Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation
Author:
Genres: History, Religion & Spirituality, Christian Books & Bibles
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: History, Religion & Spirituality, Christian Books & Bibles
Book Type: Paperback
Alyssa L. reviewed on + 6 more book reviews
This is a pathetic account of the relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims, which bends all historical facts to make Arab and Muslim aggression against the Jewish people and Christians look mild in comparison to European aggression against Islam. Nothing could be further from the truth. Karabell puts a few isolated historical events under a microscope, and draws overarching conclusions, but does so without honestly presenting the facts concerning basic theological differences and the overall historical records.
The first warning shot across the bow comes on the first page of Chapter One. Karabell states, as if fact, that in about the year 610, Muhammed ibn Abdullah "began to hear the voice of God, and for the first time, God spoke in Arabic." Generally one might expect only Muslim believers to state the history this way --- not historians supposedly working as objective reporters of events.
A second comes in the fact that Karabell quickly conflates the two distinct parts of the Koran --- those chapters concerning events before Mohammed's migration to from Mecca to Yathrub (later renamed, Medina), and those chapters that came after. As all genuine scholars of Islam will attest, faithful Muslims believe the 22 chapters depicting the latter period abrogated the 92 kinder and gentler chapters that tell of the former. This principle, described in Arabic as An-Nasikh wal-Mansukh. This "science of abrogation" gives the deciding power to verses of the Nasikh, over the abrogated Mansukh chapters. Thus, the 22 later chapters are filled with violence and hatred towards Jews and Christians, and order Muslim believers to defeat the "infidel" faiths, however long it might take them. And they outweigh anything and everything in the former abrogated ones.
While the spare footnotes to the first chapter do cite some reliable sources, Karabell all too quickly makes it clear that he takes genuine and renowned scholars of Islam such as Bat Ye'or ([[ASIN:0838636780 Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, 7th-20th Centuries)]] and [[ASIN:0231132913 Patricia Crone]] (God's Rule - Government and Islam: 6 Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought) as lightweights. Meanwhile, he leans heavily on highly inaccurate and biased authors like Karen Armstrong and Richard Bulliet. The former's books, various Saudi interests have purchased in large quantities to stock American universities and public libraries. The latter is (among other things) an apologist for Turkey's current Islamist government, and among those Columbia University Middle East history professors responsible for the university's recent nickname, Bir Zeit on the Hudson.
Karabell takes isolated episodes of Islamic violence against Christians and Jews and pretends that they were anything but defining. He omits, however, a vast number of other violent episodes of Muslims against Christians and Jews, not to mention Hindus and Zoroastrians. According to the Hindi scholar of Islam, K.S. Lal ([[ASIN:8185689032 Legacy of Muslim Rule in India]] and [[ASIN:8185689679 Muslim Slave System in Medieval India]]), for example, the subcontinent's Muslim conquerors murdered some 100 million people, not counting tens of millions transported as slaves.
For an honest history of the relations between the three major faiths (and indeed others including the Hindu faith and Zoroastrianism), one would be far better served to rely on Bat Ye'or (predominantly, Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, but also [[ASIN:0838632629 Dhimmi]], [[ASIN:0838639437 Islam and Dhimmitude]] and [[ASIN:083864077X Eurabia]]), and Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, a Brown University renal specialist and professor of medicine, and the current generation's most thorough scholar of Islamic suppression of non-Muslims (in [[ASIN:1591026024 Legacy of Jihad]] and [[ASIN:1591025540 Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism]]). Do also read Robert Spencer's important accounting of [[ASIN:1596985283 Muhammad]]'s life, and its impact on current events.
Please. If you MUST read this book, make it a point also to read the far more honest and complete scholars noted above, among others. Karabell is a revisionist.
---Alyssa A. Lappen
The first warning shot across the bow comes on the first page of Chapter One. Karabell states, as if fact, that in about the year 610, Muhammed ibn Abdullah "began to hear the voice of God, and for the first time, God spoke in Arabic." Generally one might expect only Muslim believers to state the history this way --- not historians supposedly working as objective reporters of events.
A second comes in the fact that Karabell quickly conflates the two distinct parts of the Koran --- those chapters concerning events before Mohammed's migration to from Mecca to Yathrub (later renamed, Medina), and those chapters that came after. As all genuine scholars of Islam will attest, faithful Muslims believe the 22 chapters depicting the latter period abrogated the 92 kinder and gentler chapters that tell of the former. This principle, described in Arabic as An-Nasikh wal-Mansukh. This "science of abrogation" gives the deciding power to verses of the Nasikh, over the abrogated Mansukh chapters. Thus, the 22 later chapters are filled with violence and hatred towards Jews and Christians, and order Muslim believers to defeat the "infidel" faiths, however long it might take them. And they outweigh anything and everything in the former abrogated ones.
While the spare footnotes to the first chapter do cite some reliable sources, Karabell all too quickly makes it clear that he takes genuine and renowned scholars of Islam such as Bat Ye'or ([[ASIN:0838636780 Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, 7th-20th Centuries)]] and [[ASIN:0231132913 Patricia Crone]] (God's Rule - Government and Islam: 6 Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought) as lightweights. Meanwhile, he leans heavily on highly inaccurate and biased authors like Karen Armstrong and Richard Bulliet. The former's books, various Saudi interests have purchased in large quantities to stock American universities and public libraries. The latter is (among other things) an apologist for Turkey's current Islamist government, and among those Columbia University Middle East history professors responsible for the university's recent nickname, Bir Zeit on the Hudson.
Karabell takes isolated episodes of Islamic violence against Christians and Jews and pretends that they were anything but defining. He omits, however, a vast number of other violent episodes of Muslims against Christians and Jews, not to mention Hindus and Zoroastrians. According to the Hindi scholar of Islam, K.S. Lal ([[ASIN:8185689032 Legacy of Muslim Rule in India]] and [[ASIN:8185689679 Muslim Slave System in Medieval India]]), for example, the subcontinent's Muslim conquerors murdered some 100 million people, not counting tens of millions transported as slaves.
For an honest history of the relations between the three major faiths (and indeed others including the Hindu faith and Zoroastrianism), one would be far better served to rely on Bat Ye'or (predominantly, Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, but also [[ASIN:0838632629 Dhimmi]], [[ASIN:0838639437 Islam and Dhimmitude]] and [[ASIN:083864077X Eurabia]]), and Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, a Brown University renal specialist and professor of medicine, and the current generation's most thorough scholar of Islamic suppression of non-Muslims (in [[ASIN:1591026024 Legacy of Jihad]] and [[ASIN:1591025540 Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism]]). Do also read Robert Spencer's important accounting of [[ASIN:1596985283 Muhammad]]'s life, and its impact on current events.
Please. If you MUST read this book, make it a point also to read the far more honest and complete scholars noted above, among others. Karabell is a revisionist.
---Alyssa A. Lappen
