Oh yes, I agree. Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world where not all followers of a religion follow its true message. You might say &quot;well OK, so get rid of religion&quot;. People will still seek power, but in other ways. In other words, there are people who always seek the easiest way to gain more power and influence.<p>Yes, the Quran was revealed directly to Muhammad. He told his wife first, and she believed him. It just spread from there. I&#x27;d argue that the absolutely miracolous rate at which Islam spread throughout the region is a plus in favor of Islam :)<p>As for your point about eternal torture, let&#x27;s say a guy comes up to you in the street nowadays and tells you he&#x27;s a Prophet sent by God to save humanity. He tells you about this book called Mojimbi which is the word of God. At this point, you have complete freedom to accept of reject his claim. Unless he can convince you that what he&#x27;s saying is true, you wouldn&#x27;t believe him and he&#x27;d be on his way.<p>Muhammad however was able to convince people with two things.<p>One, he was known in his community to be an extremely honest person; never once did anyone hear of him lying. He was a trader, so he dealt with a lot of people. So when he said that he was visited by an angel etc, some people just believed him on the spot. Of course, many others called him crazy, so it wasn&#x27;t a fool-proof plan.<p>Two, he had the Quran. Some background first. The community Muhammad lived in was very well-versed in the Arabic language. Most mastered the language and its intricacies by the age of 10, and were known as experts in poetry. Look it up, Arabic is extremely complex.<p>So he recites some verses from the Quran to people and claims that these are words from Allah (keep in mind he was illiterate). They were amazed, absolutely awestruck by the words coming out of his mouth. The structure and linguistic nature of the verses was perfect, and this was coming from experts in the language! One of the Prophet&#x27;s biggest critics (and a great poet no less) at the time was almost going to join Islam just because of this.<p>Now, let&#x27;s go back to the example. You&#x27;re a professor of English language at Standford, and a guy you&#x27;ve dealt with a lot and who you know is an extremely honest person in all aspects tells you the same message. He also recites some verses that are so elegant and beautiful in structure that they make Shakespeare look like a pre-schooler&#x27;s work, and tells you these are the words of God. Wouldn&#x27;t that make things different?