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The Muhammad Code: How a Desert Prophet Brought You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram
Osama bin Laden called Muhammad "a Prophet of Conquest." Pakistan's Universal Sunnah Foundation brags that under Muhammad's battlefield leadership, "Islam spread an average of 317 square miles per day." Right now ISIS, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the Supreme Leader of Iran know that Islam toppled two of the biggest superpowers in history—Rome and Persia—then took over two-thirds of the inhabited world. Militant Muslims believe that Islam is on the brink of doing it again. The Muhammad How a Desert Prophet Brought You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram lays bare the origins of this profoundly dangerous belief. Many contemporary thinkers excuse Islamic violence as a legitimate reaction to Western imperialism. They blame America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the establishment of Israel in 1948. But Jihad was invented in 624 AD by the only prophet ever to call himself "The Prophet of War." And that prophet was not responding to "legitimate grievances," but an ambition for world conquest.
350 pages, Paperback
Published December 6, 2016
43 people are currently reading
341 people want to read
About the author
Howard Bloom
25 books306 followers"I know a lot of people. A lot. And I ask a lot of prying questions. But I've never run into a more intriguing biography than Howard Bloom's in all my born days. " Paul Solman, Business and Economics Correspondent, PBS NewsHour
Howard Bloom has been called “next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Einstein,[and] Freud,” by Britain's Channel4 TV, "the next Stephen Hawking" by Gear Magazine, and "The Buckminster Fuller and Arthur C. Clarke of the new millennium" by Buckminster Fuller's archivist. Bloom is the author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"—The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"—The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), and The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich). Bloom has been published in arxiv.org, the leading pre-print site in advanced theoretical physics and math. He was invited to tell an international conference of quantum physicists in Moscow in 2005 why everything they know about quantum physics is wrong. And his book Global Brain was the subject of an Office of the Secretary of Defense symposium in 2010, with participants from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom has founded three international scientific groups: the Group Selection Squad (1995), which fought to gain acceptance for the concept of group selection in evolutionary biology; The International Paleopsychology Project (1997), which worked to create a new multi-disciplinary synthesis between cosmology, paleontology, evolutionary biology, and history; and The Space Development Steering Committee (2007), an organization that includes astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell and members from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense.
Bloom explains that his focus is “mass behavior, from the mass behavior of quarks to the mass behavior of human beings.” In 1968 Bloom turned down four fellowships in psychology and neurobiology and set off on a science project in a field he knew nothing about: popular culture. He was determined to tunnel into the forces of history by entering “the belly of the beast where new myths, new mass passions, and new mass movements are made.” Bloom used simple correlational techniques plus what he calls “tuned empathy” and “saturated intuition” to help build or sustain the careers of figures like Prince, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Billy Idol, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, John Mellencamp, Queen, Kiss, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Run DMC, and roughly 100 others. In the process, he generated $28 billion in revenues (more than the gross domestic product of Oman or Luxembourg) for companies like Sony, Disney, Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola, and Warner Brothers. Bloom also helped launch Farm Aid and Amnesty International’s American presence. He worked with the United Negro College Fund,the National Black United Fund, and the NAACP, and he put together the first public service radio campaign for solar power (1981). Today, his focus on group behavior extends to geopolitics. He has debated one-one-one with senior officials from Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood and Gaza’s Hamas on Iran’s Arab-language international Alalam TV News Network. He has dissected headline issues on Saudi Arabia’s KSA1-TV and on Iran’s global English language Press-TV. And he has appeared fifty two times for up to five hours on 500 radio stations in North America.
Bloom is a former visiting scholar in the Graduate School of Psychology at NYU and a former core faculty member at the Graduate Institute in Meriden, Connecticut. He has written for Th
Howard Bloom has been called “next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Einstein,[and] Freud,” by Britain's Channel4 TV, "the next Stephen Hawking" by Gear Magazine, and "The Buckminster Fuller and Arthur C. Clarke of the new millennium" by Buckminster Fuller's archivist. Bloom is the author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"—The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"—The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), and The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich). Bloom has been published in arxiv.org, the leading pre-print site in advanced theoretical physics and math. He was invited to tell an international conference of quantum physicists in Moscow in 2005 why everything they know about quantum physics is wrong. And his book Global Brain was the subject of an Office of the Secretary of Defense symposium in 2010, with participants from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom has founded three international scientific groups: the Group Selection Squad (1995), which fought to gain acceptance for the concept of group selection in evolutionary biology; The International Paleopsychology Project (1997), which worked to create a new multi-disciplinary synthesis between cosmology, paleontology, evolutionary biology, and history; and The Space Development Steering Committee (2007), an organization that includes astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell and members from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense.
Bloom explains that his focus is “mass behavior, from the mass behavior of quarks to the mass behavior of human beings.” In 1968 Bloom turned down four fellowships in psychology and neurobiology and set off on a science project in a field he knew nothing about: popular culture. He was determined to tunnel into the forces of history by entering “the belly of the beast where new myths, new mass passions, and new mass movements are made.” Bloom used simple correlational techniques plus what he calls “tuned empathy” and “saturated intuition” to help build or sustain the careers of figures like Prince, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Billy Idol, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, John Mellencamp, Queen, Kiss, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Run DMC, and roughly 100 others. In the process, he generated $28 billion in revenues (more than the gross domestic product of Oman or Luxembourg) for companies like Sony, Disney, Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola, and Warner Brothers. Bloom also helped launch Farm Aid and Amnesty International’s American presence. He worked with the United Negro College Fund,the National Black United Fund, and the NAACP, and he put together the first public service radio campaign for solar power (1981). Today, his focus on group behavior extends to geopolitics. He has debated one-one-one with senior officials from Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood and Gaza’s Hamas on Iran’s Arab-language international Alalam TV News Network. He has dissected headline issues on Saudi Arabia’s KSA1-TV and on Iran’s global English language Press-TV. And he has appeared fifty two times for up to five hours on 500 radio stations in North America.
Bloom is a former visiting scholar in the Graduate School of Psychology at NYU and a former core faculty member at the Graduate Institute in Meriden, Connecticut. He has written for Th
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 1, 2021
Ranty, repetitive and utterly tiresome polemic by an 'author' with track record of Islamaphobia, no knowledge of Arabic language or the primary sources he's attempting to 'critique'. In an era when intolerance, sectarianism, bigotry etc are rampant, this 'book' is another small contribution to the bonfire of distorted, ill-informed hatred threatening to consume us all.
October 13, 2018
An interesting look into the life of the Prophet Muhammad from his early years, through his claimed revelations, to his formation of followers and the raids on nearby towns and caravans. He established methods to be used by his band of raiders to deceive non-believers and eventually attacking, killing, subjugating, and enslaving all those around him. The spoils, or loot, were then divided among the faithful including livestock and women after Muhammad took his twenty percent of the total. His strategy of conversion, paying an annual tax acknowledging inferior status to Muslims, or death were offered to those who fell to the Muslims. As they conquored more territory and accumulated more wealth, the Muslims attracted more followers who wanted in on this way of life. Eventually they grew strong enough to use these tactics on the Persians and the Byzantine Empire.
The author describes these Muhammad Codes in detail with many examples noting sources in the Qu'ran, Hadiths, and other Islamic texts and then shows how the more recent followers like ISIS, al Queda, Boko Haram, etc. are using these same ideas and tactics today to attack their neighbors and even spread into many western countries. This will likely continue until and unless their targets wake up and realize the patterns of what is happening to them and devise plans and countermeasures to stop or reverse it.
The author describes these Muhammad Codes in detail with many examples noting sources in the Qu'ran, Hadiths, and other Islamic texts and then shows how the more recent followers like ISIS, al Queda, Boko Haram, etc. are using these same ideas and tactics today to attack their neighbors and even spread into many western countries. This will likely continue until and unless their targets wake up and realize the patterns of what is happening to them and devise plans and countermeasures to stop or reverse it.
April 23, 2017
How can you be a "Muslim Athiest" or a "Jewish Athiest"? Bloom definitely uses these terms within his book which act as a microcosm to the contradictions, fallacies and soft theories which this book is riddled with.
November 16, 2021
This is an utterly hatefilled and unhinged polemic that seeks to blame Muhammad / radical Islam for anything and everything that the author could think of, short of gingivitis (although that might be in there too).
Honestly surprised this isn't considered hate speech. Irredeemable waste of ink and paper.
Honestly surprised this isn't considered hate speech. Irredeemable waste of ink and paper.
April 14, 2023
This is Howard Bloom without the bombast.
An earnest and serious warning of the dangers of radical Islam.
Highly detailed, clearly argued and making some very compelling points.
The very fact that as I write this I feel the need to be careful about what I am
saying is damming in itself. For all sorts of reasons.
And the author goes into this too at some length.
An earnest and serious warning of the dangers of radical Islam.
Highly detailed, clearly argued and making some very compelling points.
The very fact that as I write this I feel the need to be careful about what I am
saying is damming in itself. For all sorts of reasons.
And the author goes into this too at some length.
May 13, 2024
Neo-Orientalism
December 26, 2016
I was a Goodreads winner of this book. This book is engaging, engrossing and powerful. Very powerful! Howard Bloom is spot on and the research is meticulous. The western world is walking around with blinders on, refusing and denying what is happening around us and it is becoming worse. Everyone should read this book and understand better the world we are living in. It is not only about the past history of Islam, but about the current events of today.
January 22, 2017
Nearly 2000 footnotes, the book is half footnotes. Obsessive documentation. Bloom's message is loud and clear -- worldwide jihad until the entire world submits to Islam is the clearly stated goal in the Quran. Deception and guile against non-muslims, as well as terror, and especially rape of women, are accepted strategies. Creepy, unnerving.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews