In the world today, there are three primary monotheistic religions, those religions being Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although Islam may be the newest of the three religions, it still has a vast history. The history of Islam and its growth to becoming the second most populated religion in the modern world begins with a man named Muhammad, the founder of the group. Without Muhammad, there would not be the religion of Islam, and the world today would certainly not be the same. Although Muhammad died over one thousand years ago, his legacy is bigger than ever, and he is one of the most influential people in history.
Muhammad was born in the city of Mecca in 570 CE to his mother, Abinah bint Wahb. His biological father, Abdullah ibn Abdul-Muttalib, had died prior to Muhammad’s birth. Muhammad’s name comes from the Arabic language and it means “to praise or to glorify”. During Muhammad’s early years, he was raised by his mother and his wet nurse. However, when Muhammad was only six years old his mother died of a sudden illness on the way back from a trip to the oasis city of Yathrib, where they went to see his mother’s family and visit Muhammad’s father’s grave. After his mother’s death, Muhammad began to live with his paternal grandfather, from whom he learned much about the workings of government and politics in the city of Mecca. From learning about government and politics, Muhammad developed good people skills and understood how people’s minds worked. Just a few years after his mother’s death, his grandfather also died due to his age and an illness he had developed. After the death of his grandfather, Muhammad ended up living with his paternal uncle, Abu Talib, who worked as a merchant in Mecca. As a teenager Muhammad would work as a shepherd, and he would also travel with his uncle around the country, helping his Abu with customers and other merchants. Muhammad was very successful when it came to helping his uncle, and he eventually gained a reputation with older merchants and customers as being a very trustworthy and reliable young man. Muhammad eventually gained enough money to move out and find a new job. His new job was to help out a young and rich widow, who was also a very successful merchant.
This young widow name was Khadija bint Khuwaylid. Khadija has already been widowed twice, and had many children with those husbands, but Muhammad ended up falling in love with her after he worked with her for many years. She ended up being very impressed by Muhammad’s trustworthiness and his success with the business, so she also fell in love and eventually married him. When they got married, Muhammad was twenty-five, and Khadija was forty. Muhammad and Khadija ended up having six children together, four girls and two boys. Both of the boys died at infancy, leaving the couple with only the four girls. The couple had a very successful marriage that only ended due to the death of Khadija, twenty-five years after the marriage. After her death, Muhammad legally married many other women, but his love and faithfulness for Khadija is seen as a perfect example of marriage in the Islamic faith.
About fifteen years into his marriage with Khadija, Muhammad experienced his first revelation of God and the angels. The god and angels he heard speak to him was the same god that the Jewish and Christian faiths were rooted in. Muhammad was scared of the voices and visions he had been receiving, so he retreated into a cave on a mountain top, where he would live for many months and hide from the rest of the world since he believed he was going crazy. While in the cave and during the spiritual month of Ramadan, an angel visited Muhammad and told him to believe in the one true God, who Muhammad called “Allah”. The angel revealed himself as Gabriel, and he told Muhammad that it is his job to be a messenger and prophet of Allah. Though Muhammad was scared, he dedicated himself to Allah and starting preaching and spreading the holy word. Muhammad began to gain a small following in Mecca. His following included the son of his uncle and former guardian, whose name was Ali. Muhammad preached the word of Allah in Mecca for many years, but it all changed after the death of his powerful and wealthy wife, Khadija, and his uncle and former guardian, Abu.
Once Khadija and Abu died, the city of Mecca and the rulers turned against Muhammad and his followers more than ever. The rulers of the city had firm beliefs in the polytheistic religion that the city has always know, so Muhammad’s preaching of the one true God was seen as blasphemy. The followers of Muhammad started being persecuted and murdered by the Meccan leaders, so to escape the persecution, Muhammad and his followers left the city and became refugees. After leaving Mecca, the group that would go on to be called Islam were invited to relocate to the small oasis city of Yathrib, the same place where Muhammad’s father was buried, and where his mother took him as a child right before her death. The city of Yathrib invited Muhammad and his followers because they wanted him to mediate ongoing disputes between local idolatrous tribes and the Jewish tribes in the city. Muhammad agreed to mediate, and in return he was granted safety from those who wanted to hurt him and his followers.
Now with Muhammad and his group of followers located in Yathrib, he was able to gain a larger following and more power, although there was a large Jewish population in Yathrib that was against what Muhammad believed in. In Yathrib, Muhammad slowly gained power, wealth and respect, and after six years he became the master of Yathrib. Muhammad ended up killing and sending the Jewish tribes into exile, so Medina became the first truly Islamic city. When Muhammad was leader, the city’s name was changed to Medina, which means “city of the prophet”. Muhammad created the Constitution of Medina, which said that Muslims are one community and they should not fight one another, and that those who have different beliefs, such as the Jews, but help the Muslims will not be punished or looked down upon for their different beliefs. Now that Muhammad had established power, he had to find a way to promote the economy of Medina and a way to provide for his people.
In order to promote the economy and provide for his people, Muhammad and his followers were no longer just a group of worshippers, but they became a militaristic group as well. In order to benefit his people, Muhammad and his followers would raid nearby towns and villages, and they ended up being very successful. They became so successful that the non-Muslim people of Medina started to join the rids to benefit themselves. The Meccan army found out about Muhammad and his raids, so they sent a small army to stop him. Mecca was very unsuccessful, losing a good amount of the army they sent, and Muhammad and Medina was now established as a military force that could not be stopped. Even though Mecca lost the first battle, they decided to battle Muhammad two other times, however they failed both of those times, although they did manage to injure Muhammad during the second battle, but Mecca was unsuccessful in their attempts to stop Muhammad and his followers. Muhammad was now seen as one of the most powerful men in Arabia, and after failed negotiations that were meant to establish a truce between him and Mecca, Muhammad attacked Mecca, and Mecca surrendered almost immediately.
Now that Muhammad had returned to his home of Mecca, he officially declared it as the center of his monotheistic religion. Muhammad had the pagan statues outside the Kaaba, the most holy site in Islam, taken down and destroyed. Muhammad preached the word of God to the citizens, and Muhammad’s religious practice became the official religion of Mecca. Although many people still wanted to believe in the religion that they’ve always known in Mecca, they were forced to convert their believes to that of Islam, or else they would be persecuted by Muhammad and his followers.
Once Muhammad took control of Mecca and declared it to be the center of Islam, he moved back to Medina, where he lived out the rest of his life. While Muhammad was back in Medina, he and his now large group of followers went throughout the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and they spread Muhammad’s belief. Often there would be war and conquests to spread the religion, but after a few years the majority of the peninsula was dominated by Islamic beliefs. Since Muhammad was getting old, he and about ten thousand followers took one last pilgrimage to Mecca, and visited the Kaaba one last time. A decade after Muhammad took over Mecca, and the same year as his final pilgrimage, Muhammad died at the age of sixty-one, over one thousand years ago.
Although the prophet, Muhammad, died very long ago, he is very much not forgotten. After his death, much like Jesus, his followers continued to spread his beliefs around the world. However, after Muhammad’s death there was also a great divide started in the Islamic community. The Muslims disagreed about who should follow Muhammad as their leader. The majority agreed that the successor of Muhammad should be Abu Bakr, a man elected by the elders of the community. But the minority believed that Muhammad’s successor should be someone in his bloodline. The person in the bloodline that wanted to be Muhammad’s successor was his son-in-law, Ali. This disagreement caused a permanent split in the Muslim community. The minority of Muslims that believed in Ali as the successor are called Shiites, and the supporter of whichever successor the elders chose are called Sunnis.
Today, the belief system that Muhammad started has become the second largest in the world, and remains the fastest growing religion in the world. Some experts believe that by the year 2070, Islam could be the largest religion in the world, surpassing Christianity. The majority of the Arabian Peninsula, know referred to as the Middle East, has remained primarily Islamic since the early Muslims took it over. Despite Islam having a vast influence in the modern world, Muhammad and his belief system have recently become very controversial. Due to a very small percent of Muslims committing acts of terror on the world and saying they did it because of their beliefs, the world has adapted something referred to as “Islamophobia”, or the fear and discrimination against Muslims. Despite this fear and hatred towards the Islamic community, there are still over one billion people who believe in the teachings of Muhammad.
Although Muhammad died over one thousand years ago, the impact he had on the world can still be felt today. He started out as an orphan without any real wealth or power, and through God and his hard work, he rose up to be a powerful political leader, a great military commander, and a world renowned religious leader. Muhammad is a man that is looked up to by religious leader, militaristic leaders, and politicians around the world. Although his beliefs may seem discriminated against in western culture and media, Islam is still growing at a rapid place everywhere in the world. Because of the legacy Muhammad left the world, and the fact that the visions he had in a cave have now become the basis of one of the largest religions the world, he his easily one of the most influential people in human history.