphics and animation– where I summarize my new book, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires: Here’s the link for the video: Emir-Stein Center presents Juan Cole on the Prophet Muhammad […]

Islam

Dawn Newspaper: Contextualizing the Dawn of Islam: Glowing Review of Cole’s Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires

contributors

Hachette Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires By Juan Cole Bold Type Books, US ISBN: 978-1568587837 336pp. By Taha Ali | – (Dawn) – Every once in a while, if we are lucky, we get a book which brings the early days of Islam alive for us in a way that is […]

Islam

Very Early Muslim Piety toward the Prophet Muhammad: Blessings and Intercession

Juan Cole

The great scholar Annemarie Schimmel quoted Arthur Jeffrey, the Australian scholar of Islam, to this effect: “Many years ago . . . the late Shaikh Mustafa al-Maraghi remarked on a visit to his friend, the Anglican bishop in Egypt, that the commonest cause of offence, generally unwitting offence, given by Christians to Muslims, arose from […]

Qur'an

Headcanon: Review of Juan Cole, “Muhammad: Prophet of Peace” at Northwest Progressive Institute

Juan Cole

David A. Johnson has written, for The Cascadia Advocate (a project of the Northwest Progressive Institute), a review of my new book on the Prophet Muhammad: Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires, published October 9, 2018 Available at Barnes and Noble And Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor And Hachette And Amazon Here […]