PROPHET OF PEACE, OR OF VIOLENCE — An Objective Analysis

If we were to objectively study the entire 23 years of Muhammad’s prophetic life, it would be absolutely clear that Muhammad was a Prophet of peace, not a prophet of violence. If we compare the Prophet's battles with other battles in history, we will find that the mission of the Prophet was a non-violent mission; and the battles that happened were defensive in nature and under exceptional circumstances. The number of people killed in these battles were very few when compared to the casualties of many other battles in history. Sorting in order of the number of casualties or by the duration of battles in history, the armed conflicts of the Prophet Muhammad and his people were forced to engage in, do not even figure in the records. The mission of the Prophet is not to rule over people but to change their minds and hearts towards spirituality. As a comparison here are some details of some of the famous battles in the history of mankind. 1 Battle / War Period Duration Casualties World War I 1914 – 1918 4 years Over 15 million World War II 1939 – 1945 6 years About 65 million American Civil War 1861 – 1865 4 years About 500,000 Iran Iraq War 1980 – 1988 8 years Over 500,000 Battle of Waterloo 18 Jun 1815 1 day 47,000 Battle of Panipat 14 Jan 1761 1 day Over 100,000 Gulf War Aug 1990–Feb 1991 7 months 25,000 Iraq War Mar2003–Dec 2011 8 ½ years 35,000 In comparison to the above sampling of battles from history, the defensive battles fought by the Prophet were those at Badr, Uhud and Hunain. The combined total duration of actual fighting was equivalent to only 1½ days.2 The total number of casualties in all these battles was 1018. 1. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_by_casualties 2. Battle of Badr (morning to noon) ~ 6 hours Battle of Uhud (one day) ~ 12 hours Battle of Hunain (one day) ~ 12 hours