Muhammad is his name

CNN released on October 12, 2009 a new study by the Pew forum on religion and public life showing that nearly 1 out of 4 people in the world is Muslim. The study says there are 1.57 billion Muslims globally now. As the fasted growing religion at the present time, and the second largest religion ( after Christianity to which 2.25 billion adhere,) Islam has roots in the bedrocks of the human civilization since the seventh century.



Back to Arabia, the setting where Abraham and his blessed family exalted in the worship of the One God; the time is 610 A.D. (See http://dinamalki.blogspot.com/2009/09/they-say-isaac-we-say-ishmael.html) Mecca was an inernational parlor at the time due to the commercial activities and the pilgrimage in the area. Many centuries after Abraham died, Arabia returned to polytheism, and the Ka'ba became home to 360 statutes representing different gods and an altar site to polytheist pilgrims. The tribe of Quraish was then the dominant ruler of Mecca and the most revered.



A grandson of Quraish's leader, Muhammad the son of Abdullah was an orphan who worked in trade caravans first with his uncle then with one of Quraish's wealthiest women, Khadijah. After she noticed his honesty and dedication, Khadijah, a fourty year old, proposed marriage to the twenty five year old Muhammad. When he turned fourty, he received God's revelation, the Quran, through archangel Gabrial. The first words were "read, read in the name of your lord who created."



Thus the message of Islam brought back monotheism to Arabia and eventually to the rest of the world. Soon, Muhammad started a long journey of compassionate teaching, various hardship, and constant thriving for the word of God. Before you find out his story from the mouth of a Muslim, check what other non-Muslims said about him.



Sir George Bernard Shaw in the “Genuine of Islam,” Vol. 1. Nr. 8, 1936:
“I believe that if a man like him (Mohammad) were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesized about the faith of Mohammad that it would be acceptable to Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.”


Michel Hart in “The 100, A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History,” New York, 1978:
“My choice of Mohammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the secular and religious level…It is probable that the relative influence of Mohammad on Islam has been larger than the combined influence of Jesus Christ and St. Paul on Christianity…It is this unparallel combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles Mohammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human history.”


Mahatma Ghandi, statement published in “Young India,” 1924:
“I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind… I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place of Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion for his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.”