Muhammad's Role in Founding and Spreading Islam

Introduction

When examining the Prophet Muhammad in a religious-historical context, it is helpful to compare him to another central religious figure in the history of the West in order to highlight what makes him unique. While Christ plays the role of God-Man in the Christian religion, Muhammad plays the role of man — though a very special one. As the Qur'an notes: "Muhammad is no more than an apostle: many were the apostles that passed away before him."¹ However, Muhammad's nature is unlike that of other men, for he is recognized in Islam as having the "most perfect nature" and as being "like a jewel among stones."² Similarly to the way in which Christ is beloved of the Father in Christianity, Muhammad is "the beloved of God (habib Allah), whom the Quran calls an excellent model (uswah hasanah) to emulate."³

Another distinction worth noting is that the religion revealed through the Prophet is Islam — not "Muhammadanism." Though Western writers have employed that moniker to describe Islam, for the followers of Islam the religion was never known by any other name, and certainly not by the name Muhammadanism. Christians were always known as Christians and identified as such. Muhammad served as the founder of Islam but not as its architect or designer: the designer of the religion was Allah, and both Muhammad and his followers recognized that. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr notes, "Islam is based on the Absolute, Allah, and not on the messenger."⁴ This paper therefore describes Muhammad's role in the founding of Islam and shows how he enabled the religion to spread.

The Prophet

Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570 AD. At the time, Arabia was a war-torn region with many tribes fighting one another. Muhammad belonged to a tribe that had grown increasingly powerful near Mecca. This tribe was named Fihr, also known as Quraysh, and it was responsible for protecting the sacred Kaaba — known in Islam as the House of God. It is toward this mosque that all Muslims turn when they pray, and during Muhammad's lifetime his tribe guarded it. In Muhammad's time, the Kaaba "was venerated as the shrine of Allah, the High God."⁵ As Mecca was an important commercial and religious center in Arabia, the tribe of Fihr played a very special role in the region.

Muhammad's parents died when he was just a small child and he was raised by his uncle. His early years were spent as a shepherd, but in his twenties he married a wealthy widow named Khadeejah. Together they had six children, though only one survived: Muhammad's daughter Fatimah. Fatimah was deeply loved by Muhammad, and when he founded Islam, she and her mother were among its first converts. She is today known as the "mother of all the descendants" of Muhammad — also known as sayyids or sharifs.⁶

Muhammad traveled frequently from Mecca to Syria, meeting people of Jewish and Christian faith and learning some of the particulars of their religions. Meanwhile, he prayed and fasted in order to maintain discipline in his own faith. In 612 AD, at the age of 40, he received a message from the archangel Gabriel and entered into the service of Allah, acting as his prophet and apostle in Arabia. Muhammad would receive these revelations for the rest of his life — "for the next twenty-three years."⁷ The message he preached was that people must reject the worship of false idols and amend their lives to be in accordance with the will of Allah. His preaching was not initially well received, however, and he was driven from Mecca ten years later, in 622. This event is known as the Hejira, or Flight.

From Mecca, Muhammad went to Medina, where he and his Muslims won the respect of the Bedouin tribes by defeating the Meccan army sent to protect a caravan traveling to Medina. The Muslims were vastly outnumbered but were led by Muhammad, who had trained them to fight with precision. The Meccan army was routed, and the Bedouin who watched their enemy fall to the Muslim newcomers began from that point on to recognize Muhammad as the Prophet of Allah.⁸ The Muslims grew in number but continued to face challenges, and Muhammad led them in a number of contests among Arabian, Jewish, and Christian tribes. Throughout it all, Muhammad impressed upon his followers the importance of maintaining a disciplined spirit. For that reason, Seyyed Hossein Nasr states that "the love of the Prophet lies at the heart of Islamic piety."⁹ The centrality of the Prophet to Islam is further reflected in the understanding among Muslims that "human beings can love God only if God loves them, and God loves only the person who loves His Prophet."¹⁰ This understanding is supported by the Qur'an: "Lo! Allah and His angels shower blessings upon the Prophet. O ye who believe! Ask blessing upon him and salute him with a worthy salutation."¹¹ Thanks to his preaching and his victories in battle, Muhammad was able to spread the religion of Islam and win the love and affection of converts.