It has taken some time for Robert Spencer to cultivate his reputation as one of the leading critics of Islam the West has ever fostered. He has written a multitude of books on Islam with an edge that few writers can match in the same field. However, with this book, Spencer has perfected an approach which took years to harness; to directly analyze Islam within the context of it's founders life, based on acknowledged resources and citations from none other than the core of Islamic doctrine.



From the very beginning, Spencer relies almost entirely on sources such as Sahih Al Bukhari, Sahah Muslim and biographers of the Prophet Mohammed himself such as Ibn Ishaaq. Of course, these people considered Prophet Muhammed divine and therefore wouldn't have looked objectively at the life of the prophet, seeing as they couldn't have based on his authority, which is reflective in the hadeeth itself.



Spencer details just how accountable the prophet should be for waging more than 15 conquests, and effectively obliterates the fantastic myth that surrounds Mohammed; one in which he issued tolerance, equal rights for women and non believers. In fact, he cleverly points out that the Qur'an never says that women are equal to men, yet most readers interpret this based on profoundly weak evidence, and make no attempt to analyze the passages and the hadeeths which inexplicably do the position of women in Islam no favor.