Juan Cole's Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires (2018) retells the history of the prophetic period in seventh-century Arabia through the context of a brutal war between the Iranian Sassanian Empire and the Roman Empire in the Near East. In this conversation, Juan Cole and Hamza Yusuf reflect on how a new understanding of the historical period can give us sharper insights into the prophetic mission and the message of the Qur'an.