Qur'an: No More Mr Nice Prophet

After about 180 pages of "stock up on good deeds because the world is gonna end any day now", the tone of the Qur'an changes very suddenly. After putting up with so much shit, Muhammad's (and God's) patience wore out: Muhammad picked up his shotgun and started singing:

"No more Mr Nice Prophet,
No more Mr Clean,
No more Mr Nice Prophet,
They say, he's sick, he's a false prophet"
(I may have embellished this slightly: he didn't actually have a shotgun.)

As Muhammad's following grew, the Muslims became increasingly unpopular. The leaders of the Quraysh tribe, Muhammad's own tribe, imposed a boycott on the Muslims. Everyone in Mecca was forbidden to trade with the them; nobody could sell them food. This ruined many of the Muslims' lives, and was partly responsible for the death of Khadija, Muhammad's wife. Slaves who had converted to Islam were killed.

Eight years after his first revelation, Muhammad was approached by emissaries from the city of Yathrib, 250 miles north of Mecca. Several tribes had given up the nomadic way of life to found Yathrib. Some of these tribes were Jewish, and their monotheist ideas were popular with the Arab tribes. However, the Yathrib tribes were often still at war with each other. The emissaries recognised Muhammad as God's prophet to the Arabs; they converted to Islam. Two years later, in 622 CE, the Muslims of Mecca migrated to Yathrib. This exodus marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. The Muslims had turned their backs on tribal blood ties; a new era had begun.

Muhammad became ruler of Yathrib, which became known as Medina. His revelations became a lot more political: while he was not forcing everyone to convert to Islam, a lot of the Jews and pagans of Medina, who did not recognise him as a legit prophet, weren't too fond of him as their ruler. They just thought he was some random guy from Mecca, with voices in his head, who had suddenly been put in charge of their city. Luckily for Muhammad, the voice in his head (God, speaking through the Angel Gabriel) provided him with an effective solution to this problem:

"If the hypocrites, and the sick in heart, and those who spread panic in the city, do not desist, We will give you sway over them, and then they will no longer be your neighbours therein, except for a short while. Accursed shall they be; wherever they are found they shall be captured and killed outright. Such has been the precedent of God with those who came before, and you shall not find God's precedent to vary."

I have another 340 pages of the Qur'an, another ten years of Muhammad's life, still to go. Mecca and Medina will go to war; there will be betrayals, subterfuge, slaughter, sieges, raids, and, after all that, a peace offensive. Muhammad will end up ruler of all Arabia, the various tribes having sworn allegiance to the Muslim super-tribe.