Fred McGraw Donner (born 1945) is a scholar of Islam and Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago.
He then studied oriental philology for a year (1970–1971) at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität in Erlangen, Germany, before returning to Princeton for doctoral work.
[citation needed] Donner's book The Early Islamic Conquests was published in 1981 by Princeton University Press.
[13] On the other hand, orientalist Patricia Crone was critical of the book: she wrote on Tablet that the only direct evidence for Donner's central thesis of an ecumenical early Islam comes from several Quranic verses, while the rest is based on conjecture.
According to Crone, The New York Times review of Donner's book indicates that his account of a "nice, tolerant, and open" Islam appeals to American liberals, and it may perform a useful role in educating the broader public, but as a scholarly work "it leaves something to be desired".
[14] Other academic reviews have characterized the book as "provocative and largely convincing"[15] and as "a plausible and compelling, if necessarily somewhat speculative, alternate account of the emergence of Islam".