Prejudice is poison. Unless purged out of one’s mind in early stages, it can spread like cancer and make one incapable of judging right from wrong. Of many kinds of prejudices the worst is to believe that one’s own religion is superior to all others which may be tolerated but never taken seriously or accepted as equally valid as one’s own.

The most mis-understood of the major religions of today is Islam which, after Christianity, is the second most widely practised religion in the world. It also gains more converts than any of the others. Prejudice against Islam was spread in Christendom from the time Muslims gained dominance in the Midlle East, North Africa and Spain.

Christian crusaders failed in their missions to crush it in its homeland but continued to villify its founder Muhammed. The emergence of militant Islamic groups like the al- Qaeda and the Taliban gave them reasons to do so. The attack in the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001 provided fresh ammunition to vilifiers of Islam.

Since then Islamophobia has been deliberately spread throughout the non-Muslim world. The two principal contentions are that Islam was spread by the sword and that its founder prophet was not the paradigm of virtue that Muslims make him out to be.

It can be proved by historical evidence that Islam was not forced upon the people; it was  readily accepted by millions because it offered them new values principally equality of mankind as one fraternity and rights to women unheard of during those times. In countries like Indonesia and Malayasia Islam was not forced on population by Muslim invaders but by Muslim missionaries.

Muslims are extremely sensitive about criticism of their Prophet. They regard him as the most perfect man ever trod the earth, a successor of Adam, Moses, Noah, Abraham and Jesus Christ. He was the last and the seal of Prophets.

If you honestly want to see how Muslims see him, you owe it to yourselves to take a good look at his life and teachings he claimed had been revealed to him by god. It would be as wrong to judge him by the doings of the al-Qaeda and the Taliban or the fatwas periodically pronounced by Ayatollahs and half-baked Mullahs. You do not judge Hinduism of the Vedas and Upanishads by the doings of Hindus who, in the name of Hindutva, destroy mosques, muder missionaries and nuns, vandalise libreries and works of art.

You do not judge the teachings of the Sikhs gurus by the utterances of Bhindranwale and murders of innocents by his hooligans. Likewise, judge Muhammed by what he taught and stood for and not by what his so-called followers do under his name.

Muhammed was born in Makka in 570 AD. He lost both his parents while still a child and was brought up by his grandfather and uncle. He managed the business of a widow whom he later married. She bore him six children.

He took no other wife till after she died. He was 40 years old when the revelations started coming to him while he was in trance.

They proclaimed the new Messiah. Such revelations kept coming off and on, at times dealing with problems at hand, at others with matters spritual. They were memorised or written down by his admirers and became the Quran which means recitation. It should be kept in mind that Muhammed was not preaching ideas of his own creation but only reiterating most of what was in the Judaic creed.

Allah was the Arabic name for god before him. So were Islam (surrender) and Salam (peace). Makkah was the main market city of the Bedouin tribes; Kaaba with huge courtyard and the monolith with the black meteorite embedded in it; tribes gathered there during two pilgrimages – the bigger Haj and the minor Umra, offered camels as sacrifice, circumambulated in the Kaaba.

He accepted Judaic traditions regarding food which is halaal (lawful) and haraam (forbidden such as pig meat), names of the five daily prayers, circumcision of male children. Muhammed only asserted the oneness of god which did not accept any equals such as proliferated in the Kaaba in the forms of stone goddesses worshipped by difference tribes.

This was unacceptable to god and Muhammed was his human messenger to remind people of these truths. He never forced people to accept his faith and indeed quoted Allah’s message of freedom of faith.

To make a beginning in clearing your mind of anti-Muslim prejudices, I suggest you read Karen Armstrong’s Muhammed: Prophet of Our Time.