Muhammad The Great Exemplar — Page 51
51 identity and a new name for themselves by which they spread across the earth. However, [in real terms], the Holy Prophet sa did not impart onto the world at large a new law, nor did he initiate any sort of world reform. Muir, as per his disposition, is a firm proponent of this thesis. But at times, the breeze of the Holy Prophet’s sa character unsettles the sureness of his footing, and in a state of fear and trembling, he stumbles and yet thereafter his spirit soars from the earth to a new realm. At one such moment his pen flows with the words: The fabric of Islam no more necessarily grew out of the state of Arabia, than a gorgeous texture grows from the slender meshes of silken filament; or the stately ship from unhewn timber of the forest; or the splendid palace from rude masses of quarried rock. Had Mahomet, stern to his early convictions, followed the leading of Jewish and Christian truth, and inculcated upon his fellows their simple doctrine, there would have been a ‘‘SAINT MAHOMET’’ — more likely perhaps a ‘‘MAHOMET THE MARTYR’’ — laying the foundation stone of the Arabian Church. But then (so far as human probabilities and analogy indicate) Arabia would not, certainly in his day, have been convulsed to its centre, or even