Mehru Jaffer - The Book of MUHAMMAD

Once upon a time there lived a man who changed the course of history simply by being good.

Years of intense introspection finally revealed to Muhammad Abdullah of Mecca that the natural state of all human beings is goodness. And if that fundamental law is violated, the meaning of life is lost. To be good is to be kind, compassionate and charitable. And God, Muhammad believed, is the ultimate idea of goodness. Muhammad spent his own life living up to that ideal of perfection and asked others to do the same.

The Prophets message is as simple as that. In fact, it is so simple that it is almost a disadvantage. Dr John A. Hall finds Muhammads humanity so full-blooded that he feels the religion is too advanced for its own good. In theory at least, Hall says in Powers and Liberties, there is nothing to prevent human beings from trying to perfect themselves in the image of God. The very austerity, the very openness of Muslim society, he adds, makes it impossible to respect anything that interferes in mans relationship to the creator.

Muhammad himself said, You are all answerable to God. You have been given unlimited freedom to act as you deem fit and to forage whatever pasture you like without being answerable to anyone. Rather you shall be held accountable before your Creator for each act, each word, in fact for the whole course of your life when you have been given autonomy. You will be raised after death and presented in the court of your Lord for reckoning.

But the way this simple message is put into practice today is at the root of many problems.

Over time, the idea of Muhammad has come to mean many things to many people. To his followers he is a prophet, but for the vast majority he remains a mystery. About himself, he says, I am only a human being like you. God has sent me as an apostle so that I may demonstrate perfection of character, refinement of manners and loftiness of deportment.

Surely Muhammad must be one of the most mesmerizing men to walk the earth, and also the most maligned. Therefore the yearning remains, even 1500 years after his time, to know more about the merchant who is remembered today as the Messenger of God. The most interesting attempt is made by those constantly trying to free the memory of Muhammad from the common cage of clich where he is imprisoned by a past blurred with age, by legends so loving that they make him seem unreal. But Muhammad is very real. He remains extraordinary as a prophet and a leader for having realized his dream in his own lifetime. Before his death in 632 AD , he succeeded in uniting all of Arabia through his new faith. In fact, at no other time in history except for a few years at the beginning of the Islamic era has Arabia been united under a single power.

For years the different families of Arabia had felt fenced in by the encroaching influence of the Romans and Persians, the two super-powers of that time. They lived under constant fear that forces more powerful than their own cantankerous clans might colonize them one day. By uniting over 200 tribes under the banner of Islam, Muhammad also liberated the Arabs from the confines of a peninsula that they were forced to circle for centuries in search of the most basic necessities of life. He turned the tattered tribal strength of a scattered population into a single military movement that became legendary for its might. This eventually led to the united desert tribes swarming out of the peninsula in single strength to hold both cultural and military sway over most of the world for over a millennium, beginning with Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Iran, Carthage, the Indus Valley and Spain.