Most Islamic biographies deal with Muhammad’s use of warfare by using an understandable but insufficient logic: that the Messenger of Allah was the ideal and paradigmatic human, so he must have been an ideal and paradigmatic military commander. Wanting Muḥammad’s behavior to conform to very modern ethical concepts and widespread (but not necessarily accurate) beliefs about the nature and conduct of war, the writers have created a narrative which, in significant ways, departs from the account clearly and consistently revealed in the earliest extant Arabic sources.
Professor Joel Hayward sees this as an unhelpful explanatory tendency and believes that the modern depiction of the Prophet’s relationship with warfare — which presents him as being rather antipathetic to war, indeed as virtually a pacifist who only fought reluctantly in self-defense — cannot actually be sustained by a thorough and even-handed analysis of the early Islamic sources. A committed Muslim himself, Hayward concludes that, within a competitive and conflictual environment with ubiquitous threats, warfare was necessary to make real the bold new world that Muḥammad foresaw. Through original, meticulously researched and rigorous analysis, Hayward covers all the raids and campaigns and demonstrates that Muḥammad correctly understood the necessity and utility of force and duly developed into an intuitive, effective and victorious military practitioner who developed and enforced a strict moral code so as to attain his goals whilst safeguarding the innocent.
This engaging, accessible yet deeply scholarly and definitive book makes a major contribution to strategic and military analysis and to the Prophet’s biography.
