Considering how touchy Muslims get whenever they hear any critical talk of Muhammad, one might miss the ironic fact that, from the dawn of Islam to now, millions of non-Muslims have been asking Asia’s question -- “What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?” -- or variants thereof.
In one infamous instance in the late 1390s, Manuel II Palaiologos, one of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire’s most able emperors, told a group of Muslim ulema (scholars):
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.
Like Asia Bibi, Manuel did not make this assertion to be provocative, but rather because he was in Muslim (Ottoman) territory, and a throng of Muslim scholars were also pressuring him into converting to Islam.
This has long been the problem: Muslims often initiate tensions by trying to persuade non-Muslims to join -- or perhaps just validate -- their religion, one way (persuasion) or another (jihad). But from the very start, whenever non-Muslims seriously examine the life of Muhammad -- the fount of Islam -- questions and criticisms arise. Then Muslims, frustrated because they cannot assuage these concerns, respond with outrage and violence.
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