Neither did the prophet. His army was only the people who believed in his book to be the truth.Fiction writers normally do no not have standing armies to make people read their books.
No author of physics has claimed it to be fiction and no reader of physics has claimed it to be fiction. Hopefully you understand the difference. A writer of physics is not actually writing fiction and trying to convince his readers of the truth of his fiction. He, according to himself, is writing fact. According to you however, the prophet was writing fiction (a figment of his imagination) and at the same time convincing people of it's truth. The prophet, according to you, was a most convincing conman.But when it comes to facts, people have accepted truths of physics generation after generation.
And why don't you? Where did you get this idea of God from? Which book did you read? Isn't this God a figment of your imagination?Let's accept that Allah is the author of the Quran, now would He, given all his power, glory and infinite capacity, cheapen Himself by challenging mortals to do what He can do? I don't think so.
Why would that cheapen him? Isn't a challenge actually supposed to prove your superiority? And isn't a challenge normally issued to those that do not believe in your superiority? Do you wish that God should just punish you without giving you a chance to find out the truth? He is doing this not for himself but for you. He doesn't want you to suffer even though you seem to be bent on it.
As far as numbers are concerned, no one follows their religious books like the muslims follow the quran. You said so yourself. You won't find a single person of any other religion who memorises their entire religious book. You will find 11 year old muslim children who have memorised the entire quran.
If you compare the effect of the quran on it's believers against the effect of any other religious book on it's believers, you will find a huge difference. That is the criterion.
Neither intended nor predicted is simply your conclusion and not the truth. The message of the quran had to be spread. Even during the time of the prophet, he sent letters of invitation to Islam to all the leaders in the surrounding countries. So the spread was intended and it has been predicted in the quran.He did convince hundreds of people (I'm guessing) during his lifetime. After his death though, the spread of Islam of out of his hands. It came in the wake of Islamic imperialism which it seems he neither intended nor predicted.
