What I liked about this book is the fact that it summarizes in a concise manner the various phases of the formation of Islam. However, the author has clear biases that he tried to emphasize throughout the book. This is surprising from a scholar. The biases are around the successors of the prophet along with the relationship between the religion that the the prophet intended to spread versus the Islam that we see people practice today. The first part of the book was better in all aspects. The latter part was very defensive and completely missed the point. Trying to separate the Islam of the prophet from the terrorism we see today is wrong. Defending a religion by emphasizing that the original message was misinterpreted by the subsequent followers is no defense at all. In fact, it brings this religion to blame even more because of the usage of words that are misleading without providing a proper guidance. In other words, if the author is to be believed regarding this issues (words had various meanings that lead to contradictory interpretations), then, well, the god that revealed those words to the prophet had a weird sense of humor. I must say that the author did a lot better when writing Zealot.

Read some of his current reviews of Israel, and of the United States, and other western world ideals. He is a scholar of what? Show me the credentials. I can claim to be anything I want. By the way try reading beyond fundamentalism. His book from 2009. He claims the US is fighting a holy war agains Muslims. Ugh... Moron we weren't the ones who started this.

A good book for nonmuslims. More of a history review than an in depth analysis of specific topics.