Why Muhammad?

Abstract

God‘s reasoning is unfathomable. Nevertheless, not only orientalists but Muslims are well-advised to ponder on occasion questions linked to the Night of Destiny (laylut al qadr): Why, of all people, was Muhammad, a person who lived in Arabia, of all places, and in the seventh century C.E., chosen to deliver God‘s final message in Arabic, a heretofore obscure language in the larger world of that time? In our quest for answers to such questions, human reasoning may provide the following answers: 1) Seventh-century Arabia could not be reached by the power projection of the region’s two dominant hegemonical states. The Christian (east) Roman empire of Heraclius I and the Iranian empire of the Sasanian Shah Chosraw II Parwez were completely absorbed in an ongoing struggle that would ultimately turn out to be fatal for both of them. The dualist Persian religions of Mithraism and Manichaeism had been consolidated into the official state religion of Zoroastrianism. Both empires would not have tolerated a new religion that, like Islam, could have shaken their very foundations. Only in the far distant and obscure land of Arabia could a new ideological state-community arise and consolidate itself before either of the two neighboring superpowers had a chance to intervene. 2) Arabia enjoyed a central geostrategic position with regard to the known world at that time, being at a similar distance from Morocco and China as well as England and Japan. Muslim expansion was greatly facilitated by the fact that in geographical terms, Islam was never marginal. 3) At that point in time, the languages of commerce and intellectual discourse-Latin, Greek, Persian, and Hebrewhad become so linked and interwoven as media for the transportation and interpretation of previous divine relations that they were now unsuitable for the new Islamic message. In order to bring about a theological revolution, particularly in the Christianized world, the Qur’anic message required a virginal language. We see how true this assessment is when we consult a translation of the Qur’an made by Christian orientalists. Whenever they encounter terms like al kulimut, al amr, or al ruh (al quddus) they ...