Noah pbuh lived for a thousand years. Considering the fact that the great flood occurred when he was 950 years old, it is safe to say that revelations from God continued virtually to the end of his life. Having this connection with God, even if it is intermittent, is surely a factor of confidence and hope in the face of ever changing life conditions. Now let's make a thought experiment in which we are going to apply this concept to Muhammad pbuh with a slight change.
Let's assume that the last messenger of God did not die in 632 AD but lived until now. However, we are going to hold that the revelations through which the Quran came ended as told in history. So, Muhammad pbuh was relieved of his duty as a messenger of God, and was to continue his life as an ordinary human being. What would happen?
Of course a lot can be said of this idea, and this thought experiment can be made in perspective of different topics. But I would like to do it in terms of understanding and interpreting the Quran.
Remember the "companions of the Suffa"? Those were the poor and single youngsters at the time of the prophet, who spent most of their times in worship and learning Islam. Whenever there was a need to send someone to a people for teaching Islam, the companions of the Suffa were the candidates of choice. Looking at the concept of Suffa with the eyes of modern academia, it is plausible to say that it was similar to a graduate school at a university, and the messenger of God was in the place of a professor raising phd students. I am going to use this analogy to run the thought experiment I suggested above.
Assuming that the revelations came to an end at 632 AD and that Muhammad pbuh continued to live, the number of the phd students and the graduates would increase. In the first two centuries, due to the temporal proximity of the divine message, neither Muhammad pbuh nor his phd students would have a great difficulty in addressing the questions raised among people. Among them, the most challenged ones would be those who had emigrated to distant countries to teach Islam, since the conditions and cultures would differ proportional to their distance to the Arabian peninsula.
In order to answer the most difficult issues, the Suffa graduates would write to prophet Muhammad, which would take months to reach him and several more to reach back to the sender. Due to lack of divine revelations, Muhammad pbuh would be in the shoes of an Islamic scholar in that time, and he would consider his memories during the revelation of the Quran, the scientific knowledge of the time and his wisdom and commonsense to answer those questions. The things would get more complicated upon the increase of contact with the Greek, Roman, Indian and Egyptian philosophies and scientific heritage.
But worst of the conditions would arise when different countries would arm themselves against each other, and religion was to become an instrument of war. On one case, prophet Muhammad would consider the concept of jihad in Islam, which is an instrument to stop oppression on the earth; but on the other hand, he would contemplate about the eagerness of people to kill each other, which is contrary to the aim and meaning of jihad. It is possible that at this conjunction, some of his graduates would consider the fact that Muhammad pbuh is not anymore the recipient of revelation, and that he is acting just like another human being. So, they would position themselves in opposition to him, siding with the warmongers.
Having lost some of his students in these wars, he would likely wish to migrate to a more peaceful place. During the revelation period of Quran, he was shown where to go and when to go by divine signals. But now, he would be devoid of that. Nevertheless, as any other human being, he would rely on inspirations, dreams and serendipitous events as signs of God. Upon those, he would reflect on the real conditions, and eventually take a leap of faith. But where could this be?
Prophet Muhammad would probably look for places far from war, where people were thirsty for the divine message. His migration would also mean the migration of the Quran with the rich references to the natural phenomena in it, some of which unexplained with the scientific knowledge of the time. A possible location would, then, be a boundary where he could interact with the Western people. After all, Quran (5/82) was referencing the Christians as the friendliest to the believers.
With this change of location, he would encounter the deterministic philosophy about the nature and universe. The explanation of the heavenly bodies and the chemical wonders would surely throw Muhammad pbuh to deep and vast contemplation. This action-reaction based understanding would also agree with much of the Islamic teachings and jurisdictions in the Quran. So, his new generation of students would combine the Quranic knowledge with the readings of the universe, and would arrive at a much broader sense of "unity of God".
As we come to the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, further advances in science and technology would signal the re-revelation of the Quran, because some of the verses that couldn't have been satisfactorily understood would find an explanation at last. The rise of quantum theory and the picture of nature seen through it would give a new pair of glasses to read the Quran anew. This new reading would trigger Muhammad pbuh to make another reading, too: his own words that he had uttered in the 7th century AD.
But these new readings would, once again, put prophet Muhammad and some of his phd students in opposing ranks. These students would take his words in the past as "timeless words", in the sense that they are valid unconditionally and forever. Even if he tried to convince them to rethink their claims, these students would think that he is just being humble. Some of them would even think that prophet Muhammad's words during his messengership were binding, but his current words were similar to any other human, and so, were not to be considered seriously. So, Muhammad pbuh would once again see, in pain, how his own words are being used as an instrument to polarize and antagonize people.
Tired of all these "heartless believers", he would once again like to emigrate to places where people are more hospitable to and tolerant of each other. There, he would be given a chair at a university, and would be given the means to raise phd students with an understanding of Islam as if it is being revealed just now.
With the suitable conditions of the peaceful environment, he and his students would take everything from scratch. Their school would have the Quran as one of their laboratories, the universe and the humanity being the other two. Unlike some of the current "Islamic scholars" who hold every act and word of his unquestionable, Muhammad pbuh would invite his phd students to question and challenge his life, and would invite them to interpret Quran in different ways. Each phd thesis could possible contain opposing views, but he would welcome these as an indispensable component of intellectual quest to reach a single theory everything in the Quran. After all, Quran was finished in the 7th century, and no more revelation was to come, and the Merciful Creator had given the ability to read and write (96/1-5) and to communicate (55/1-4) to find His way.
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