I should write something on the passing of W. M. Watt. It may not be politically correct to say this but I have learned a great deal from many classical Orientalists, and he was one of them. I always liked how he writes, and how he utilized his knowledge and language skills: and he tried to write with sensitivity although I have always felt that his early work on Muhammad's life was rather apologetic. He wanted to deflect Western biases but he went too far sometimes as he tried to explain Muhammad's marriages, for example, accepting the apologetic Muslim view that they were all based on political considerations (which of course is not true; Muhammad's marriage to Zaynab Bint Al-Jahsh was not motivated by "political considerations" for example). I always favored Rodinson's biography of Muhammad to Watt's. But something happened to Watt at the end of his career. When you read his later work, especially Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity, he sounds very uncharacteristically angry at Muslims. I was shocked when I read that book because it did not read like the Watt that I have been reading over the years. You felt that he was fed up with Muslims, or that he was finally coming out with his real views. I don't know personally which one is the real Watt. But I for sure have learned from his scholarship, including his first book ever on free will and predestination in Islam (1948). I still recommend that book to my students. I never met Watt, but feel that I knew him.