From: "arah" 

Muhammad the Most Influential person on earth

Many  have written to us about this webpage. All that have written to us
are in agreement with Hart's assessment of Muhammad's top-ranked place on
this list, but many have written to disagree with parts of Hart's
description of Muhammad. In particular, a number of correspondents have
written to point out that Muhammad is not the author of the Qu'ran, but is
in fact the Prophet through whom Allah delivered the Qu'ran to humanity.
Hamzah Jaradat's notes on this are representative of this discussion:
Mohammad is the not the author of the Qu'ran.

Excerpt from Hart's book:

My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential
persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he
was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the
religious and secular levels...

Muhammad founded and promulgated one of the world's great religions, and
became an immensely effective political leader. Today, thirteen centuries
after his death, his influence is still powerful and pervasive... Like all
religions, Islam exerts an enormous influence upon the lives of its
followers. It is for this reason that the founders of the world's great
religions all figure prominently in this book. Since there are roughly
twice as many Christians as Moslems in the world, it may initially seem
strange that Muhammad has been ranked higher than Jesus. There are two
principal reasons for that decision. First, Muhammad played a far more
important role in the development of Islam than Jesus did in the
development of Christianity. Although Jesus was responsible for the main
ethical and moral precepts of Christianity (insofar as these differed from
Judaism), St. Paul was the main developer of Christian theology, its
principal proselytizer, and the author of a large portion of the New
Testament.

Muhammad, however, was responsible for both the theology of Islam and its
main ethical and moral principles. In addition, he played the key role in
proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing the religious practices of
Islam. Moreover, he is the author of the Moslem holy scriptures, the Koran,
a collection of certain of Muhammad's insights that he believed had been
directly revealed to him by Allah. Most of these utterances were copied
more or less faithfully during Muhammad's lifetime and were collected
together in authoritative form not long after his death. The Koran
therefore, closely represents Muhammad's ideas and teachings and to a
considerable extent his exact words. No such detailed compilation of the
teachings of Christ has survived. Since the Koran is at least as important
to Moslems as the Bible is to Christians, the influence of Muhammed through
the medium of the Koran has been enormous It is probable that the relative
influence of Muhammad on Islam has been larger than the combined influence
of Jesus Christ and St. Paul on Christianity. On the purely religious
level, then, it seems likely that Muhammad has been as influential in human
history as Jesus.

Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was a secular as well as a religious
leader. In fact, as the driving force behind the Arab conquests, he may
well rank as the most influential political leader of all time... the Arab
conquests of the seventh century have continued to play an important role
in human history, down to the present day. It is this unparalleled
combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles
Muhammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human
history.

M. S. Abdullah has written a list of 16 Reasons why Muhammad (not Jesus)
should be ranked first on the list of history's most influential people.

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