ISLAM THE BASICS

MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON IN HISTORY
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael H. Hart, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential
Persons in History
 
 My choice of Muhammad to lead 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 religious and secular levels. . .
 
 . . . 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 to 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 a
 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. . .
 
 Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was a secular leader 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. . . [When Muhammad died in 632, he was the
 effective leader of all of southern Arabia. By 711, Arab armies
 had swept completely across North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. In
 a scant century of fighting, the 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.]
 
 . . 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.
 
Alphonse de Lamartine, Histoire de la Turquie
 
 Never has a man set for himself, voluntarily or involuntarily, a
 more sublime aim, since this aim was superhuman: to subvert
 superstitions which had been interposed between man and his
 creator, to render God unto man and man unto God; to restore the
 rational and sacred idea of divinity amidst the chaos of the
 material and disfigured gods of idolatry, then existing. Never has
 a man undertaken a work so far beyond human power with so feeble
 means, for he (Muhammad) had in the conception as well as in the
 execution of such a great design no other instrument than himself,
 and no other aid, except a handful of men living in a corner of
 the desert. Finally, never has a man accomplished such a huge and
 lasting revolution in the world, because in less than two
 centuries after its appearance, Islam, in faith and in arms,
 reigned over the whole of Arabia, and conquered, in God's name,
 Persia, Khorasan, Transoxania, Western India, Syria, Egypt,
 Abyssinia, all the known continent of Northern Africa, numerous
 islands of the Mediterranean, Spain, and a part of Gaul.
 
 If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astounding
 results are the true criteria of human genius, who could dare to
 compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad? The most
 famous men created arms, laws and empires only. They founded, if
 anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled
 away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies,
 legislations, empires, peoples and dynasties, but millions of men
 in one-third of the inhabited world; and more than that, he moved
 the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and
 the souls.
 
 On the basis of a Book, every letter of which has become law, he
 created a spiritual nationality which blended together peoples of
 every tongue and of every race. He has left us as the indelible
 characteristic of this Muslim nationality the hatred of false gods
 and the passion for the One and Immaterial God. This avenging
 patriotism against the profanation of Heaven formed the virtue of
 the followers of Muhammad; the conquest of one-third of the earth
 to his dogma was his miracle; or rather it was not the miracle of
 a man but that of reason.
 
 The idea of the Unity of God, proclaimed amidst the exhaustion of
 fabulous theogonies, was in itself such a miracle that upon its
 utterance from his lips it destroyed all the ancient temples of
 idols and set on fire one-third of the world. His life, his
 meditations, his heroic revilings against the superstitions of his
 country, and his boldness in defying the furies of idolatry, his
 firmness in enduring them for fifteen years at Mecca, his
 acceptance of the role of public scorn and almost of being a
 victim of his fellow countrymen: all these and, finally, his
 flight, his incessant preaching, his wars against odds, his faith
 in his success and his superhuman security in misfortune, his
 forbearance in victory, his ambition, which was entirely devoted
 to one idea and in no manner striving for an empire; his endless
 prayers, his mystic conversations with God, his death and his
 triumph after death: all these attest not to an imposture but to
 affirm conviction which gave him the power to restore a dogma.
 This dogma was twofold, the unity of God and the immateriality of
 God: the former telling what God is, the latter telling what God
 is not; the one overthrowing false gods with the sword, the other
 starting an idea with the words.
 
 Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of
 ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images; the
 founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire,
 that is Muhammad. As regards all standards by which human
 greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man
 greater than he? -- Paris 1854, Vol. II, pp. 276- 277