1. Daniel C. Peterson, Abraham Divided: An LDS Perspective on the Middle East, rev. ed. (Salt Lake City: Aspen Books, 2001); BYU Studies Special Issue: LDS Scholars Engage Islamic Thought 40, no. 4 (2001).

2. Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), cover.

3. Modern Islamic interpretations offer support for a less stringent prediction of the status in the afterlife for those who were not exposed to Muslim teachings while on earth (40).

4. Peterson disputes the Muslim claim that Muhammad was unable to read or write, since these skills would have been required of a person deeply involved in the caravan trade. However, he says the Prophet probably had no direct acquaintance with Christian scriptures.

5. A native Arab speaker, raised in the language and culture, may dispute some of Peterson’s points relating to the early forms of Arabic poetry, while respecting the linguistic accomplishment of any Western scholar who is able to discuss the finer points of such poetry. Each line of the ancient Arabian qasida, or ode, is “a separate unit, a complete thought,” according to Peterson (20), making it easy for references to pagan concepts to be removed by the time the poems were recorded. In such poems published in the Arabic language as “Sharh al-M’allaqat al-‘Ashr” by Al-Khatib al-Tabrizi, however, the thought is continued for several lines.

6. The sanctuary’s name, the Ka’ba, refers to its shape, with its four corners directed toward the four points of the compass.

7. Muhammad’s father died before he was born. Peterson writes that his grandfather brought him into the Ka’ba and “presented the infant to God, offering a prayer of thanks for the gift of this boy as a substitute for his dead son” (36). Later, even before becoming a prophet, he served as the arbitrator during reconstruction of the shrine.

Thora Qaddumi

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