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It seems certain that Muhammad, like all the prophets before him, wanted nothing to do with God’s calling. So despondent was he about the experience that his first thought was to kill himself. As far as Muhammad understood, only the Kahin, whom he despised as reprehensible charlatans, received messages from the heavens. If his experience at Mount Hira meant that he was himself becoming a Kahin and that his colleagues in Mecca were now going to regard him as such, then he would rather be dead.
Still frightened and trembling from the experience in the cave, Muhammad made his way back home, where he crawled to his wife’s side, crying, “Wrap me up! Wrap me up!” Khadija immediately threw a cloak over him and held him tightly in her arms until the trembling and convulsions stopped. Once he had calmed, Muhammad wept openly as he tried to explain what had happened to him. “Khadija,” he said, “I think that I have gone mad.” “This cannot be, my dear,” Khadija replied, stroking his hair. “God would not treat you thus since He knows your truthfulness, your great trustworthiness, your fine
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Muhammad’s example to his community explains why, for the most part, Jews thrived under Muslim rule, especially after Islam expanded into Byzantine lands, where Orthodox rulers routinely persecuted both Jews and non-Orthodox Christians for their religious beliefs, often forcing them to convert to Imperial Christianity under penalty of death. In contrast, Muslim law, which considers Jews and Christians “protected peoples” (dhimmi), neither required nor encouraged their conversion to Islam. Muslim persecution of the dhimmi was not only forbidden by Islamic law, it was in direct defiance of
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