READER COMMENT

Hi,

I came across your website doing some research, i was looking into your Islamic section "Islam to CE 680" and come across few mistakes, and thought about righting to you in order for you to correct them, but when i read further i realized that the whole thing is based on assumptions, personal opinion, changing and twisting of the truth and no real research done in that topic. i would recommend you to, do some real research before you publish a work like that on Internet as you say that it is recognized by scholars. I think that the scholars that had recognized it are not familiar with history.

Athar Jatoi

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F SMITHA: For this chapter I've looked hard for appropriate works to draw from, including Muslim scholars. I'm attracted to history written free of social pressure, history that is not gloss and objective enough to include details that do not flatter. The history being taught many Muslims appears to me to scholarship guided by theology or bent on minimal conflict with fellow Muslims. For years I've welcomed detailed refutations of points made in this chapter. I'm still waiting.

Here are a few of the works I've read regarding Islam:

The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800,
by Jonathan P. Berkey, 2003

In Search of Muhammad, by Clinton Bennet, 1998. The History of Medieval Islam, J.J. Saunders, 1965. The Middle East, Past and Present, by Yahya Armajani, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1970 Quest for the Historical Muhammad, edited by Ibn Warraq, Prometheus Books, 2000 Islam: Beliefs and Observations, by Ceasar E. Farah, 2003 The Monotheists, by F.E. Peters, 2003 The Encylopaedia Britannica. I've also read various works by Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, considered by some to be the West's most distinguished scholar on the Middle East. Various ideological Muslims describe his scholarship with derogatory phrases.

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