Assalamu'alaikum wr wb,
Sebagai ummat Islam yang bersyahadah Tidak ada Tuhan selain Allah dan Muhammad 
adalah utusan Allah, kita wajib meneladani teladan Nabi Muhammad yang bahkan 
oleh orang kafir seperti Michael Hart pun diakusi sebagai manusia nomor 1 di 
dunia.

Jika tidak, dan kita justru mengikuti orang lain sebagai panutan, berarti 
syahadah kita belum benar. Iman kita (terutama rukun iman kepada Nabi) masih 
kurang beres.

Wassalam

http://media-islam.or.id/2008/03/31/nabi-muhammad-manusia-paling-sempurna-di-dunia
Nabi Muhammad Manusia Paling Sempurna di Dunia

“Sesungguhnya pada diri Rasulullah ada suri teladan yang baik bagimu yang 
mengharap rahmat Allah dan kedatangan hari kiamat dan banyak menyebut Allah.” 
[Al Ahzab:21]

Itulah firman Allah yang menyatakan kemuliaan Nabi Muhammad. Bahkan non Muslim 
seperti Sir George Bernard Shaw dalam buku ‘The Genuine Islam,’ Vol. 1, No. 8, 
1936 menyatakan bahwa jika ada agama yang akan menguasai Inggris atau Eropa 
dalam abad mendatang mungkin itu adalah Islam. Muhammad adalah orang yang 
mengagumkan dan pantas disebut Penyelamat Manusia (the Savior of Humanity). 
Begitu katanya.
Mahatma Gandhi, dalam pernyataan yang diterbitkan di ‘Young India,’1924 
menyatakan bahwa bukanlah pedang yang menyebarkan Islam. Tapi kepedulian, 
keberanian, dan keimanan Nabi kepada Tuhan yang menyebabkan itu. Ketika saya 
menutup buku jilid kedua dari Kisah Nabi Muhammad, saya menyesal karena tidak 
ada lagi yang dapat dibaca.
Dan memang Muhammad yang kala itu pengikutnya hanya istri dan keponakannya, 
Ali, tidaklah mungkin bisa menyebarkan Islam dengan pedang. Karena 
kepribadiannya dan kebenaran Islamlah maka orang-orang berbondong memeluk 
Islam. Jika pun ada perang, maka itu tak lebih dari membela diri sebagaimana 
diketahui bahwa 3 perang besar pertama seperti perang Badar, Uhud, dan Khandaq 
terjadi di kota tempat tinggal ummat Islam di Madinah. Begitu pula perang 
Mu’tah terjadi di tanah Arab ketika tentara Romawi yang beragama Kristen 
menyerang untuk menghancurkan Islam.
Michael H Hart dalam buku ‘The 100, A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons 
In History,’ New York, 1978 menempatkan Nabi Muhammad dalam urutan pertama 100 
orang paling berpengaruh di dunia mengalahkan Isaac Newton, Paulus, dan Yesus.
Menurut Michael H Hart, kebanyakan dari orang-orang besar yang ada dalam 
bukunya menjadi besar karena kebetulan lahir di negara-negara maju yang jadi 
pusat peradaban dunia. Bahkan tanpa ada mereka pun tetap saja negara-negara 
tersebut akan maju dan akan ada banyak orang yang akan menggantikannya untuk 
memimpin kemajuan tersebut.
Sebagai contoh Napoleon Bonaparte yang memimpin Perancis untuk menguasai Eropa 
itu terjadi karena Perancis adalah memang negara Eropa yang besar dan kuat. 
Napoleon tidak bisa melakukan itu jika Perancis adalah negara yang kecil dan 
lemah. Dan pada akhirnya, Napoleon pun gagal dan meninggal dalam pengasingan.
Amerika Latin pun tetap akan merdeka dari penjajahan Spanyol meski Simon 
Bolivar tidak ada. Akan banyak pejuang lain yang bisa menggantikan posisinya.
Yesus pun meski merupakan penyebar agama Kristen yang pertama, namun dia 
ditangkap dan disalib oleh tentara Romawi. Jumlah pengikutnya saat Yesus 
meninggal tidak banyak. Paulus lah yang berhasil mengembangkan agama Kristen 
sehingga diterima bangsa Eropa.
Sebaliknya, Nabi Muhammad lahir di kawasan yang terbelakang. Mekkah kota 
kelahiran Nabi adalah kota kecil di pinggiran yang jauh dari pusat perdagangan, 
seni, dan ilmu pengetahuan. Saat itu yang jadi negara besar dalah Romawi dan 
Persia. Ada pun bangsa Arab adalah bangsa jajahan yang terbelakang dengan 
jumlah penduduk yang hingga sekarang pun tidak banyak serta terpecah menjadi 
berbagai suku yang saling perang satu sama lain.
Pada saat Nabi lahir, kebanyakan bangsa Arab menyembah berhala. Selama 3 tahun 
pertama Nabi Muhammad menyeru Islam pada keluarga dan teman dekatnya. Baru pada 
tahun 613 Nabi menyiarkan Islam secara terbuka sehingga Islam mulai menyebar. 
Penguasa Mekkah yang kafir pun menganggap Nabi Muhammad sebagai bahaya dan 
ingin membunuhnya sehingga Nabi Muhammad hijrah ke Madinah. Setelah 3 kali 
serangan kaum kafir Mekkah dalam perang Badar, Uhud, dan Khandaq gagal, Nabi 
Muhammad dan pengikutnya menaklukkan kota Mekkah tahun 630. Pada saat meninggal 
tahun 632 Nabi Muhammad yang bertahun-tahun pada masa awal kenabiannya 
ditentang penduduk kafir Quraisy dalam tempo 23 tahun sanggup menyatukan bangsa 
Arab di dalam Islam.
Bangsa Arab bukan hanya sanggup menahan serangan tentara Romawi dan Persia, 
bahkan sanggup menaklukkannya. Hingga saat ini ibukota Romawi, Constantinople, 
di bawah kepemimpinan negara Islam dan berganti nama jadi Istambul (Turki). 
Begitu pula Baghdad yang sebelumnya jadi ibukota Persia ada di negara Islam 
Iraq.
Yang harus diingat adalah bahwa peperangan yang dilakukan oleh Nabi Muhammad 
bukanlah peperangan yang penuh darah seperti yang dilakukan tentara Salib yang 
membantai semua ummat Islam yang mereka taklukkan seperti dalam film ”Kingdom 
of Heaven.” Peperangan yang dilakukan oleh Nabi Muhammad seperti pada perang 
Badar, Uhud, Khandaq, dan Tabuk terjadi karena mereka membela diri dari 
serangan kaum kafir. Peperangan terhadap kerajaan Romawi dan Persia justru 
membebaskan daerah jajahan kerajaan tersebut sehingga mereka lepas dari 
penindasan kerajaan Romawi dan Persia. Pada saat penaklukan kota Mekkah 
misalnya boleh dikata tidak ada peperangan yang penuh darah. Tapi penyerahan 
yang penuh kedamaian.
Dalam 100 tahun sejak kematian Nabi Muhammad, Kerajaan Islam menyebar dari 
India, Pakistan, Iran, Timur Tengah, Afrika Utara, Albania, Yugoslavia, hingga 
Spanyol. Ini adalah satu imperium terbesar yang pernah ada dalam sejarah. Meski 
Spanyol kembali dikuasai Katolik setelah 7 abad, namun Islam tetap berkuasa di 
negara-negara Afrika Utara, Timur Tengah, Iran, dan Pakistan.
Islam bukan hanya maju secara politik dan militer. Dalam ilmu pengetahuan pun 
tiba-tiba bangsa Arab yang dulunya terbelakang di bawah ilmuwan Yunani atau 
Persia tiba-tiba jadi pemimpin. Banyak penemuan Islam / ilmuwan Arab/Islam yang 
diakui dunia hingga sekarang.
Sebagai contoh, sistem angka yang dipakai dunia sekarang adalah sistem angka 
Arab (Arabic Numeral) menggantikan sistem angka Romawi (Roman Numeral) yang 
kaku. Dengan angka Arab anda dapat menulis 93..567.794.214.698 dengan mudah. 
Angka tersebut tidak bisa ditulis dengan sistem angka Romawi.

Dalam ensiklopedi Microsoft Encarta disebut bahwa dalam dunia Islam yang 
menyebar ke Barat hingga Spanyol banyak dihasilkan penemuan Ilmiah seperti 
angka Arab:

===

The Islamic world, which in medieval times extended as far west as Spain, also 
produced many scientific breakthroughs. The Arab mathematician Muhammad 
al-Khwārizmī introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals to Europe many centuries after 
they had been devised in southern Asia.

===
Astronom Arab (baca Astronom Muslim) juga banyak yang menemukan dan menamakan 
bintang seperti Aldebaran, Altair, dan Deneb. Al Haytham (Alhacen) yang 
mengantarkan ilmu Optic juga menemukan metode Ilmiah yang menekankan kepada 
observasi, eksperimen, dan pencatatan yang akurat.
Singkatnya, Nabi Muhammad bukan hanya sekedar pemimpin agama atau Nabi. Namun 
beliau juga adalah pemimpin militer, pemimpin negara, dan juga peletak fondasi 
berkembangnya ilmu pengetahuan Islam (Islam Golden Age) di kalangan ummat Islam.
Tak heran jika seorang Non Muslim seperti Michael H Hart pun mengakui Nabi 
Muhammad sebagai orang nomor satu di dunia mengalahkan Yesus dan 
manusia-manusia lain di dunia.
Jika Non Muslim saja bersikap seperti itu, maka ummat Islam yang dalam 
syahadahnya mengakui Muhammad sebagai utusan Allah juga harus mengakui bahwa 
Nabi Muhammad adalah manusia paling sempurna yang maksum (terpelihara dari 
kesalahan).. Oleh karena itu ummat Islam harus mempelajari siroh/sejarah Nabi 
dan mengikuti sunnah Nabi.
Berikut komentar tokoh Non Muslim terhadap Nabi Muhammad dan Islam:
Sir George Bernard Shaw in ‘The Genuine Islam,’ Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936.

“If any religion had the chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the 
next hundred years, it could be Islam.”

“I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its 
wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that 
assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself 
appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion 
for from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity.”

“I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern 
world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the 
much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad 
that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be 
acceptable to the Europe of today.”

Michael Hart in ‘The 100, A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons In 
History,’ New York, 1978.

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 secular and religious 
level. …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. …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.

Mahatma Gandhi, statement published in ‘Young India,’1924.

I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today an undisputed sway 
over the hearts of millions of mankind…. I became more than ever convinced that 
it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of 
life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the 
scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and 
followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in 
his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and 
surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the second volume (of the Prophet’s 
biography), I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life.

MUHAMMAD

570-632

http://www.jamaat.net/hart/thetop100.html

>From the 100, a Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History

by Michael H. Hart

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.

Of humble origins, 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.

The majority of the persons in this book had the advantage of being born and 
raised in centers of civilization, highly cultured or politically pivotal 
nations. Muhammad, however, was born in the year 570, in the city of Mecca, in 
southern Arabia, at that time a backward area of the world, far from the 
centers of trade, art, and learning. Orphaned at age six, he was reared in 
modest surroundings. Islamic tradition tells us that he was illiterate. His 
economic position improved when, at age twenty-five, he married a wealthy 
widow. Nevertheless, as he approached forty, there was little outward 
indication that he was a remarkable person.

Most Arabs at that time were pagans, who believed in many gods. There were, 
however, in Mecca, a small number of Jews and Christians; it was from them no 
doubt that Muhammad first learned of a single, omnipotent God who ruled the 
entire universe. When he was forty years old, Muhammad became convinced that 
this one true God (Allah) was speaking to him, and had chosen him to spread the 
true faith.

For three years, Muhammad preached only to close friends and associates. Then, 
about 613, he began preaching in public. As he slowly gained converts, the 
Meccan authorities came to consider him a dangerous nuisance. In 622, fearing 
for his safety, Muhammad fled to Medina (a city some 200 miles north of Mecca), 
where he had been offered a position of considerable political power.

This flight, called the Hegira, was the turning point of the Prophet’s life. In 
Mecca, he had had few followers. In Medina, he had many more, and he soon 
acquired an influence that made him a virtual dictator. During the next few 
years, while Muhammad s following grew rapidly, a series of battles were fought 
between Medina and Mecca. This was ended in 630 with Muhammad’s triumphant 
return to Mecca as conqueror. The remaining two and one-half years of his life 
witnessed the rapid conversion of the Arab tribes to the new religion. When 
Muhammad died, in 632, he was the effective ruler of all of southern Arabia.

The Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia had a reputation as fierce warriors. But their 
number was small; and plagued by disunity and internecine warfare, they had 
been no match for the larger armies of the kingdoms in the settled agricultural 
areas to the north. However, unified by Muhammad for the first time in history, 
and inspired by their fervent belief in the one true God, these small Arab 
armies now embarked upon one of the most astonishing series of conquests in 
human history. To the northeast of Arabia lay the large Neo-Persian Empire of 
the Sassanids; to the northwest lay the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, 
centered in Constantinople. Numerically, the Arabs were no match for their 
opponents. On the field of battle, though, the inspired Arabs rapidly conquered 
all of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. By 642, Egypt had been wrested from 
the Byzantine Empire, while the Persian armies had been crushed at the key 
battles of Qadisiya in 637, and Nehavend
 in 642.

But even these enormous conquests-which were made under the leadership of 
Muhammad’s close friends and immediate successors, Abu Bakr and ‘Umar ibn 
al-Khattab -did not mark the end of the Arab advance. By 711, the Arab armies 
had swept completely across North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean There they 
turned north and, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, overwhelmed the Visigothic 
kingdom in Spain.

For a while, it must have seemed that the Moslems would overwhelm all of 
Christian Europe. However, in 732, at the famous Battle of Tours, a Moslem 
army, which had advanced into the center of France, was at last defeated by the 
Franks. Nevertheless, in a scant century of fighting, these Bedouin tribesmen, 
inspired by the word of the Prophet, had carved out an empire stretching from 
the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean-the largest empire that the world 
had yet seen. And everywhere that the armies conquered, large-scale conversion 
to the new faith eventually followed.

Now, not all of these conquests proved permanent. The Persians, though they 
have remained faithful to the religion of the Prophet, have since regained 
their independence from the Arabs.. And in Spain, more than seven centuries of 
warfare 5 finally resulted in the Christians reconquering the entire peninsula. 
However, Mesopotamia and Egypt, the two cradles of ancient civilization, have 
remained Arab, as has the entire coast of North Africa. The new religion, of 
course, continued to spread, in the intervening centuries, far beyond the 
borders of the original Moslem conquests. Currently it has tens of millions of 
adherents in Africa and Central Asia and even more in Pakistan and northern 
India, and in Indonesia. In Indonesia, the new faith has been a unifying 
factor. In the Indian subcontinent, however, the conflict between Moslems and 
Hindus is still a major obstacle to unity.

How, then, is one to assess the overall impact of Muhammad on human history? 
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.

Of many important historical events, one might say that they were inevitable 
and would have occurred even without the particular political leader who guided 
them. For example, the South American colonies would probably have won their 
independence from Spain even if Simon Bolivar had never lived. But this cannot 
be said of the Arab conquests. Nothing similar had occurred before Muhammad, 
and there is no reason to believe that the conquests would have been achieved 
without him. The only comparable conquests in human history are those of the 
Mongols in the thirteenth century, which were primarily due to the influence of 
Genghis Khan. These conquests, however, though more extensive than those of the 
Arabs, did not prove permanent, and today the only areas occupied by the 
Mongols are those that they held prior to the time of Genghis Khan.

===
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