Sublime

Islam preaches the continual self-revelation of God from Adam down to all the prophets who have ever existed in all religions. These prophets are called nabis in Arabic, and they have been chosen to relay God’s divine message to all humanity. But sometimes a nabi is given the extra burden of handing down sacred texts: Moses, who revealed the Torah;

IN 613, THREE years after the Revelation had begun, Muhammad’s message underwent a dramatic transformation, one that is best summed up in the twofold profession of faith, or shahadah, that would henceforth define both the mission and principles of the movement: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s Messenger.

And it was precisely this self-image that so greatly disturbed the Quraysh. For by proclaiming himself “the Messenger of God,” Muhammad was blatantly transgressing the traditional Arab process through which power was granted. This was not authority that had been given to Muhammad as “the first among equals.” Muhammad had no equals.

Yet, like his great prophetic predecessors—Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus—Muhammad would be something more.

As the Quran suggests over and over again, and as the Constitution of Medina explicitly affirms, Muhammad may have understood the concept of the Umm al-Kitab to mean not only that the Jews, Christians, and Muslims shared a single divine scripture but also that they constituted a single divine Ummah.

the Quran is considered to be direct revelation (tanzil), the actual words of God handed down through Muhammad, who was little more than a passive conduit.

For fifteen years he struggled with the incongruity between his lifestyle and his beliefs; by his fortieth year, he was an intensely troubled man. Then, one night in 610 C.E., as he was meditating on Mt. Hira during one of his religious retreats, Muhammad had an encounter that would change the world. He sat alone in a cave, deep in meditation.