Both Peters and Dashti make some drastic theoretical presuppositions and assumptions in their writings. First of all, and most importantly, they assume most of the stories that supposedly took place during Muhammad's life as true. This seems very important to me. The stories of events that involved Muhammad are mostly gathered through word of mouth or a "chain of transmission" and through Muhammad's own writings. Though I believe most of the stories about the life of Muhammad to be factual, I also know that word of mouth is not the most reliable source in this day and age, and the truth could be just as easily warped in the time of Muhammad. The authors also make the assumption that people's way of thinking in the time of Muhammad were similar to ours. What I mean by that is that stories which we heard about Muhammad were the stories that seemed important to the people of that time. We may have placed a great deal of emphasis on aspects of Muhammad's life that never even crossed the people of his times mind. Therefore, many stories which may have been important in our assessment of Muhammad are unknown. These assumptions may seem fairly simple and obvious, but they do have some very complex implications. After all, these assumptions are made in all stories we here, about Muhammad or anything else for that matter.
             Obviously, since I believe that the authors have made these assumptions, I also believe that the writings we are presented are slanted. I do not believe, however that they have been unduly slanted. The arguments and presuppositions that the authors make are sound and fair. Without these presuppositions, we wouldn't be able to tell stories about anything or anybody even about people from our own time era. Authors need to make assumptions such as these to find the truth about things. Without authors making assumptions, we couldn't say m
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