Muhammadﷺ- An example for all people of all times

They say that reading biographies is perhaps the best way to learn real life lessons. That is because a biography is a record of practice. Of what worked and what didn’t. The life of Muhammadﷺ is perhaps one of the most well documented in human history. Having said that, one may ask why his life and all the details are important at all? I am not speaking from the perspective of a Muslim for whom to study the life of Muhammadﷺ and to live his life in accordance with it, is a religious requirement. I am asking this from the perspective of a neutral reader, Muslim or not, who is looking for biographies to read. The answer lies in the facts related to the life of Muhammadﷺ which are public knowledge. Here was someone who in a period of 23 years, took his people from being the weakest, most despised and oppressed in their community to being the leaders and role models in the same community. And he did all that without lies, cheating, corruption, violence, or bloodshed. My question is, ‘Would you like to know how to do that? Would you like to know how to bring about not incremental but transformational change in your society? Then study the life of Muhammadﷺ.’    In the words of J. Krishnamurty, ‘It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.’ I don’t think there is anyone, including the 1% who appear to have it all who will disagree that we are very sick. Humanity is sick. The earth is sick. We are all very sick. This is no longer an academic issue for people to write scholarly papers about. It is something that we, the people of the world, need to address, recognizing it as the dire emergency that it is. If we don’t, the clock would be ticking backwards for us and fast. And the time is very close where we would have to make our own position as the inhabitants of this earth; not its owners as we like to believe; completely untenable. We need action. And we need it now.   Call it a strange coincidence but 7th Century Makkah was a microcosm of our global capitalist, pluralist, multicultural, multiracial society. Let me describe the Makkah that Muhammadﷺ was born into, grew up and lived in, until the age of 50. That is a long time for someone to spend in one town but that was what Muhammadﷺ did.   Makkah was a town with one single claim to fame – the Ka’aba. This is the House of Allahﷻ built by Ibrahim (AS) and was a place of pilgrimage from time immemorial. Access to the Ka’aba was open to anyone who wanted to come. The environs of the Ka’aba were declared a sanctuary with all killing, hunting, and fighting banned within that sanctuary. This was the main reason why Makkah developed as a town because it was a safe haven for everyone from any of the many frequently warring tribes. Another similarity that 7th century Makkah had with our modern society is that it was a world of business. Businessmen were its leaders, and they ran the town. Acquisition of wealth was the primary concern. Makkan society was materialistic based on a free-market economy and markets were not regulated by any central authority. Traders charged the best price they could get, hoarded in times of scarcity, and sold at great profit and bought goods from as far afield as Syria and Yemen to sell in Makkah. Makkah being a sort of an aggregator of people from all of Arabia, was a great seller’s market where high prices could be commanded as goods sold in Makkah were simply not available in any other part of Arabia. That is how Makkan traders became extremely wealthy and became its nobility and created a sort of oligarchy. You can draw similarities with our capitalist society today and see how close 7th century Arabia was to most of our 21st century world. Makkah was also a multicultural and pluralistic place as all centers of trade tend to be. That is because if you want to promote trade you must make it easy and safe for people from multiple origins, belief systems and cultures to coexist peacefully.