…cOmEs fRoM ALLAH, aNd tO HiM wE ShALL rEtUrN..

Islamic tradition tells us that he was
illiterate. His economic position improved when, at age twenty-five, he
married a wealthy widow. Nevertheless, as he approached forty, there
was little outward indication that he was a remarkable person. Most
Arabs at that time were pagans, who believed in many gods. There were,
however, in Mecca, a small number of Jews and Christians; it was from
them no doubt that Muhammad first learned of a single, omnipotent God
who ruled the entire universe. When he was forty years old, Muhammad
became convinced that this one true God (Allah) was speaking to him,
and had chosen him to spread the true faith. For three years, Muhammad
preached only to close friends and associates.

Then, about
613, he began preaching in public. As he slowly gained converts, the
Meccan authorities came to consider him a dangerous nuisance. In 622,
fearing for his safety, Muhammad fled to Medina (a city some 200 miles
north of Mecca), where he had been offered a position of considerable
political power. This flight, called the Hegira, was the turning point
of the Prophet’s life. In Mecca, he had had few followers.
In
Medina, he had many more, and he soon acquired an influence that made
him a virtual dictator. During the next few years, while Muhammad’s
following grew rapidly, a series of battles were fought between Medina
and Mecca. This was ended in 630 with Muhammad’s triumphant return to
Mecca as conqueror. The remaining two and one-half years of his life
witnessed the rapid conversion of the Arab tribes to the new religion.

When
Muhammad died, in 632, he was the effective ruler of all of southern
Arabia. The Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia had a reputation as fierce
warriors. But their number was small; and plagued by disunity and
internecine warfare, they had been no match for the larger armies of
the kingdoms in the settled agricultural areas to the north. However,
unified by Muhammad for the first time in history, and inspired by
their fervent belief in the one true God, these small Arab armies now
embarked upon one of the most astonishing series of conquests in human
history. To the northeast of Arabia lay the large Neo-Persian Empire of
the Sassanids; to the northwest lay the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman
Empire, centered in Constantinople.

Numerically, the Arabs
were no match for their opponents. On the field of battle, though, the
inspired Arabs rapidly conquered all of Mesopotamia, Syria, and
Palestine. By 642, Egypt had been wrested from the Byzantine Empire,
while the Persian armies had been crushed at the key battles of
Qadisiya in 637, and Nehavend in 642. But even these enormous
conquests, which were made under the leadership of Muhammad’s close
friends and immediate successors, Ali, Abu Bakr and ‘Umar ibn
al-Khattab, did not mark the end of the Arab advance. By 711, the Arab
armies had swept completely across North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean
There they turned north and, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar,
overwhelmed the Visigothic kingdom in Spain.

For a while, it
must have seemed that the Moslems would overwhelm all of Christian
Europe. However, in 732, at the famous Battle of Tours, a Moslem army,
which had advanced into the center of France, was at last defeated by
the Franks. Nevertheless, in a scant century of fighting, these Bedouin
tribesmen, inspired by the word of the Prophet, had carved out an
empire stretching from the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean-the
largest empire that the world had yet seen. And everywhere that the
armies conquered, large-scale conversion to the new faith eventually
followed. Now, not all of these conquests proved permanent. The
Persians, though they have remained faithful to the religion of the
Prophet, have since regained their independence from the Arabs. And in
Spain, more than seven centuries of warfare, finally resulted in the
Christians reconquering the entire peninsula. However, Mesopotamia and
Egypt, the two cradles of ancient civilization, have remained Moslem,
as has the entire coast of North Africa. The new religion, of course,
continued to spread, in the intervening centuries, far beyond the
borders of the original Moslem conquests. Currently it has tens of
millions of adherents in Africa and Central Asia and even more in
Pakistan and northern India, and in Indonesia. In Indonesia, the new
faith has been a unifying factor. In the Indian subcontinent, however,
the conflict between Moslems and Hindus is still a major obstacle to
unity.

How, then, is one to assess the overall impact of
Muhammad on human history? Like all religions, Islam exerts an enormous
influence upon the lives of its followers. It is for this reason that
the founders of the world’s great religions all figure prominently in
this book. Since there are roughly twice as many Christians as Moslems
in the world, it may initially seem strange that Muhammad has been
ranked higher than Jesus. There are two principal reasons for that
decision. First, Muhammad played a far more important role in the
development of Islam than Jesus did in the development of Christianity.
Although Jesus was responsible for the main ethical and moral precepts
of Christianity (insofar as these differed from Judaism), St. Paul was
the main developer of Christian theology, its principal proselytizer,
and the author of a large portion of the New Testament.

Muhammad,
however, was responsible for both the theology of Islam and its main
ethical and moral principles. In addition, he played the key role in
proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing the religious
practices of Islam. Moreover, he is the author of the Moslem holy
scriptures, the Koran, a collection of certain of Muhammad’s insights
that he believed had been directly revealed to him by Allah. Most of
these utterances were copied more or less faithfully during

Muhammad’s
lifetime and were collected together in authoritative form not long
after his death. The Koran therefore, closely represents Muhammad’s
ideas and teachings and to a considerable extent his exact words. No
such detailed compilation of the teachings of Christ has survived.
Since the Koran is at least as important to Moslems as the Bible is to
Christians, the influence of Muhammad through the medium of the Koran
has been enormous. It is probable that the relative influence of
Muhammad on Islam has been larger than the combined influence of Jesus
Christ and St. Paul on Christianity.

On the purely religious
level, then, it seems likely that Muhammad has been as influential in
human history as Jesus. Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was a
secular as well as a religious leader. In fact, as the driving force
behind the Arab conquests, he may well rank as the most influential
political leader of all time. Of many important historical events, one
might say that they were inevitable and would have occurred even
without the particular political leader who guided them. For example,
the South American colonies would probably have won their independence
from Spain even if Simon Bolivar had never lived. But this cannot be
said of the Arab conquests. Nothing similar had occurred before
Muhammad, and there is no reason to believe that the conquests would
have been achieved without him. The only comparable conquests in human
history are those of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, which were
primarily due to the influence of Genghis Khan. These conquests,
however, though more extensive than those of the Arabs, did not prove
permanent, and today the only areas occupied by the Mongols are those
that they held prior to the time of Genghis Khan. It is far different
with the conquests of the Arabs. From Iraq to Morocco, there extends a
whole chain of Moslem nations united not merely by their faith in
Islam, but also by their Arabic language, history, and culture.

The
centrality of the Koran in the Moslem religion and the fact that it is
written in Arabic have probably prevented the Arab language from
breaking up into mutually unintelligible dialects, which might
otherwise have occurred in the intervening thirteen centuries.
Differences and divisions between these Arab states exist, of course,
and they are considerable, but the partial disunity should not blind us
to the important elements of unity that have continued to exist. For
instance, neither Iran nor Indonesia, both oil-producing states and
both Islamic in religion joined in the oil embargo of the winter of
1973-74.

It is no coincidence that all of the Arab states, and
only the Arab states, participated in the embargo. We see, then, that
the Arab conquests of the seventh century have continued to play an
important role in human history, down to the present day. It is this
unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which I
feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential single
figure in human history.

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THIS PART AND BELOW IS COMPILED BY TKO WEBMASTER

Prophet Muhammad foretold in the Torah and Bible

The coming of Prophet Muhammad had been foretold in the Torah. God had said to Moses: 

"I
will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee,
and I will put My words in his mouth; and he shall speak to them all
that I shall command him" Deuteronomy 18:18 

Who
in the Old Testament were the brethren of the sons of Israel if not the
sons of Ismael? (descended from Abraham’s first wife Hagar at the well
of Zam Zam at Makkah called Bakkah in those days) Who else could have
been the Prophet like unto Moses? Who was more similar to him than the
Prophet Muhammad? 

The prophecy in Bible has been fulfilled by the advent of Prophet Muhammad. Jesus says in the Bible, John 16:7 and 16:13:
"If
I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart I
will send him unto you . . .We will guide you into all truth; for he
shall not speak of himself but whatever he shall hear, that shall he
speak . . ." 

Prophet
Muhammad was a receptacle of Divine revelation and Angel Gabriel used
to bring the words from God, which would be "etched" upon his heart.
The first revelation to Prophet Muhammad at the cave of Mount Hira: 

"Read! In the name of your Lord Who Creates
Creates man from a clot of blood
Read! And your Lord is most generous
Teaches man that which he knew not" Quran 96:1-5 

Genesis 17:7 Covenant Allah (Elohim in Hebrew) made with Abraham and Ishmael

The non-Muslim verdict on Muhammad (PBUH)

If
a man like Muhamed were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world,
he would succeed in solving its problems that would bring it the much
needed peace and happiness.

George Bernard Shaw 

People
like Pasteur and Salk are leaders in the first sense. People like
Gandhi and Confucius, on one hand, and Alexander, Caesar and Hitler on
the other, are leaders in the second and perhaps the third sense. Jesus
and Buddha belong in the third category alone. Perhaps the greatest
leader of all times was Mohammed, who combined all three functions. To
a lesser degree, Moses did the same. 

Professor Jules Masserman 

Head
of the State as well as the Church, he was Caesar and Pope in one; but,
he was Pope without the Pope’s pretensions, and Caesar without the
legions of Caesar, without a standing army, without a bodyguard,
without a police force, without a fixed revenue. If ever a man had the
right to say that he ruled by a right divine, it was Muhummed, for he
had all the powers without their supports. He cared not for the
dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping
with his public life. 

Rev. R. Bosworth-Smith 

Muhammad was the soul of kindness, and his influence was felt and never forgotten by those around him. 

Diwan Chand Sharma, The Prophets of the East, Calcutta 1935, p. l 22. 

Four
years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in
Arabia the man who, of all men exercised the greatest influence upon
the human race . . . Mohammed . . . 

John William Draper, M.D., L.L.D., 
A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, London 1875, Vol. 1, pp. 329-330 

In
little more than a year he was actually the spiritual, nominal and
temporal rule of Medina, with his hands on the lever that was to shake
the world. 

John Austin, 
"Muhammad the Prophet of Allah," in T.P. ’s and Cassel’s Weekly for 24th September 1927. 

Philosopher,
Orator, Apostle, Legislator, Warrior, Conqueror of ideas Restorer of
rational beliefs, of a cult without images; the founder of twenty
terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire, that is Muhammed. As
regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may
well ask, is there any man greater than he? 

Lamartine,
Historie de la Turquie, Paris 1854, Vol. 11 pp. 276-2727 

It
is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the
great prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived, to
feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, one of the great
messengers of the Supreme. And although in what I put to you I shall
say many things which may be familiar to many, yet I myself feel
whenever I re-read them, a new way of admiration, a new of reverence
for that mighty Arabian teacher. 

Annie Besant, 
The Life and Teachings of Muhammad, Madras 1932, p. 4 

Muhummed is the most successful of all Prophets and religious personalities. 

Encyclopedia Britannica 

I
have studied him - the wonderful man - and in my opinion far from being
an anti-Christ he must be called the saviour of humanity. 

George Bernard Shaw in "The Genuine Islam" 

By a fortune absolutely unique in history, Mohammed is a threefold founder of a nation, of an empire, and of a religion. 

Rev. R. Bosworth-Smith in "Mohammed and Mohammedanism 1946.