To love Muhammad is one thing, but to imitate him - to try to be 'like' him - is another. He was the last messenger and the last prophet, so how can we expect to imitate what is by definition unique and unrepeatable? In the first place his virtues are to be imitated, and they were providentially exemplified in the extraordinary variety of human experience through which he passed in his sixty-two years of life. He was an orphan, yet he knew the warmth of parental love through his grandfather's devoted care for him; he was the faithful husband of one wife for many years, and after her death, the tender and considerate husband of many wives; he was the father of children who gave him the greatest joy this world has to offer, and he saw all but one of them die; he had been a shepherd and a merchant when young, and he became a ruler, a statesman, a military commander, and a law-giver; he loved his native city and was driven from it into exile, finally to return home in triumph and set an example of clemency which has no equal in human history. Not only do we know almost everything he did, we know the exact manner in which he did it.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza.

I have very carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet (PBUH). I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to conclusion that Muhammad (PBUH) was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under the most agonising Pain.

Far from being the father of jihad, [Prophet] Mohammad was a peacemaker, who risked his life and nearly lost the loyalty of his closest companions because he was determined to effect a reconciliation with Mecca

Muhammad was a prince; he rallied his compatriots around him. In a few years, the Muslims conquered half of the world. They plucked more souls from false gods, knocked down more idols, razed more pagan temples in fifteen years than the followers of Moses and Jesus did in fifteen centuries. Muhammad was a great man. He would indeed have been a god, if the revolution that he had performed had not been prepared by the circumstances.

I was told that the last injunction the apostle [Muhammad] gave [before his death] was in his words `Let not two religions be left in the Arabian peninsula."

Later, when I started to study the hadith, I leaned many more horrible facts that I had never heard before. I learned, for example, that my beloved Prophet used to send assassins to terrorize his opponents in the middle of night, telling them to lie and act deceitfully if necessary. I learned that he ordered the murder of a 120-year-old man whose only crime was to recite a lyric ridiculing the Prophet. Another one of his victims was a poetess, mother of five small children, whose crime was also to compose poetry condemning Muhammad for murdering that old man. The assassin entered the house of this woman and pierced his sword in her chest while she was asleep with her baby nursing on her side. And the next day the messenger of Allah praised the assassin.

Never has a man set for himself, voluntarily or involuntarily, a more sublime aim, since this aim was super human; to subvert superstitions which had been imposed between man and his Creator, to render God unto man and man unto God; to restore the rational and sacred idea of divinity amidst the chaos of the material and disfigured gods of idolatry, then existing. Never has a man undertaken a work so far beyond human power with so feeble means, for he Muhammad had in the conception as well as in the execution of such a great design, no other instrument than himself and no other aid except a handful of men living in a corner of the desert. Finally, never has a man accomplished such a huge and lasting revolution in the world, because in less than two centuries after its appearance, Islam, reigned over the whole of Arabia, and conquered, in God's name, Persia, Khorasan, Transoxania, Western India, Syria, Egypt, Abyssinia, all the known continent of Northern Africa, numerous islands of the Mediterranean Sea, Spain and part of Gaul. If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astounding results are the three criteria of human genius, who could dare to compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples and dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and souls. . . his forbearance in victory, his ambition, which was entirely devoted to one idea and in no manner striving for an empire; his endless prayers, his mystic conversations with God, his death and his triumph after death; all these attest not to an imposture but to a firm conviction which gave him the power to restore a dogma. This dogma was twofold, the unity of God and the immateriality of God; the former telling what God is, the latter telling what God is not; the one overthrowing false gods with the sword, the other starting an idea with words.
Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images; the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire, that is Muhammad. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?

...the Christian people possessed almost all the Saracen provinces until after the time of Saint Gregory. But after that time, a certain son of perdition, the pseudo-prophet Muhammad, arose, and he seduced many away from the truth with carnal enticements and pleasures. Even though his perfidy lasted until the present, still we trust in the Lord who has now made a good sign that the end of this beast, whose number, according to John's Apocalypse, counts 666, of which now almost six hundred years are completed approaches. ... Therefore, dearly beloved sons, changing dissensions and fratricidal jealousies into treaties of peace and goodwill, let us gird ourselves to come to the aid of the Crucified, not hesitating to risk property and life for him who laid down his life and shed his blood for us.

Not only does the messenger who is also a slave subordinate his own will to that of his Lord; there is nothing in his mind or in his memory that could obstruct the free passage of the revelation. Muhammad is 'abd and rasul; he is also nabi al-ummi, the unlettered Prophet; a blank page set before the divine pen. On this page there is no mark made by any other pen, no trace of profane or indirect knowledge. A prophet does not borrow knowledge from the human store, nor is he a man who learns in the slow human way and then transmits his learning. His knowledge derives from a direct intervention of the Divine in the human order, a tajalli, or pouring out of the truth upon a being providentially disposed to receive it and strong enough to transmit it.

The Prophet Moses (pbuh) is our prophet as well and so is the Prophet Abraham (pbuh). Some say “these are the Prophets of Jews and Jesus is the Prophet of Christians.” Actually they are all our prophets, they are all Prophets of Islam. They all are Muslims.

In short, the lack of confirming detail in the historical record, the late development of biographical material about the Islamic prophet, the atmosphere of political and religious factionalism in which that material developed, and much more suggest that the Muhammad of Islamic tradition did not exist, or if he did, he was substantially different from how that tradition portrays him.

Prophets have a way of dying by violence.

The charge advanced against me and my Jama‘at, that we do not believe in the Holy Prophet (pbuh) as the Seal of Prophets, is altogether false. The strength, certainty, comprehension and insight with which we acknowledge and believe in the Holy Prophet (pbuh) as the Seal of the Prophets, cannot even be dreamed of by the other Muslims; they do not have the capacity to comprehend the reality and the mystery comprised in the Seal of Prophethood. They have merely heard an expression from their ancestors but they are unaware of its import and do not know what it signifies and what is meant by believing in it. But we believe with full comprehension—and God Almighty knows this well—that the Holy Prophet (pbuh) is the Seal of the Prophets. God Almighty has disclosed the reality of the Seal of Prophethood in such a manner that we derive special delight from its contemplation which cannot be conceived of by anyone except those who have drunk deep at this fountain. We can illustrate the Seal of Prophethood by the example of the moon, which begins as a crescent and arrives at its perfection on the fourteenth night when it is called the full moon. In the same manner, the excellences of Prophethood reached their climax in the Holy Prophet (pbuh). Those who believe that Prophethood has been closed compulsorily and that the Holy Prophet (pbuh) should not be regarded as being superior even to the Prophet Jonas have not understood the reality of the Seal of Prophethood and do not have true knowledge of his superiority and excellences. Despite their own ignorance and lack of understanding, they charge us with denying the Seal of Prophethood. What shall I say concerning such invalids and how shall I express my pity for them!