ABSTRACT
There can be very few people in the world who have not heard of Muhammad, Prophet of Islam. For Muslims, of course, he is the orphan who became apostle of God, communicating to all humankind
the message of Divine Oneness and the key to man’s existential dilemma: isla-m or conscious submission to the will of the One true Lord of all worlds. For those who choose not to follow his teachings, he is a man whose career formed the cornerstone upon which a vast empire, spanning from Spain to India, was founded, and the enigmatic, often controversial, founder of a world religion that today claims the allegiance of over a billion souls. As such, he is often lauded – even by his detractors – as both prophet and statesman, a figure whose significance is such that he was once voted the most influential man in world history by a panel of Western writers and academics. Few who have read anything about him come away without having formed an opinion concerning him, and many who know nothing at all about him will often venture an opinion anyway, swayed possibly by the latest news item on ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, or simply because it is human nature to pontificate on matters totally beyond our ken. But who is Muhammad, and what is his role in the genesis of that enigma known as Islam?
