If you wonder how Islam arose, you have a choice of nonfiction accountings. History, as we know, can skate close to fiction, depending on who writes the accounts and their political agendas. These alternative resources include Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time by Karen Armstrong, The Wives of Prophet Muhammad by Bint Al-Shati and Women in the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation by Barbara Freyer Stowasser.
If you are a Muslim, you may not agree with the spin Kamran Pasha puts on the story in his fictionalized account of Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam. Few will disagree, though, that this first novel from a successful screenwriter makes use of his cinematic literary skills.
Mother (for short) is the story of Aisha, Muhammad's youngest and among the first of twelve wives. She was the daughter of one of The Prophet's childhood friends who married him when she was approximately six years old, but who spent only about a dozen years with him before his death. Multiple wives and child brides were acceptable in Arabian lands in the seventh century C.E. Females were considered women as soon as they experienced their first menses, and when people lives shorter lives.
Aisha tells the story as a weary, dying old woman, not unlike the many fictional depictions of Christ's mother Mary or Mary Magdalene at the end of their lives. Pasha seamlessly switches the narrative voice among the points of view of the storyteller at various ages. His scenic descriptions of the arid countryside, oases and cities of the Arabian Peninsula give readers strong sense of how living was then (and probably still is for impoverished peoples there).
Consider the Muslims' approach after 10 days in a caravan across an ocean of sand to the site that would become Medina:
We spurred our camels up the flowing expanse until we reached the summit of the dunes and could see what lay beyond.Continued on the next page Page 1 — Page 2
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