A momentary glance at just the Prophet’s صلى الله عليه وسلم life and his worldly success has commanded attention from scholars worldwide, even among those who may not recognize the great substance and truth in his teachings. As Karen Armstrong, an acclaimed author on comparative religion, puts it, Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death… Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as in spirituality, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.136

Michael Hart, the contemporary American historian who authored The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, succinctly illustrates this mind-boggling success story as follows:

My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of 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. Of humble origins, Muhammad founded and promulgated one of the world’s great religions and became an immensely effective political leader. Today, thirteen centuries after his death, his influence is still powerful and pervasive. The majority of the persons in this book had the advantage of being born and raised in centers of civilization, highly cultured or politically pivotal nations. Muhammad, however, was born in the year 570, in the city of Mecca, in southern Arabia, at that time a backward area of the world, far from the centers of trade, art, and learning. Orphaned at age six, he was reared in modest surroundings. Islamic tradition tells us that he was illiterate. His economic position improved when, at age twenty-five, he married a wealthy widow. Nevertheless, as he approached forty, there was little outward indication that he was a remarkable person.

Most Arabs at that time were pagans, who believed in many gods. There were, however, in Mecca, a small number of Jews and Christians; it was from them no doubt that Muhammad first learned of a single, omnipotent God who ruled the entire universe. When he was forty years old, Muhammad became convinced that this one true God (Allah) was speaking to him and had chosen him to spread the true faith. For three years, Muhammad preached only to close friends and associates.

Then, about 613, he began preaching in public. As he slowly gained converts, the Meccan authorities came to consider him a dangerous nuisance. In 622, fearing for his safety, Muhammad fled to Medina (a city some 200 miles north of Mecca), where he had been offered a position of considerable political power… When Muhammad died, in 632, he was the effective ruler of all of southern Arabia. The Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia had a reputation as fierce warriors. But their number was small; and plagued by disunity and internecine warfare, they had been no match for the larger armies of the kingdoms in the settled agricultural areas to the north. However, unified by Muhammad for the first time in history, and inspired by their fervent belief in the one true God, these small Arab armies now embarked upon one of the most astonishing series of conquests in human history.137

Therefore, it was also the swiftness of Islam’s expansion which beckoned the wonderment of many Western historians, and Muslims who cite it as a miraculous proof for the truth of Islam’s claims. And as Lamartine said earlier, it was not just the astonishing series of conquests and their striking rapidity that made Muhammad unique, but also the meager means through which he صلى الله عليه وسلم accomplished this, the selfless relinquishing of any material gains and the retention of his transcendent purpose despite all these accomplishments, that marked his greatness. Bosworth Smith (d. 1908), a reverend schoolmaster and author, writes, Head of the State as well as the Church; he was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without the Pope’s pretensions, and Caesar without the legions of Caesar.

Without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue, if ever any man had the right to say he ruled by a right Divine, it was Mohammed; for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports...138 By a fortune absolutely unique in history, Mohammed is a threefold founder of a nation, of an empire, and of a religion.139

Many have echoed Smith’s fascination with Muhammad’s صلى الله عليه وسلم unique rise to power, and his enduring influence wherever his message went, irrespective of whether it had political support there. Edward Gibbon, whose writings are not void of hostility towards Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم, could not help but document his admiration of Islam’s resilience on the world stage. He writes, It is not the propagation but the permanency of his religion that deserves our wonder, the same pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Mecca and Medina is preserved after the revolutions of twelve centuries by the Indian, the African and the Turkish proselytes of the Koran…140

After the renowned Mahatma Gandhi (d. 1948) found himself in prison with the Prophet’s biography, he was able to identify the secret behind the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم overcoming insurmountable odds and reaching such stations of global success. It was the combination of political control and not allowing that political power to control him. Muslims believe that only God could have fused these two phenomena inside one man, and that He reinforced his claim to prophethood with these material and moral triumphs. In Gandhi’s words, I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind… I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.141