Muhammad was born in Arabia, amongst clans who were pagans and community-oriented. The Bedouins of Arabia worked hard and fought harder. They relied on themselves and thought highly of their own success. One Muslim says the Bedouins never developed an instinct to obey authority (Farah, 25).
The pre-Islamic Arabs were also looking for their own “monotheistic” religion and prophet. The Jews had the Hebrew Bible and Moses. Christians had the New Testament and Jesus Christ. Where was the prophet for the Arabs? Where was their book?
Into that void – in 570 A. D. – stepped a six-year-old orphan. Eventually, he was raised by his uncle and married a wealthy widow, fifteen years his senior. As the story goes – hardly verifiable – in a cave on Mt. Hira, north of Mecca, in the month of Ramadan, the angel Gabriel began revealing messages to Muhammad. This 40-year-old man had inherent leadership skills and the gift of oratory. Consequently, he stepped into the “void” of the prophet of God (or “Allah” as the Muslims contend, although I would argue their “Allah” is not just another name for the God of the Bible).
Muhammad did have a hard time converting people to his new “monotheistic” religion. Supposedly in this tenth year as a prophet, he took a trip to Jerusalem and went to heaven on a white horse named Buraq, where he met Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. The Dome of the Rock mosque is now built in Jerusalem over the site where he went to heaven.
Muhammad’s eventual success at uniting the Arabs under his leadership is given to three factors: 1.) The Muslims’ military strength; 2.) Muhammad could be a generous and reliable ally; 3.) His teaching that Paradise was within easy reach.
Within the last ten years of his life, Muhammad had become the de facto emperor of Arabia – a hero for unifying the tribes on the Arabia peninsula. On June 8, A. D. 632, Muhammad died in Medina at the age of 63. He was buried there, in the apartment of one of his twelve wives.
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Those who supported subsequent leadership was to come from Muhammad’s family were called Shi’ites while those who believed the community as a whole should decide the leaders are known as Sunni (86-87%). There are various other splinter groups – or denominations – in Islam.
One thing I want to leave you with is the sharp contrast between how Jesus proved His deity and how there is an admitted lack of proof of Muhammad’s prophet hood. Muslims admit that Muhammad did not perform any miracles, save for the production of the Qu’ran itself. While Muslims insist they do not worship Muhammad, they do believe he is the perfect person – insan-i-kamil. Thus, they try to pattern their lives after him.
Another Muslim scholar, Haneef, writes (29): “A divinely-revealed Book might contain God’s guidance, but a Book was not enough; someone was needed to translate that guidance into action, to live it. And that someone was not to be an angel or a super-human being but a man like other men, a man from among the community to which the guidance was immediately addressed, who would serve as a living example to others and would give concrete form to the laws which God had revealed amidst the varied conditions of ordinary human existence.” Jesus Christ would fill that description much better than Muhammad.
Knowing about Muhammad will not help you grow closer to Jesus. It might how you appreciate how solid our knowledge of Jesus Christ is and His claims. But, I hope you will learn about Islam and try to – patiently – teach the truth to any Muslims you may encounter. A fuller detail of Muhammad’s life is available on our website.
–Paul Holland
