I actually didn’t know much about Muhammad or about Islam itself, because it was never really big in Australia, not until 9-11.
Before 9-11, I simply didn’t care what Islam is all about, and didn’t care if Muhammad was a prophet or not.
To me, I treated Muhammad the same way I treat what I do or don’t want to eat.
For instance, I don’t care for the taste of turkey, crab or octopus, but I don’t try to force others to share my dislike for its taste, but I also expect people not to force me to eat and like turkey, crab and octopus. So I don’t care what other people want to eat because they are free to like what they want to eat or what they dislike and don’t want to eat.
So I didn’t care about people believing Muhammad to being a prophet or not believing him to be a prophet, because it never mattered to me, so I wasn’t interested in learning more about Muhammad or about Islam.
Like I understand the wars and attacks that have been going on in the Middle East, like that of civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s or tit for tat attack and retaliation between Israelis and Palestinians that have been going on for decades, or the Russians fighting the Afghans, and the revolution in Iran, etc that all predated 9-11, I was aware of all this, but it was so far away from Australia, so I really didn’t care what going on in the Middle East. Wars were political and social issues, and I wasn’t interested in politics or in wars.
My point is that foreign politics and foreign wars were of no interests to me, particularly what was going on in the Middle East.
Then everything changed with 9-11, and that tragedy pushed both Islam and Muhammad in the spotlight. And how I looked at politics and other related issues...well, everything changed that day.
Until 9-11, I didn’t know anything about Osama bin Laden, or about the al-Qaeda or the Talibans. Middle Eastern politics and wars simply didn’t interest me, but because Australia was ally to the US since World War II, I had to face the bloody fact that PM John Howard was going to support bloody George Bush junior and he was going to push Australian troops into the war(s) with enemies that has politics that I don’t understand.
What I didn’t understand that Muslims have tendencies to mix current politics, wars and social issues with their religion. In a country, like Australia, where Australians were predominantly Christians, it was politically secular - the law and policies were secular. And being of Chinese background living in Australian suburb, I didn’t understand with others would enmesh religion with politics.
Politics is already messy without religion interference, but a combination of politics and religion was to me, a big unstable timebomb catastrophe that could detonate prematurely at the slightest vibration.
And I was already seeing that it was going to happen.
And Islam kept getting into dragged into limelight because it kept getting used by terrorists.
What does anything have to do with Muhammad?
Yes, I was getting sidetracked, but what I wanted to say is that 9-11 has made me face what I didn’t want to know about - Islam. If 9-11 didn’t happen, I probably would have continued to ignore Islam.
You cannot learn a thing about Islam without learning more about Muhammad.
And to put it simply, the more I learned about Muhammad, the less I like about him, prophet or not prophet.
Edit:
I am not saying that Islam support or equate with terrorism, but how my attention to Islam for the first time. If 9-11 didn’t happen, I probably would have continue to ignore Islam.