Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet by Deepak Chopra
Set in 6-7 AD, a time when “slaves were kept and cruelty abused. So were women and unwanted baby girls were routinely left to die on a mountainside after they were born.” Set mostly in Mecca, in a desert valley in western Saudi Arabia, (today, Islam’s holiest city). The seclusion provided by sands of desert gave Mecca a protection it needed from the invaders and a seclusion which gave birth to a new religion.
Muhammad is orphaned by age of six. He grows up surrounded by cousins and extended family.
At a young age, he makes a reputation for himself as a trusted merchant. He makes it through a desert leading safely a caravan for an older merchant, who was too weary to travel.
He marries a rich widow almost twice his age. She had many offers before. But they say, “She was waiting for a pure husband.”
Later, there is a shift in Muhammad’s behavior. Even his four daughters find him aloof. And others claim that he lost his mind. He likes to walk on the slopes of Mount Hira. One day, he finds a cave there, which he cleans and afterwards spends a lot of time there.
The angel Gabriel appears and tells him, he’s God’s chosen one. Now, he understands that “God is not someone you can seek. He is in all things, and always has been.”
He and his followers change one believer at a time. “To protect some of his followers, he sends them across the sea to Abyssinia, where the Christians recognize us as brothers under the same God. A bitter irony, this. Our own blood brothers, the Quraysh, persecute us without mercy.”
Hundreds of ancient Arabian gods have vanquished in favor of one God. “The God of Muhammad has cast down the gods of Arabia. They have crumbled to dust.”
Muhammad becomes the bringer of peace, settling feuds between Jews and Arabs.
The lives of Muhammad and his family are revealed through the lives of other people, for example Bedouin wet nurse, who takes him to the desert and nurses him for the first two years of his life as it was custom. The points of views through which the story is revealed are very interesting, making the story deeply engrossing.
Also, presented with great prose, “She had outlived most of Muhammad’s family with such steel in her spine that she threatened to outlive the rest of us too.”
P.S. The famous “five pillars of Islam” prescribe the duties of the faithful:
- The profession of faith, declaring that Allah is the one God and Muhammad his prophet.
- Prayer, which takes places five times a day facing Mecca, the most sacred place on earth.
- Charity, through the giving of alms to the poor.
- Fasting during the month of Ramadan.
- Pilgrimage, at least once in a lifetime, to Mecca.
There are six core beliefs (one God, prophets/messengers sent by God, angels, books sent by God, judgment day, fate) that would be agreed upon even by sects that otherwise divide along fierce lines like the Sunni and Shia. These beliefs overlap closely with those of both Judaism and Christianity. But no religion can escape the claim that it surmounts all others; often, leading to religious conflicts.
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