If you're like me, you like the idea of applying some scholarly rigor to the period of early Islam, and don't mind questioning the official story, but you also don't want to spend time or money on some bigoted, dishonest, anti-Islam rant. That's why it took me a long time to finally decide to buy this book. I don't agree with it entirely, but I do think it was worth reading. It presents a revisionist view and supports it honestly (as far as I can tell). Obviously the author is trying to persuade the reader that Islam did not begin the way we all thought it did, so obviously there's an agenda there. In the end, it does not result in either an air-tight case or (as far as I can tell) dishonesty or misrepresentation of the evidence. I'm glad to have read this view and to be made aware of the evidence presented, so that I can factor it into my own view, which is more nuanced than this book's. Read this AFTER you've become familiar with a more mainstream version of the history. Then decide for yourself. To the author's credit, this book gives you room to decide. He has a strong opinion, but he knows and acknowledges that it is an opinion. His "voice" is not that of an anti-Islam extremist. He's calm and measured. All in all a valuable book, though only as an addition to others.
Here's an honest question, just because I'm curious how a revisionist would answer it: If Muhammad did not exist, and the whole story was concocted c. 700 by the Sunni Umayyads, 20 years after the second Fitnah, how is it that the Sunni and Shia agree to such a great extent on who Muhammad's family were? They all agree that Ali was his son-in-law, and the father of his grandsons, right? Obviously they disagree on whether this blood relationship matters or not. But they agree on most of the basic facts, right? How could that be if Muhammad is a myth created years after the "schism"? Why would the Sunni acknowledge that Hussein was the grandson of their made-up prophet if he was, in fact, made up?
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