Muhammad
Maxime Rodinson is an atheist. But he is not one to shut himself off with arrogance as do the ‘new atheists’. He sees that “…Muhammad did really experience sensory phenomena translated into words and phrases and that he interpreted them as messages from the Supreme Being.”
Goenawan Mohamad
July 19, 2021
A 20TH century Jew and fervent Marxist wrote a biography of a prophet from the Arab world who lived in the sixth century—the prophet who is usually treated as a figure above history: Maxime Rodinson wrote the biography of Muhammad in a book that received wide attention, positive and negative.
One could say that he treads a narrow path with layers of risk. One could also say that his work has become a rare and brilliant book. The writer Tar
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