Conversion to Islam in the Premodern Age: A Sourcebook. Edited by Nimrod Hurvitz, Christian C. Sahner, Uriel Simonsohn, and Luke Yarbrough. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. 355 pp. $95 (hardcover), $39.95 (softcover), $39.95 (eBook).
The editors commissioned and assembled no less than 57 of what they term "some of the most vivid and neglected [primary-]sources" on conversions to Islam during the premodern period, 700-1650. The geographic coverage extends from West Africa to Indonesia, with an emphasis on the Middle East and especially Syria and Iraq, a reflection of both the Middle East's centrality in Islam and the sources available. Translations into English are from languages as varied as Armenian and Malay; each is followed by suggestions for further reading.
The scholarship is exemplary, providing a sober and literate survey of a key topic of Islamic history. Reading the excerpts one after another, from here and there, relentlessly moving forward in time, provides extensive information on circumstances, motives, legal implications, personal changes, social impact, and more.
But beyond those specifics, the collection leads to an inescapable overall impression of betrayal and oppression: almost always, the convert implicitly realizes that. as he joins what the editors candidly call "the hope of joining God's 'winning team'," he leaves his former co-religionists in the lurch. In the Geniza, for example,, the convert was usually known as a "criminal" (Heb. poshe'a).
Conversely, few conversions occur for positive, affirmative, inspirational reasons. (One exception of note concerns the 41 monks of Amorium who converted en masse.) Thus does the editors' scholarly detachment vanish, pushed aside by the pain that soaks the testimonies and cries that reverberate through the centuries. The agony for non-believers of Islamic supremacism remains sadly consistent.
Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today. By John V. Tolan. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019. 309 pp. $29.95.
Asserting that "Muhammad has always been at the center of European discourse on Islam," Tolan finds that "Muhammad occupies a crucial and ambivalent place in the European imagination ... alternatively provoking fear, loathing, fascination, or admiration." Indeed, views of him are "anything but monolithic," ranging from the satanic to the most positive.
Tolan's nine chapters look at instances of this phenomenon over 800 years, starting with Crusader stories and ending with such twentieth century scholars as Louis Massignon and W. Montgomery Watt. Tolan, a professor of history at the University of Nantes in France, makes no attempt to sketch a complete account but offers separate case studies, some thematic (Muhammad as idol or as fraud), others geographical (Spain, England) or varied in outlook (Enlightenment, Judaism).
As the author of many other books on the subject of European responses to Islam (indeed, he calls this study "the fruit of a career"), Tolan ably and elegantly steers the reader from one insightful example to another to build a convincing case for the "anything but monolithic" views of Muhammad. One favorite example: the extraordinary 1856 passage written by Heinrich Graetz in his 11-volume History of the Jews: If Muhammad was "not a loyal son of Judaism, ... he appreciated its highest aims, and was induced by it to give to the world a new faith, known as Islam, founded on a lofty basis. This religion has exercised a wonderful influence on Jewish history and on the evolution of Judaism."
That said, there is something unsatisfying about examples not tethered together into a cohesive account. How are we to be sure that Tolan's exemplars are representative or significant? For example, while Massignon and Watt definitely epitomize the school of Christian scholarship of those who "tried to reconcile their Christian faith with the recognition of the positive, spiritual nature of Muhammad's mission," how do they compare in importance to those Christian scholars who rejected such a reconciliation? What is the relationship between the schools, and which had more importance? Why discuss only the one and not the other?
The Prophet's Heir: The Life of Ali ibn Abi Talib. By Hassan Abbas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. 239 pp. $30.
This reader admits to certain expectations on opening a book published by Yale University Press and written by a Distinguished Professor of International Relations at the Near East South Asia Strategic Studies Center of the National Defense University. The center, it bears noting, is a U.S. Department of Defense unit "focused on enhancing security cooperation" between Americans and regional "foreign and defense policy professionals, diplomats, academics, and civil society leaders."
Those expectations primarily concern scholarly objectivity; one does not expect to find a devout Shiite Muslim tract. That, however, defines The Prophet's Heir, an apologia for the key figure of Shiism, one of the most important personages of Islamic history, and the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, Islam's prophet.
Consider how Abbas describes his subject in his introduction (available gratis here): the Distinguished Professor of International Relations whose salary is paid by the U.S. taxpayer informs us on page one about Ali's "matchless valour as well as spirituality." He describes Islam as beginning "when the archangel Gabriel graced the city of Makkah [Mecca] with a divine message for someone very special. ... God's last prophet on earth." Page two goes on to explain that the divine message to Muhammad was "a continuation of what had already been revealed, but that had been forgotten or modified" —this being precisely Islam's standard, superior, and disdainful view of Judaism and Christianity. Page four calls Ali "an avid advocate for justice ... a brave warrior."
The apologetics also go far beyond Ali. Page nine announces that Muslims "excelled in areas ranging from arts and sciences to statecraft and empire-building across the continents during the last fourteen centuries." The next 190 pages continue in a similar da'wa (missionary) spirit, not bothering even to disguise the hagiography as biography but overtly treating pious history as factual history. That a reverent Shiite Muslim should want to write such a paean to his religious paragon is natural enough. But that the U.S. government funds and Yale University disseminates such Sunday-school materials surprises and dismays this reader.
The Prophet's Heir should alarm those concerned about the separation of church and state, those worried about government waste, and those fearful of lawful Islamist encroachments on the public square.
