Modern Miracles of Muhammad S.A.W

This article has been published in the Intellect Magazine,  Volume 3, Issue 4, June-July-August 2012,

Modern Miracles of Muhammad S.A.W.
Dr. Asad Zaman

1. Introduction
Prophets a.s. were given miracles appropriate for their times, according to the sensibilities of their people. Since our prophet Muhammad s.a.w. was sent for all times, he was given miracles for all times. This article collects some of the miracles of our prophet which are striking to the modern mind, which is not much taken by the standard miracles involving violations of natural laws.

Ideas are born in the context of history, and respond to needs of the situations. However, our Prophet brought to the world, and demonstrated with his life, ideas completely outside the range of existing thought. These ideas changed the course of history for all time to come. Unfortunately, as prophesied by our Prophet, Islam came as a stranger and will become a stranger. Today, these ideas have the same power as they did fourteen centuries ago, and they can bring about the same miracle that they did when they were first introduced to mankind.

The collection of ideas to be discussed are miracles of Muhammad s.a.w. in several senses.

Several civilizations had existed, each with its philosophers and thinkers, but none had presented such ideas to the world. In particular, no such idea was present in the Arab culture of the Jahilliyya. So where did Muhammad s.a.w. get these ideas?
Implementation of these ideas changed the course of history. As we shall see, these ideas continue to have the same power. If the Muslims implement them in their lives and communities, they can again change the course of history.
These ideas are far reaching and prescient – they apply with the same force today as they did under the radically different conditions of fourteen centuries ago.

We will now go just three of the several major changes in thinking and acting brought about by the work of our prophet Muhammad s.a.w.  The depth and reach of the revolutionary teachings of Islam makes it impossible to encompass all of the changes. Even the three we have chosen can only be inadequately sketched within a short article.