Muhammad (saw) – The Perfect Man — Page 933
Muhammad sa The Perfect Man 933 Mu h ammad's extraordinary success. . . . Instead of devoting all their efforts to restructuring their own personal lives within the context of the 'pax Romana', like the early Christians, Muhammad and his companions had undertaken the redemption of their society, without which there could be no moral or spiritual advancement. . . . The Islamic empire had reached the limits of its expansion about a hundred years after Mu h ammad's death, and Muslims developed normal diplomatic and economic links with their neighbours. There was no pressure on Jews, Christians or Zoroastrians to convert to Islam,. . . We in the West have never been able to cope with Islam: our ideas of it have been crude and dismissive and today we seem to belie our own avowed commitment to tolerance and compassion by our contempt for the pain and inchoate distress in the Muslim world. Islam is not going to disappear or wither away; it would have been better if it had remained healthy and strong. We can only hope that it is not too late. . . . If Muslims need to understand our Western traditions and institutions more thoroughly today, we in the West need to divest ourselves of some of our old