The Year of the Rat Reading 8: "The Messenger: The Meanings of the Life of Muhammad"

I have read quite a number of biographies of the Prophet Muhammad over the years. He is someone I really admire. I know he has his distractors, but I am not here to answer their criticism. I am just here to tell you of a new book I read, by a man named Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan writes a biography that can be applied to how Muslims live their lives in a multicultural world. He eliminates all of the crap that is happening in the world today by showing that the Prophet was a compassionate man, who was chosen to bring a message of peace to the world. He accepted other religions, treated women with the utmost of respect, and believed that how people treated one another was the true measure of how they would be judged by God.
He also believed that one should be nice to animals. One of my favorite hadith (stories from the life of the Prophet) of all time involves a man who notices that a dog is thirsty. This man climbs into a well and fills his shoe up with water to quench the thirst of a dog. A few years ago I was in Malaysia and I noticed a dog was thirsty. So I went to give him some water. After I gave it to him, a man came and knocked over the water. So the dog remained thirsty.
In this book there are also a couple of nice stories about treating dogs and cats nicely. You should also treat your enemy with kindness and respect other religions. I am always amazed how little Muslims I might in Kuwait seem to know about how to treat other people and animals. The Prophet once said a woman who killed her cat was going to burn in hell. I am amazed at how Kuwaitis treat animals and foreigners. It is almost like they know nothing about their religion (or maybe they really do just know nothing). (Which reminds me of what an Egyptian man once told me. He say: "Don't judge Islam by what you see in Kuwait.")
So I would recommend this book for anyone, Muslim or not. You can learn a lot in it about a truly amazing man.