The speed with which Islam spread compared with other religions was the main reason the world, and the West in particular, took notice of this religion and its Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. At times they studied it, at others they fought it, and on several occasions they sent adventurers and explorers to the holy lands to investigate its mysteries.
This led some to believe in it as a religion, as the wise among them did, or at least to admire it. Orientalists devoted themselves to studying the reason for its spread from the prophetic era to the present. Its spread during the Prophet’s lifetime was his miracle, and the speed of its spread today remains a miracle and a striking sign of the truth of his prophethood.
The miracles I attribute to the Messenger of God are those recognized by thinkers and scholars who read his purified biography. In this sense, their explicit testimony described it as a “miracle.”
The spread of Islam during his lifetime and in the decades that followed was a miracle attested to by distinguished figures from East and West. From the East, Imam Muhammad Abduh says [1]: “In their earliest period, Muslims surged into kingdoms and lands, conquering and ruling them. They astonished minds and overcame nations. Their authority extended from the Pyrenees, separating Spain and France, to the Great Wall of China, despite their small numbers and limited equipment, and their unfamiliarity with different climates and lands. They subdued kings and humbled Caesars and Persian rulers in no more than eighty years. This is indeed an extraordinary event and a great miracle!”
His contemporary Dr. Taha Hussein says [2]: “In less than a quarter of a century, in twenty-three years — thirteen of which the Prophet spent in Mecca, where Islam spread only a little, and ten in Medina — God accomplished through him most of this great miracle. He remade the Arabs into a nation in the fullest and most precise sense, preparing them for a great mission that would extend beyond their peninsula, redirect history, and change the face of the earth in less than half a century.”
The scholar Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib says in his article “Our Greatest Example” [3]: “We recall with pride and admiration the spread of Islam in its earliest period, a spread that was almost miraculous.”
Dr. Husayn Mu’nis says in his book “Islam the Conqueror” [4]: “When the Messenger of God established the Muslim community in Medina and began his campaigns, he was able in about ten years to bring the whole Arabian Peninsula into Islam. It alone constitutes one-sixth of the area of the Islamic world.”
Among Western figures [5], M. N. Roy rightly considers “the spread of Islam a miracle, the greatest of the prophets’ signs and the most wondrous and extraordinary.”