Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

7. God’s Way:
A Life and a Law for Muslims
WITH Muhammad’s death, God’s voice was stilled,
and the community that “The Guidance” had brought
into being had to turn to their recollection of what the
Quran had pronounced were Muslim’s responsibilities.
But if the Quran declared the principles of a Muslim
life, Muhammad exemplified these, and the community
of Muslims has drawn on his example, as well as
on his own personal teachings, from his own day to
this.
Muhammad as Moral Exemplar
As the Christians looked to Jesus, who in his humanity
was their peer, first in the flesh and then in the accounts
of his life, the earliest Muslims had before them the
example of Muhammad, in life to begin with, then in
memory, and finally, and ever more dramatically, in
legend. Muhammad lived in circumstances quite different
from Jesus’, of course. Mecca was a commercial
center as well as a religious, albeit pagan, one. Given
the importance of its shrine, religion was quite clearly
the principal business, and as some modern interpreters
would contend, business may have become the
religion of Mecca as well. Muhammad had a modest