Al Qala Hamra - Alhambra - Andalous - Spain - Copyright by El Eulma.com

Long ago, in the early years of the seventh century of the Christian era, there lived a middle-aged businessman who started to behave rather oddly. He took to wandering about by himself in the deserted countryside outside his native city. He heard voices talking to him when no one was present. He saw an angel standing in the sky. The same angel visited him in a dream and almost suffocated him with a brocaded textile until the sleeper spoke the words:
Recite: in the name of thy Lord who created, created Man of a blood-clot.
Recite: And thy Lord is the most generous, who taught by the Pen, taught Man that he knew not.
When he woke, he later recalled, it was 'as though these words were written on my heart'.
The city was Mecca and the man's name was Muhammad. As a result of these mysterious goiIJgs-on, the course of the world's history was changed.
The distinguished French orientalist Ernest Renan (d.1892) once made the bold claim that Islam was born and grew 'in the full light of history'. Muhammad, it seemed, was more accessible to us than, say, Jesus {about whom Renan wrote a notoriously controversial study published in 1863). Certainly, on a superficial view, the sur-viving evidence relating to the life and teaching of Muhammad would seem to support such a claim, for it is ample and diverse.....to be continued

Email from Aissa.M 25 October 2001, email: [email protected]