Opinion of Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him)

[politicus]

Your use of the Levant in this context is strange. The Arab peninsula is some distance from the Levant even if you include Mesopotamia in the concept.

In the context of the Arab peninsula Muhammad was a social reformer and as such a FF up to a point. He was also a warlord (with all the robbery, murder and enslavement that includes) and destroyer of pagan and Jewish culture. If you dislike large scale social engineering from above he becomes a much more questionable figure.

Comparing him to Washington and Ghandi is too friendly, neither of these men forced others to convert to their ideology or destroyed cultures. Mao would seem far more relevant. A successful and zealous warlord with a calling to safe his people, who eradicated old injustices and created a more egalitarian society, but created other injustices in the process, destroyed ancient cultures and imposed his own ideology on people.

Also, it is in reality not possible to differentiate between the founder of a religion and the religion he created (or the founder of a country for that matter). If you believe the world would have been a better place without Islam coming into existence - and the Arab tribes ever spreading beyond their homeland -  (and the ensuing marginalization of Christianity in the Middle East and North Africa) you are bound to have a negative opinion of Muhammad.