Most Influential Person In History

Prophet Muhammad: Most Influential Person In History
Michael H. Hart, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History

My choice of Muhammad to lead the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels. . .

. . . it may initially seem strange that Muhammad has been ranked higher than Jesus. There are two principal reasons for that decision. First, Muhammad played a far more important role to the development of Islam than Jesus did in the development of Christianity. Although Jesus was responsible for the main ethical and moral precepts of Christianity (insofar as these differed from Judaism), St. Paul was the main developer of Christian theology, its principal proselytizer, and the author of a large portion of the New Testament.

Muhammad, however, was responsible for both the theology of Islam and its main ethical and moral principles. In addition he played a key role in proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing the religious practices of Islam. Moreover, he is the receiver of the Moslem holy scriptures, the Koran.
[The Quran, Muslims believe, is the revealed Word of God.]

Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was a secular leader as well as a religious leader. In fact as the driving force behind the Arab conquests, he may well rank as the most influential political leader of all time. . .
[When Muhammad died in 632, he was the effective leader of all of southern Arabia. By 711, Arab armies had swept completely across North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. In a scant century of fighting, the Bedouin tribesmen, inspired by the word of the Prophet, had carved out an empire stretching from the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean -- the largest empire
that the world had yet seen.]

. . the Arab conquests of the seventh century have continued to play an important role in human history, down to the present day. It is this unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human history.

Remember the writer of this amazing book belongs to the religion of Christianity.