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Hazreti Muhammad was the man who is credited as being the founder of Islam. He is regarded by Muslims as the last messenger and prophet of God. Muslims do not believe that he was the creator of a new religion, but the restorer of the original, uncorrupted monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham and others. They see him as the last and the greatest in a series of prophets.
 Sources on Hazreti Muhammad's life concur that he was born ca. 570 CE in the city of Mecca in Arabia. He was orphaned at a young age and was brought up by his uncle, later worked mostly as a merchant, and was married by age 26. At some point, discontented with life in Mecca, he retreated to a cave in the surrounding mountains for meditation and reflection. According to Islamic tradition, it was here at age 40, in the month of Ramadan, where he claims he received his first revelation from God. Three years after this event, Hazreti Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" to Him is the only religion acceptable to God, and that he was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and other prophets.
Hazreti Muhammad gained few followers early on, and was largely met with hostility from the tribes of Mecca; he was treated harshly and so were his followers. To escape persecution, Hazreti Muhammad and his followers migrated to Yathrib in the year 622. This historic event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. In Medina, Hazreti Muhammad managed to unite the conflicting tribes, and after eight years of fighting with the Meccan tribes, his followers, who by then had grown to ten thousand, conquered Mecca. In 632, on returning to Medina from his 'Farewell pilgrimage', Hazreti Muhammad fell ill and died. By the time of his death, most of Arabia had converted to Islam.
The revelations, which Hazreti Muhammad claimed to receive until his death, form the verses of the Qur'an, regarded by Muslims as the 'word of God', around which the religion is based. Besides the Qur'an, Hazreti Muhammad's life and traditions are also upheld by Muslims.
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Inescapable Islam
Hazreti Muhammad
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