"Muhammad was not the founder of Islam; he did not start a new religion. Like his prophetic predecessors, he came as a religious reformer. Muhammad maintained that he did not bring a new message from a new God but called people back to the one, true God ... - John L. Esposito, ISLAM The Straight Path, p. 15. "I am not a Muslim in the usual sense, though I hope I am a 'Muslim' as 'one surrendered to God' but I believe that embedded in the Qur'an and other expressions` of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth from which I and other occidentals have still much to learn....Islam is certainly a contender for the supplying of the basic framework of the one religion of the future. "