The Trilogy Project was developed to make Islam’s three sacred texts, Koran, Sira and Hadith understandable to the ordinary person. It was based upon scientific principles and objective methods, so that any independent person could achieve the same results if they used the same methods.
All Islamic doctrine is based on words of Allah and the Sunna (words and actions) of Mohammed. Allah is found in the Koran and Mohammed is found in the Sira (biography) and the Hadith (traditions). All of Islam is based on Koran, Sira, and Hadith. If it is in the Trilogy, it is Islam. If it is not in the Trilogy, then it is not Islam. To know Islam, know the Trilogy.
The problem in knowing the Trilogy is that the Koran, Sira, and Hadith were designed to be difficult to understand. There is only one way for them to be understood — they must be viewed as a systemic whole, not three separate books.
The CSPI books had to be fact-based and self-authenticating. In a sense, each book had to be a map to the original text. Nearly every paragraph in the CSPI book series has a reference number that allows the reader to go to the source text and verify what is written. If you don’t believe it or want more details, you can go the reference number and read the original.
Amount of Sira Text Devoted to Topic
Greater Jihad
Lesser Jihad
The meaning of the word “brother” in Islam
The Sunna of Mohammed: The Number of Times the Koran Commands
Muslims to Imitate Mohammed
The 13 Verses that reveal that a Muslim is not the friend of a Kafir
The Sira
Here is an example from Mohammed and the Unbelievers, the Sira:
I552 The assassins’ wounded friend lagged behind, so they carried him back with them. When they got back to Mohammed, he was praying. They told him they had killed the enemy of Allah and their attack had terrorized all the Jews. There was no Jew in Medina who was not afraid.
Here is the original source text: Ishaq margin note 552:
552 Our friend al-Harith had lagged behind, weakened by loss of blood, so we waited for him for some time until he came up, following our tracks. We carried him and brought him to the apostle [Mohammed] at the end of the night. We saluted him as he stood praying, and he came out to us, and we told him that we had killed God’s enemy. He spat upon our comrade’s wounds, and both he and we returned to our families. Our attack upon God’s enemy cast terror among the Jews, and there was no Jew in Medina who did not fear for his life.
The Hadith
The Hadith, collected by Bukhari, has over 6800 traditions. The text is confusing since there is so much repetition. The same tradition may be repeated a dozen times. Only about a quarter of the traditions relate to politics, the rest are purely religious. The first step is to collect all the traditions that deal with Kafirs. The Kafir material is political, since it deals with those outside of Islam. Then all of those that are similar are summarized into a single tradition. This method makes all of the political traditions easily understood. The remaining traditions, such as prayer, apply only to Muslims and are of little interest to Kafirs.
Collecting those traditions that apply to Kafirs and summarizing the repeated ones clarifies the text and makes Political Islam simple to understand. This work resulted in The Political Traditions of Mohammed.
The Koran
The Koran is made readable by reproducing the historical Koran of Mohammed’s day. This is accomplished by arranging the Koran in the original order (the one in the bookstore is arranged in order of chapter length). Then the similar sections are combined (for instance, the story of Moses is told 39 times). The final step is to take Mohammed’s life from the Sira and integrate it into the Koran verses to give the verses context. These steps reproduce the historical Koran. The resulting document is now easily read, A Simple Koran.
Anyone can take these same steps and produce similar versions of the original Trilogy.
People assume that you must understand Arabic or have a university degree in Islam to understand Islam’s texts. However, look at these scholars’ history. After 1400 years they have produced scholarly papers for presentations at scholarly meetings, but they have not made the material available to the common person.
The work stands on its own. The only person that matters in discussing Islam is not the “expert” but Mohammed. Every paragraph of our books is referenced to what Mohammed did and said (his Sunna). Each paragraph can be verified by the use of the reference numbers. Our books are fact-based knowledge, not opinion. Mohammed is our expert. We quote him in every paragraph.
See the Statistical Analysis