Narrator: Imagine a leader so powerful that he vows to sacrifice his own son to a god. In sixth-century Mecca, this was not a myth, but a very real possibility. The leader, Abd al-Muttalib, had promised that if he were granted ten sons, he would sacrifice one. The time came, and divining arrows were cast before the idol Hubal. The name that came up was Abdullah, his youngest and most beloved son. As Abd al-Muttalib prepared to fulfill his vow, a desperate intervention led to a new bargain: one hundred camels in exchange for the boy’s life. Abdullah was spared, but he would die only a few months later, leaving his young wife Amina pregnant. The child born from this shadow of death was Muhammad. This is the precarious world into which the future prophet of Islam entered—a world of tribal honor, stark choices, and divine bargains.

In her book, The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad, author Lesley Hazleton peels back centuries of dogma and reverence to explore the man behind the prophet. She presents a deeply human portrait of an individual grappling with loss, doubt, and a destiny that would reshape the world.

Narrator: Muhammad's entire life was defined by his status as an outsider, a position that began at birth. As an orphan in the tribal society of Mecca, he lacked the status and inheritance that formed a man's identity. This sense of marginalization was the crucible in which his character was forged. Following custom, his mother Amina sought a wet nurse from the Beduin tribes of the desert, believing the clean desert air and pure Arabic tongue would make her son strong.

This led to a formative story from his childhood. A Beduin woman named Halima arrived in Mecca during a drought, desperate to find a child to foster for a fee. But all the wealthy families had already placed their infants, and only the orphan Muhammad remained. Halima hesitated; fostering an orphan offered little financial reward. Yet, feeling she couldn't return empty-handed, she took the child. According to the story, her fortunes immediately turned. Her she-camel, once dry, produced enough milk for the whole family, and her livestock began to thrive. Muhammad, the boy with no status, became a source of blessing. He spent years with the Beduin, absorbing their values of resilience, independence, and a deep connection to the vast, silent desert. This experience gave him a perspective entirely different from the urban elite of Mecca, allowing him to see the injustices of his society with an outsider's clarity. When his mother died shortly after his return, he became doubly orphaned, a profound loss that would fuel his empathy for the poor and vulnerable for the rest of his life.

Narrator: Before he was a prophet, Muhammad was a successful and respected merchant. He worked on the great trade caravans traveling to Syria, a journey that exposed him to the wider world of monotheistic faiths like Judaism and Christianity. He observed their beliefs and their divisions, wondering how the idea of one God could lead to so much human disunity. In Mecca, he earned the nickname al-Amin, "the Trustworthy One," for his impeccable integrity.

A key story illustrates this reputation. Around the year 605, a flash flood severely damaged the Kaaba, Mecca's sacred shrine. The clans of the Quraysh tribe worked together to rebuild it, but when it came time to place the sacred Black Stone back into its corner, they fell into a bitter dispute. Each clan chief wanted the honor for himself, and the argument grew so heated that they were on the verge of drawing swords. An elder proposed a solution: the next man to enter the sanctuary would decide the matter. That man was Muhammad. Instead of choosing one clan over the others, he laid his cloak on the ground, placed the stone in the center, and invited a leader from each clan to take a corner of the cloak. Together, they lifted the stone. Then, Muhammad himself guided it into place. The solution was hailed as perfect, for the honor was shared by all. This event shows that even before his revelations, Muhammad was a natural diplomat, a man who saw unity where others saw division. Yet this success was paired with a growing spiritual restlessness and a deep dissatisfaction with the greed and social inequality he saw in Mecca, a city where piety and profit had become dangerously intertwined.

The traditional image of divine revelation is often one of ecstatic bliss, but Hazleton emphasizes that for Muhammad, it was an experience of sheer terror. At age forty, he had taken to retreating for meditation to a cave on Mount Hira, a rocky peak outside Mecca. He was seeking clarity, not a divine calling. During one of these retreats in the month of Ramadan, his solitude was shattered.

As he later described it, an overwhelming presence seized him, commanding him, "Recite!" Confused and terrified, Muhammad protested that he could not. The presence, later identified as the angel Gabriel, squeezed him so tightly he felt he was being crushed, repeating the command. After the third time, the words finally poured from him—the first verses of what would become the Quran. The experience left him shaken, not enlightened. He stumbled down the mountain, fearing he had gone mad or been possessed by a jinn. He ran home to his wife, Khadija, crying, "Cover me, cover me!" It was Khadija, his partner and intellectual equal, who reassured him. She listened to his story and became his first believer, telling him, "By him in whose hand is my soul, I hope that you may be the prophet of this people." Her faith was the anchor he needed. This was followed by a two-year period of agonizing silence, a "dark night of the soul" where he was plagued by doubt, wondering if he had imagined it all. This period of doubt, Hazleton argues, was essential. It kept his faith human, preventing it from hardening into the inhuman certainty of fanaticism.

Narrator: When the revelations returned, they came with a new, sharp edge. They were no longer just lyrical praises of God but a stinging critique of Meccan society—its greed, its corruption, and its neglect of the poor. Muhammad began to preach publicly, and the reaction was swift and hostile. The Meccan elite saw his message of social justice and absolute monotheism as a direct threat to their power and wealth, which was tied to the polytheistic pilgrimage to the Kaaba.

His first attempt to share the message with his own Hashim clan was a disaster. After inviting them to a meal, he began to recite the verses. His uncle, Abu-Lahab, stood up and shouted that Muhammad had bewitched them, breaking up the gathering in confusion. For years, Muhammad and his small band of followers—mostly the young, the poor, and the enslaved—faced ridicule, harassment, and persecution. He was protected from physical harm only by his uncle Abu-Talib, the clan chief, who refused to disown him despite immense pressure. The turning point came with the Hijra, the migration to the city of Medina in 622. The leaders of Medina invited Muhammad to act as their arbiter and leader, offering his followers a safe haven. This event was so pivotal it marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. In Medina, Muhammad was no longer just a preacher; he became a political and military leader, forging a new kind of community, the umma, bound not by blood but by shared faith. This set the stage for the inevitable conflict with Mecca, a series of battles that would ultimately lead to his triumphant, and largely peaceful, return as the undisputed leader of Arabia.

Narrator: Lesley Hazleton's The First Muslim masterfully reframes the story of Muhammad not as a distant, untouchable icon, but as a living, breathing human being. The book's most important takeaway is that Muhammad's journey was defined by a profound and relatable humanity. He was a man who experienced devastating loss, crippling self-doubt, and the terror of the unknown before he could become a leader who inspired millions. His story is not one of effortless divinity, but of a mortal's struggle to accept and bear the weight of an extraordinary destiny.

By focusing on the man, Hazleton challenges us to look beyond the hardened lines of dogma and politics that so often define religious figures. She asks us to consider a more difficult but far more rewarding question: What does it mean for an ordinary person to be confronted with the extraordinary, and how can the crucible of doubt forge the most resilient and humane form of faith?