You might have heard that Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) was illiterate, but did you know that he did not like poetry nor understand all of its nuances? In fact, God in the Qur’an says,

“We have not taught him poetry, nor is it fitting for him…”

[Qur’an 36:69]

It is strange, in the Arabian world during his time, to have a person who did not appreciate poetry. After all, poetry was the Arabs’ prized possession. They did not have wealth like the Byzantines and Persians did. They did not have natural resources like them either. Oil was only discovered recently. But what they had was a beautiful language. A comprehensive one, where each word can have multiple meanings and a change in a single vowel can change an entire sentence! Thus, one can imagine how much the Arabs cherished their language and respected the poets and their works.

With Prophet Muhammad, it is narrated that his wife, ‘Aishah (رَضِيَ ٱللَّٰهُ عَنْهَا), was asked whether he would recite poetry and she replied that poetry was the most despised speech to him. She remarked that once he tried to recite some lines of poetry and ended up reversing the order of its last words. At that point Abu Bakr, her father and the closest companion of Prophet Muhammad, said: “It is not quite like that,” and the Prophet replied, “Indeed, by Allah, I am not a poet and nor is it befitting for me.”

And that’s something that Prophet Muhammad’s opponents could not have an answer for – how can the Qur’an, something full of literary gems, be invented by a person who could not read, write, nor appreciate poetry? They couldn’t counterattack logically and thus, propagated that he was either a fortune-teller, madman, or a magician. However, these claims, Muslims state, are actually proofs for the Qur’an. Instead of a proper response, they made foolish claims that proved futile, and indirectly showed that the Qur’an had to be from God!

As God says,

“You ˹O Prophet˺ could not read any writing ˹even˺ before this ˹revelation˺, nor could you write at all. Otherwise, the people of falsehood would have been suspicious.” 

[Qur’an 29:48]

The best way to tell if someone is an imposter is by seeing him in desperate times; in places where there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Perhaps situations where death was the only other option. Well, Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) had plenty of incidences like that.

And nothing proves your sincerity more than the battlefield, where you don’t know if you will live to see the next day. As mentioned in another article, Prophet Muhammad would be in the front line of battles and a source of confidence. His cousin, Ali (رَضِيَ ٱللَّٰهُ عَنْهُ) said,

“If the fighting became fierce when the two nations met, we used to seek protection from the Messenger of Allah. And none of us were nearer to the enemy than he was!”

[Source: Ahmad]

I want to take you to one particular one and that is the Battle of Badr. In this, the Muslims numbered about 313. On the other side, the enemies numbered about 1,000. A fight was not originally planned and thus, the Muslims were not in full-battle attire. It didn’t make sense for the Muslims to want to fight. Yet, they chose to. And the night before the fight, what did Prophet Muhammad do? Panic? Call it quits and tell his people, “Okay guys, let’s just go home”? Or run away? Nope! He stayed up to pray to God. If you’re an imposter who’s making up that there’s a God and that you’re a messenger sent by Him, the last thing you’ll do is put yourself in life or death situations. Why would you want to go to battles, especially ones where you are disadvantaged? Besides that, the last thing you’ll do before a battle, especially in private, is to pray to the very idea you made up.

Finally, what did he do before the fight actually started? He raised his hands to the skies and passionately prayed to God pleading for victory. We should ask ourselves: what kind of an imposter does all that?