Islamic Origins: Messenger and Message

Here’s a video of a 40-minute introductory talk I gave on the Qur’an and the early history of Islam, on 30 January 2013 at the National University of Singapore. The talk was part of a lecture series called ‘Introduction to the Study of the Contemporary Middle East’, organised by the university’s Middle East Institute, where I was then a post-doc. I didn’t try to do anything more than summarise the state of scholarship on the topic at the time, including the main areas of disagreement among specialists. For more information: https://socioresources.net/blog/2013/11/sociology-and-the-history-of-islam/