Muhammad Quotes

“He was decisive and wholehearted in everything he did, so intent non the task at hand that he never looked over his shoulder, even if his cloak got caught in a thorny bush. When he did turn to speak to somebody, he used to swing his entire body and dress him full face. When he shook hands, he was never the first to withdraw his own. He inspired such confidence that he was known as al-Amin, the Reliable One.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“People worship different things; there must be 'no coercion in matters of faith!”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a human life”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“The Qur’an was attempting to give women a legal status that most Western women would not enjoy until the nineteenth century. The emancipation of women was a project dear to the Prophet’s heart, but it was resolutely opposed by many men in the ummah, including some of his closest companions.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Muhammad preached his farewell sermon to the Muslim community. He reminded them to deal justly with one another, to treat women kindly, and to abandon the blood feuds and vendettas inspired by the spirit of jahiliyyah. Muslim must never fight against Muslim.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“In each of the early surahs, God spoke intimately to the individual, often preferring to pose many of his teachings in the form of a question - 'Have you not heard?' 'Do you consider?' 'Have you not seen?'. Each listener was thus invited to interrogate him or herself. Any response to these queries was usually grammatically ambiguous or indefinite, leaving the audience with an image on which to meditate but with no decisive answer. This new religion was not about achieving metaphysical certainty; the Quran wanted people to develop a different kind of awarness.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Breath control is crucial to most of the contemplative traditions... Qur'anic reciters chant long phrases for meditation. It is natural for the audience to adjust their breathing too and find that this has a calming, therapeutic effect, which enables them to grasp the more elusive teachings of the text.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“The Qur’an was attempting to give women a legal status that most Western women would not enjoy until the nineteenth century. The”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time

“The Qur’an had begun to develop a primitive just war theory. In the steppes, aggressive warfare was praiseworthy; but in the Qur’an, self-defense was the only possible justification for hostilities and the preemptive strike was condemned.5 War was always a terrible evil, but it was sometimes necessary in order to preserve decent values, such as freedom of worship. Even here, the Qur’an did not abandon its pluralism: synagogues and churches as well as mosques should be protected. The Muslims felt that they had suffered a fearful assault; their expulsion from Mecca was an act that had no justification. Exile from the tribe violated the deepest sanction of Arabia; it had attacked the core of the Muslims’ identity.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Every year there was an important poetry contest at the fair of ‘Ukaz, just outside Mecca, and the winning poems were embroidered in gold on fine black cloth and hung on the walls of the Kabah. Muhammad’s followers would, therefore, have been able to pick up verbal signals in the text that are lost in translation. They found that themes, words, phrases, and sound patterns recurred again and again—like the variations in a piece of music, which subtly amplify the original melody, and add layer upon layer of complexity. The Qur’an was deliberately repetitive; its ideas, images, and stories were bound together by these internal echoes, which reinforced its central teaching with instructive shifts of emphasis. They linked passages that initially seemed separate, and integrated the different strands of the text, as one verse delicately qualified and supplemented others. The Qur’an was not imparting factual information that could be conveyed instantaneously. Like Muhammad, listeners had to absorb its teachings slowly; their understanding would grow more profound and mature over time, and the rich, allusive language and rhythms of the Qur’an helped them to slow down their mental processes and enter a different mode of consciousness.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“The word qur’an means “recitation.” It was not designed for private perusal, but like most scriptures, it was meant to be read aloud, and the sound was an essential part of the sense. Poetry was important in Arabia. The poet was the spokesman, social historian, and cultural authority of his tribe, and over the years the Arabs had learned how to listen to a recitation and had developed a highly sophisticated critical ear.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“The Meccan merchants had met Christian monks and hermits during their travels, and were familiar with the stories of Jesus and the concepts of Paradise and the Last Judgment. They called Jews and Christians the ahl al-kitab (“the People of the Book”). They admired the notion of a revealed text and wished they had sacred scripture in their own language.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Finally Muhammad quoted the words that God had spoken to the whole of humanity: Behold, we have created you all out of a male or a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you may come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of him. Behold God is all-knowing, all-aware.40”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“At the end of my first attempt to write a biography of Muhammad, I quoted the prescient words of the Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith. Writing in the mid-twentieth century shortly before the Suez Crisis, he observed that a healthy, functioning Islam had for centuries helped Muslims cultivate decent values which we in the West share, because they spring from a common tradition. Some Muslims have problems with Western modernity. They have turned against the cultures of the People of the Book, and have even begun to Islamize their new hatred of these sister faiths, which were so powerfully endorsed by the Qur’an. Cantwell Smith argued that if they are to meet the challenge of the day, Muslims must learn to understand our Western traditions and institutions, because they are not going to disappear. If Islamic societies did not do this, he maintained, they would fail the test of the twentieth century. But he pointed out that Western people also have a problem: “an inability to recognize that they share the planet not with inferiors but with equals.”   Unless”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“He was simply a nadhir, a messenger with a warning, and should approach the Quraysh humbly, avoid provocation, and be careful not to attack their gods. This is what the great prophets had done in the past.28 A prophet had to be altruistic; he must not trumpet his own opinions egotistically or trample on the sensibilities of others, but should always put the welfare of the community first. A”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time

“Muhammad was convinced that unless the Quraysh reformed their attitudes and behavior, they too would fall prey to the anarchy that threatened to engulf the world. Under the inspiration of Allah, Muhammad was feeling his way towards an entirely new solution, convinced that he was not speaking in his own name, but was simply repeating the revealed words of God.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Trade and religion were thus inextricably combined in Mecca. The pilgrimage to Mecca was the climax of the suq cycle, and the Quraysh reconstructed the cult and architecture of the sanctuary so that it became a spiritual center for all the Arab tribes. Even though the Bedouin were not much interested in the gods, each tribe had its own presiding deity, usually represented by a stone effigy. The Quraysh collected the totems of the tribes that belonged to their confederacy and installed them in the Haram so that the tribesmen could only worship their patronal deities when they visited Mecca. The sanctity of the Kabah was thus essential to the success and survival of the Quraysh, and their competitors understood this.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Marriages conducted in absentia to seal an alliance were often contracted at this time between adults and minors who were even younger than ‘A’isha. This practice continued in Europe”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“This critical spirit is needed today. Some Muslim thinkers regard the jihad against Mecca as the climax of Muhammad’s career and fail to note that he eventually abjured warfare and adopted a nonviolent policy. Western critics also persist in viewing the Prophet of Islam as a man of war, and fail to see that from the very first he was opposed to the jahili arrogance and egotism that not only fuelled the aggression of his time but is much in evidence in some leaders, Western and Muslim alike, today. The Prophet, whose aim was peace and practical compassion, is becoming a symbol of division and strife—a development that is not only tragic but also dangerous to the stability on which the future of our species depends.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“To refuse to admit that Muhammad had died was, therefore, to deny his message. But as long as Muslims remained true to the belief that God alone was worthy of worship, Muhammad would live on in their minds.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“In ten short years since the hijrah, Muhammad had irrevocably changed the political and spiritual landscape of Arabia.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Muhammad kept his word and returned to Medina with the Emigrants and Helpers. He did not attempt to rule Mecca himself; nor did he replace the Qurayshan officials with his own companions; nor did he establish a purist Islamic regime. All former dignitaries kept their positions in the Haram, and the assembly and the status quo remained intact. His most hated enemies were not only reinstated but promoted and showered with gifts.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“He would never forget their generosity to him while he was a mere refugee, and promised that—far from settling in Mecca—he would make Medina his home for the rest of his life. “Are you not satisfied that other men should take away flocks and herds while you take back with you the apostle of God?” he asked. “If all men went one way and the Helpers another, I should take the way of the Helpers. God have mercy on the Helpers, their sons and their sons’ sons.”43”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“The purpose of the tribe and the nation was no longer to exalt its superiority; they must not seek to dominate, exploit, convert, conquer, or destroy other peoples, but get to know them. The experience of living in a group, coexisting with people—some of whom, despite their kinship, would inevitably be uncongenial—should prepare the tribesman or the patriot for the encounter with foreigners. It should lead to an appreciation of the unity of the human race. Muhammad had managed to redefine the concept of nobility in Arabia, replacing it with a more universal, compassionate, and self-effacing ideal.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“It was not violence and self-assertion, but the spirit of mercy, courtesy and tranquillity that would cause the ummah to grow, “as a seed that puts forth its shoot and strengthens it and it grows stout and raises straight upon its stalk, pleasing the owners.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Muslims were not supposed to be men of war; they were characterized by the spirit of hilm, a peace and forbearance that allied them with the Jews and Christians, the People of the Book.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Muhammad had no ideological quarrel with the Jewish people. He once said, “He who wrongs or destroys a Jew or a Christian will have me to answer on the Day of Judgment.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“Qur’anic legislation insisted that the individual was free and sovereign—and that also applied to women.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“The emancipation of women was a project dear to the Prophet’s heart,”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

“The Qur’an was attempting to give women a legal status that most Western women would not enjoy until the nineteenth century.”
― Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time