After The Prophet by Lesley Hazleton

From The Week of July 24, 2011

For much of our world, history is alive, an ever-present force with the capacity to fuel both scholarship and hatred. For as much as its investigation can uncover new truths and right past wrongs, destructive grievances can also be extrapolated from its maelstrom, grievances with the power to sunder once united peoples. is an examination of one such moment in history, a moment that changed Islam forever and sowed the seeds for conflicts still being played out in the 21st century.

In early June, 632 AD, in what is now Saudi Arabia, a man was dying. After a long life in which he had risen from obscurity to found one of the world's most prominent faiths, the Prophet Muhammad was succumbing to a fever brought on by that most common of human killers, illness. Severely weakened, he attempted to communicate, to his family and loyal companions attending him, his last, earthly wishes, including the definitive word on who ought to succeed him as leader of the Islamic people. But thwarted in this endeavor by his ambitious adherents who were too afraid of the great man siding against them to hear his truth, Muhammad died with his desires shrouded in mystery. Though years would pass before the full force of this calamity could hit home, in less than a generation, the uncertainty surrounding the proper succession would tear the Islamic people apart, forever dividing them into two conflicting camps, the Sunni and the Shi'a.

Ms. Hazleton, a veteran journalist, assembles in After The Prophet a chronicle of both Muhammad's death and the events that followed it, beginning with the argument over who should succeed their prophet and ending with th fates of his descendents, with a particular focus on Aisha, his favorite wife, and Ali, his cousin and the first youth to accept Muhammad's teachings. In-between, Ms. Hazleton traces, in painstaking and tragic detail, the many spats, grudges and power struggles which lead to civil war, the martyrdom of Ali and the unbalancing of a people Muhammad worked so hard to unite. For readers, like myself, who are only passingly familiar with Islam, part 1 of Ms. Hazleton's book, covering the events surrounding the death of Muhammad, will be eminently enlightening, imbuing important, historical figures with fascinating personalities and logical motivations. In this, Aisha and Ali are the standouts, long-suffering antagonists with burdens to bear, principles to uphold and wars to reluctantly fight.

But where part 1 succeeds in laying down the foundation of the conflict in gripping detail, part 2, the story of the tangled history of the various princes, warlords and self-interested chiefs who succeeded Muhammad's family, is blurred by a haze of unfamiliar names, inexplicable deeds, and unimaginable times. If part 1 is an introductory course on Islam, part 2 feels like a fourth year class in which notes must be taken and prior principles well-remembered.

As challenging as After The Prophet's second half can be, the whole is well worth the read. If Islam was a dead religion, or a religion that did not concern itself much with its history, the dispute over who should have succeeded Muhammad would be purely an academic argument. But Islam is a living religion, a faith whose followers value its past as much as they do its present. If it is to be understood, its past must be grasped and this is, for the most part, a quality place to start. (3/5 Stars)