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.
