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“And that is the beginning of the prophetic career of Muhammad.”

The months to come would bring more revelations, powerful words of a lyrical quality, more beautiful and most exquisite Arabic poetry. Above all, Muhammad was to bear one message to his people, a simple yet radical proclamation that there is only one god.

“The central tenet of Islam is the one as the indivisible unity of god, not something that is simply the one pays lip service to, but something that is absolutely the most important concept.”

“Divine unity is more than saying god is, there is only one god and there aren’t other deities. It’s only thinking about one thing. So to be thinking about possessions, to be thinking about status, to be thinking about power or all intellectual idols.”

The implications were staggering. One god meant one people, no more tribal divisions. To the poor and unprotected, the prospect was revolutionary.

“It seems to me that one of the most important things in his early teaching that isn’t often talked about is the strong social justice message that he delivered. In Mecca of the time, there was an increasing separation between the haves and have-nots. He insisted that this was not to be and we should share the wealth, and it was the social justice message that I think that really got him a hearing among many of the folks.”

“So coming with Islam, it was a new order, a new way of life. And that was a beautiful way of life because everybody was equal -- black, white, men, women, children…so it had that type of universal appeal, which I think was the reason why Islam spread so rapidly.”

Many were moved by Muhammad’s message as he began to speak out in the community.

“It had the suppleness and symbolic gaps of the great pre-Islamic poems that had been created by this people, that had given this people in Arabia such an extraordinary ear for verbal expression, where verbal expression was the commanding cultural force. Some people call him a poet. And there is a chronic sura, basically saying Muhammad is not a poet. Poets speak through desire. This is not the voice of desire. This is the voice of god.”