“There certainly has come to you a messenger from among yourselves.
He is concerned by your suffering, anxious for your well-being,
and gracious and merciful to the believers.” 9:128
Born in 570 CE in Mecca, the Wall Street district of his day, this orphaned-born uneducated man transformed the Arabian peninsula from a tribal society mired in blood feuds into an advanced civilization. While claiming no divinity or miraculous powers, Muhammad, peace be upon him, accomplished this in 23 short years. He grew from Bedouin camel boy to a highly respected caravan business manager, husband, father, grandfather, prophet, preacher, mystic, pragmatist, legislator, judge, military commander, and founder of a religion that will in this century surpass Christianity as the largest religion in the world.
He built no palaces for himself nor indulged in worldly comforts. He remained monogamously married to his beloved wife Khadija for 25 years until her death. She was the first to believe in his higher calling and encouraged him to follow divine inspiration. The multiple marriages that followed her death were political unions to bind one tribe to another (a common practice as evidenced by Solomon in the Bible).
Muhammad’s, peace be upon him, ultimate concern was to preach the nature of God as one God, abounding in compassion and mercy. His gospel taught others to do good deeds for he insisted that only compassionate action would free the least, the lowest and left-out members in society. His special access to God was that of divine revelation given through the angel Gabriel and grounded in hands-on daily living.
Revelations spanned twenty-three years from the age of forty to the time of his death at age sixty-two. Revelations given in Mecca (age forty to fifty-two) were sublime spiritual inspirations interlaced with warnings to the ruling class that their social injustices would not go unpunished. Abusive retaliations followed resulting in an assassination attempt on his life.
Losing tribal protection with the death of his uncle, the tribal leader, he was forced out of Mecca and emigrated to Medina in 622 CE at the age of fifty-two. Revelations continued in Medina and were expanded topically to include matters of governance, defense and social justice.
In 1965 the Student’s Quran Center in Shalimar, Hyderabad-4 India facilitated a contest to describe Muhammad and the Qur’an in 100 words or less. The winning student wrote:
Fourteen Hundred years ago,
in a religio-commercial town,
lying between three cultures,
there lived an orphan—
noble but poor,
Grazing his uncle’s camels, he wondered,
and wondered, at God’s bounties
and man’s egotistic ingratitude.
His goodness brought him riches, trust.
At forty, his concern for his people
brought him Divine communion:
messages persuading,
warning, reassuring, promising,
explaining, softly compelling.
This Guidance, over twenty-three years,
transformed the myriad-tribal Arabs
into heralds of One Humanity.
These Divine Audiences,
compiled into 114 Suras,
often misrepresented by foes,
misunderstood by friends,
constitute the Qur’an.
When fully appreciated
it will become the Gospel of Man.
Others outside of the Islamic tradition have recognized the profundity of the Qur’an and the accomplishments of Muhammad. For example, the American author and astrophysicist, Michael H. Hart, in his best-selling book translated into sixteen languages, The 100; A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, ranked Muhammad as number one. Hart’s selection may be surprising to some. Neither Jesus, Moses, nor Marx, but Muhammad, was chosen from the world’s greatest religious and political leaders, inventors, writers, philosophers, explorers, artists and innovators.