f. w. burleigh

It’s All About Muhammad is a detailed and very readable biography of the creator of Islam based primarily on the original sources of Islam—the canonical works that form the foundation for Muslim beliefs. It is also illustrated, with 25 black and white drawings inspired by the original literature.

The author studied 20,000 pages of these documents and concluded from the extreme violence of Muhammad—as documented in the original literature—that he was a psychopath. Burleigh asks, "What other word can be used for a man who once presided over the beheading of up to 900 men and boys because they refused to accept him as their prophet?"

Muslims down through the last 14 centuries have been indoctrinated into the belief that God talked to Muhammad, but the evidence of their own literature is that he suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, the same disease Dostoevsky suffered from. (In his writing, Dostoevsky commented about Muhammad's epilepsy.) The ecstatic moments of the epileptic experiences led Muhammad to believe he was in communion with God. He attributed the words of the Koran to God, though an objective reading of the Koran reveals it as the product of an extremely angry and disturbed mind.

This book is not an argument that Islam is evil because it is a reflection of the evil of its creator. It’s All About Muhammad is a presentation of what is in the source material, told by a gifted storyteller who uncovered the telling anecdotes and the revealing quotes. Burleigh drew his own conclusion: Muslims do what they do because of Muhammad's example, hence the title: It’s All About Muhammad. But it is up to readers to examine what is in the book and reach their own conclusion.