The Koran

It is this biblical prophet, Moses, who was the model for Muhammad. Though Muslims see Abraham as the first to believe in the one God—and thus the first muslim and the ancestor of the Arabs through Ishmael—the prophet mentioned most often in the Qur’an is Moses. Muhammad was, like Moses in the words of St. Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles, “powerful in words and deeds.” --Robert Louis Wilken, Christianity Face to Face with Islam, First Things, January 2009


Recommended reading:
The Koran at Reading Rat


Criticism (articles, essays, reviews):

...the clerics pointed to the Koranic verses that state “this is a book we have sent down to you (O Muhammad).” They ask, Don’t these verses imply that God is the revealer and Muhammad the receiver? They also point out that there were times when Muhammad waited impatiently for the revelation to come to him and that in more than 300 cases the prophet is commanded to tell his people to do one thing or another. This demonstrates, the argument goes, that the commands are coming from elsewhere rather than from the heart or the mind of the prophet himself. --Mohammad Ayatollaki Tabaar Who Wrote the Koran? The New York Times, December 5, 2008

The Lost Archive by Andrew Higgins, The Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2008 (via Joseph Bottum at First Things)

The Islamic Optimist by Malise Ruthven, review of In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad by Tariq Ramadan, To Be a European Muslim by Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam by Tariq Ramadan, Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity by Tariq Ramadan, translated by Said Amghar, and The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad and the Roots of the Sunni-Shia Schism by Barnaby Rogerson, The New York Review of Books, August 16, 2007

Encountering Islam by Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2007

Islam and Western Democracies by Cardinal George Pell, April 2, 2006

Bonfire of the Pieties: Islam prohibits neither images of Muhammad nor jokes about religion, by Amir Taheri, Opinion Journal, February 8, 2006

In Perspective: What's the Difference Between Shi'ah and Sunni? by Todd Hertz, Christianity Today, April 30, 2003

Islamic Faith in An Age of Realism by Thomas J. O'Shaughnessy, S.J., The Catholic World, February 1942