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The Prophet and Prophetic Tradition - The
Last Prophet and Universal Man
by Professor Sayed Hossein Nasr
"Excerpted from "Ideals & Realities of Islam", written by
Professor S. Hossein Nasr, London 1975.
The Prophet as the founder of Islam and the messenger of God's
revelation to mankind is the interpreter par excellence of the
Book of God; and his Hadith and Sunnah, his sayings and actions,
are after the Quran, the most important sources of the Islamic
tradition. In order to understand the significance of the
Prophet it is not sufficient to study, from the outside
historical texts pertaining to his life. One must view him also
from within the Islamic point of view and try to discover the
position he occupies in the religious consciousness of Muslims.
When in any Islamic language one says the Prophet, it means
Muhammad—whose name as such is never iterated except that as a
courtesy it be followed by the formula 'Sall' Allahu 'alaihi wa
sallam', that is, 'may God's blessing and salutation be upon
him'.
It is even legitimate to say that, in general, when one says the
Prophet it means the prophet of Islam; for although in every
religion the founder who is an aspect of the Universal
Intellect, becomes the Aspect, the Word the Incarnation,
nevertheless each founder emphasizes a certain aspect of the
Truth and even typifies that aspect universally. Although there
is belief in incarnation in many religions, when one says the
Incarnation it refers to Christ who personifies this aspect. And
although every prophet and saint has experienced
'enlightenment', the Enlightenment refers to the experience of
the Buddha which is the most outstanding and universal
embodiment of this experience. In the same manner the prophet of
Islam is the prototype and perfect embodiment of prophecy and so
in a profound sense is the Prophet. In fact in Islam every form
of revelation is envisaged as a prophecy whose complete and
total realization is to be seen in Muhammad—Upon whom be peace.
As the Sufi poet Mahmud Shabistari writes in his incomparable
Gulshan-i raz (the Secret Rose Garden):
The first appearance of prophethood was in Adam,
And its perfection was in the 'Seal of the Prophets'. (Whinfield
translation)
It is difficult for a non-Muslim to understand the spiritual
significance of the Prophet and his role as the prototype of the
religious and spiritual life, especially if one comes from a
Christian background. Compared to Christ, or to the Buddha for
that matter, the earthly career of the Prophet seems often too
human and too engrossed in the vicissitudes of social, economic
and political activity to serve as a model for the spiritual
life. That is why so many people who write today of the great
spiritual guides of humanity are not able to understand and
interpret him sympathetically. It is easier to see the spiritual
radiance of Christ or even medieval saints, Christian or Muslim,
than that of the Prophet; although the Prophet is the supreme
saint in Islam without whom there would have been no sanctity
whatsoever.
The reason for this difficulty is that the spiritual nature of
the Prophet is veiled in his human one and his purely spiritual
function is hidden in his duties as the guide of men and the
leader of a community. It was the function of the Prophet to be,
not only a spiritual guide, but also the organizer of a new
social order with all that such a function implies. And it is
precisely this aspect of his being that veils his purely
spiritual dimension from foreign eyes. Outsiders have understood
his political genius, his power of oratory, his great
statesmanship, but few have understood how he could be the
religious and spiritual guide of men and how his life could be
emu- lated by those who aspire to sanctity. This is particularly
true in the modern world in which religion is separated from
other domains of life and most modern men can hardly imagine how
a spiritual being could also be immersed in the most intense
political and social activity.
Actually if the contour of the personality of the Prophet is to
be under- stood he should not be compared to Christ or the
Buddha whose message was meant primarily for saintly men and who
founded a community based on monastic life which later became
the norm of a whole society. Rather, because of his dual
function as 'king' and 'prophet', as the guide of men in this
world and the hereafter, the Prophet should be compared to the
prophet-kings of the Old Testament, to David and Solomon, and
especially to Abraham himself. Or to cite once again an example
outside the Abrahamic tradition, the spiritual type of the
Prophet should be compared in Hinduism, to Rama and Krishna, who
although in a completely different traditional climate, were
avataras and at the same time kings and house- holders who
participated in social life with all that such activity implies
as recorded in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
This type of figure who is at once a spiritual being and a
leader of men has always been, relatively speaking, rare in the
Christian West, especially in modern times. Political life has
become so divorced from spiritual principles that to many people
such a function itself appears as an impossibility in proof of
which Westerners often point to the purely spiritual life of
Christ who said, 'My Kingdom is not of this world.' And even
historically the Occident has not witnessed many figures of this
type unless one considers the Templars and in another context
such devout kings as Charlemagne and St. Louis. The figure of
the Prophet is thus difficult for many Occidentals to understand
and this misconception to which often bad intention has been
added is responsible for the nearly total ignorance of his
spiritual nature in most works written about him in Western
languages of which the number is legion. One could in fact say
that of the major elements of Islam the real significance of the
Prophet is the least understood to non Muslims and especialiy to
Occidentals.
The Prophet did participate in social life in its fullest sense.
He married, had a household, was a father and moreover he was
ruler and judge and had also to fight many wars in which he
underwent painful ordeals. He had to undergo many hardships and
experience all the difficulties which human life especially that
of the founder of a new state and society, implies. But with- in
all these activities his heart rested in contentment with the
Divine, and he continued inwardly to repose in the Divine Peace.
In fact his participation in social and political life was
precisely to integrate this domain into a spiritual centre.
The Prophet entertained no political or worldly ambition
whatsoever. He was by nature a contemplative. Before being
chosen as prophet he did not like to frequent social gatherings
and activities. He led a caravan from Mecca to Syria passing
through the majestic silence of the desert whose very 'infinity'
induces man towards contemplation. He often spent long periods
in the cave of Hira' in solitude and meditation. He did not
believe himself to be by nature a man of the world or one who
was naturally inclined to seek political power among the Quraysh
or social eminence in Meccan society although he came from the
noblest family. It was in fact very painful and difficult for
him to accept the burden of prophecy which implied the founding
of not only a new religion but also a new social and political
order. All the traditional sources, which alone matter in this
case testify to the great hardship the Prophet underwent by
being chosen to participate in the active life in its most acute
form. Modern studies on the life of the Prophet which depict him
as a man who enjoyed fighting wars are totally untrue and in
fact a reversal of the real personality of the Prophet.
Immediately after the reception of the first revelation the
Prophet confessed to his wife, Khadijah, how difficult it was
for him to accept the burden of prophecy and how fearful he was
of all that such a mission implied.
Likewise, with the marriages of the Prophet, they are not at all
signs of his lenience vis-a-vis the flesh. During the period of
youth when the passions are most strong the Prophet lived with
only one wife who was much older than he and also underwent long
periods of abstinence. And as a prophet many of his marriages
were political ones which, in the prevalent social structure of
Arabia, guaranteed the consolidation of the newly founded Muslim
community.Multiple marriage, for him, as is true of Islam in
general, was not so much enjoyment as responsibility and a means
of integration of the newly founded society. Besides, in Islam
the whole problem of sexuality appears in a different light from
that in Christianity and should not be judged by the same
standards. The multiple marriages of the Prophet, far from
pointing to his weakness towards 'the flesh' symbolize his
patriarchal nature and his function, not as a saint who
withdraws from the world, but as one who sanctifies the very
life of the world by living in it and accepting it with the aim
of integrating it into a higher order of reality.
The Prophet has also often been criticized by modern Western
authors for being cruel and for having treated men harshly. Such
a charge is again absurd because critics of this kind have
forgotten that either a religion leaves the world aside, as
Christ did, or integrates the world, in which case it must deal
with such questions as war, retribution, justice, etc. When
Charlemagne or some other Christian king thrust a sword into the
breast of a heathen soldier he was, from the individual point of
view, being cruel to that soldier. But on the universal plane
this was a necessity for the preservation of a Christian
civilization which had to defend its borders or perish. The same
holds true for a Buddhist king or ruler, or for that matter any
religious authority which seeks to integrate human society.
The Prophet exercised the utmost kindness possible and was harsh
only with traitors. Now, a traitor against a newly founded
religious community, which God has willed and whose existence is
a mercy from heaven for mankind, is a traitor against the Truth
itself. The harshness of the Prophet in such cases is an
expression of Divine Justice. One cannot accuse God of being
cruel because men die, or because there is illness and ugliness
in the world. Every construction implies a previous destruction,
a clearing of grounds for the appearance of a new form. This
holds true not only in case of a physical structure but also in
case of a new revelation which must clear the ground if it is to
be a new social and political order as well as a purely reigious
one. What appears to some as the cruelty of the Prophet towards
men is precisely this aspect of his function as the instrument
of God for the establishment of a new world order whose homeland
in Arabia was to be pure of any paganism and polytheism which if
present would pollute the very source of this new fountain of
life. As to what concerned his own person, the Prophet was
always the epitome of kindness and generosity.
Nowhere is the nobility and generosity of the Prophet better
exemplified than in his triumphant entry into Mecca, which in a
sense highlights his earthly career. There, at a moment when the
very people who had caused untold hardships and trials for the
Prophet were completely subdued by him, instead of thinking of
vengeance, which was certainly his due, he forgave them. One
must study closely the almost unimaginable obstacles placed
before the Prophet by these same people, of the immense
suffering he had undergone because of them, to realize what
degree of generosity this act of the Prophet implies. It is not
actually necessary to give an apologetic account of the life of
the Prophet, but these matters need to be answered because the
false and often malicious accusations of this kind made against
the founder of Islam in so many modern studies make the
understanding of him by those who rely upon such studies well
nigh impossible.
Also the Prophet was not certainly without love and compassion.
Many incidents in his life and sayings recorded in Hadith
literature? point to his depth of love for God which, in
conformity with the general perspective of Islam, was never
divorced from the knowledge of Him. For example in a well known
Hadith, he said, 'O Lord, grant to me the love of thee. Grant
that I love those that love thee. Grant that I may do the deed
that wins thy love. Make thy love dear to me more than self,
family and wealth.' Such sayings clearly demonstrate the fact
that although the Prophet was in a sense a king or ruler of a
community and a judge and had to deal according to Justice in
both capacities, he was at the same time one whose being was
anchored in the love for God. Otherwise, he could not have been
a prophet.
From the Muslim point of view, the Prophet is the symbol of
perfection of both the human person and human society. He is the
prototype of the human individual and the human collectivity. As
such he bears certain characteristics in the eye of traditional
Muslims which can only be discovered by studying the traditional
accounts of him. The many Western works on the Prophet, with
very few exceptions, are useless from this point of view no
matter how much historical data they provide for the reader. The
same holds true in fact for the new type of biographies of the
Prophet written by modernized Muslims who would like at all cost
to make the Prophet an ordinary man and neglect systematically
any aspect of his being that does not conform to a humanistic
and rationalistic framework they have adopted a priori, mostly
as a result of either influence from or reaction to the modern
Western point of view. The profound characteristics of the
Prophet which have guided the Islamic community over the
centuries and have left an indelible mark on the consciousness
of the Muslim cannot be discerned save through the traditional
sources and the Hadith, and, of course, the Quran itself which
bears the perfume of the soul of the person through whom it was
revealed.
The universal characteristics of the Prophet are not the same as
his daily actions and day to day life, which can be read about
in standard biogra-phies of the Prophet, and with which we
cannot deal here. They are, rather characteristics which issue
forth from his personality as a particular spiritual
prototype.Seen in this light there are essentially three
qualities that characterize the Prophet. First of all the
Prophet possessed the quality of piety in its most universal
sense, that quality which attaches man to God The Prophet was in
that sense pious. He had a profound piety which inwardly
attached him to God, that made him place the interest of God
before everything else including himself. Secondly he had a
quality of combativeness, of always being actively engaged in
combat against all that negated the Truth and disrupted harmony.
Externally it meant fighting wars, either military, political or
social ones, the war which the Prophet named the 'little holy
war' (al-jihad al-asghar). Inwardly this combativeness meant a
continuous war against the carnal soul (nafs), against all that
in man tends towards the negation of God and His Will, the
'great holy war' (al-jihad al-akbar).
It is difficult for modern men to understand the positive
symbolism of war thanks to modern technology which has made war
total and its instruments the very embodiment of what is ugly
and evil. Men therefore think that the role of religion is only
in preserving some kind of precarious peace. This, of course, is
true, but not in the superficial sense that is usually meant. If
religion is to be an integral part of life it must try to
establish peace in the most profound sense, namely to establish
equilibrium between all the existing forces that surround man
and to overcome all the forces that tend to destroy this
equilibrium. No religion has sought to establish peace in this
sense more than Islam. It is precisely in such a context that
war can have a positive meaning as the activity to establish
harmony both inwardly and outwardly and it is in this sense that
Islam has stressed the positive aspect of combativeness.
The Prophet embodies to an eminent degree this perfection of
combative virtue. If one thinks of the Buddha as sitting in a
state of contemplation under the Bo-tree, the Prophet can be
imagined as a rider sitting on a steed with the sword of justice
and discrimination drawn in his hand and galloping at full
speed, yet ready to come to an immediate halt before the
mountain of Truth. The Prophet was faced from the beginning of
his prophetic mission with the task of wielding the sword of
Truth, of establishing equilibrium and in this arduous task he
had no rest. His rest and repose was in the heart of the holy
war (jihad) itself and he represents this aspect of spirituality
in which peace comes not in passivity but in true activity.
Peace belongs to one who is inwardly at peace with the Will of
Heaven and outwardly at war with the forces of disruption and
disequilibrium.
Finally, the Prophet possessed the quality of magnanimity in its
fullness. His soul displayed a grandeur which every devout
Muslim feels. He is for the Muslim nobility and magnanimity
personified. This aspect of the Prophet is fully displayed in
his treatment of his companions which, in fact, has been the
model for later ages and which all generations of Muslims have
sought to emulate.
To put it another way, which focuses more sharply the
personality of the Prophet, the qualities can be enumerated as
strength, nobility and serenity or inner calm. Strength is
outwardly manifested in the little holy war and inwardly in the
great holy war according to the saying of the Prophet who,
returning from one of the early wars, said, 'We have returned
from the small jihad to the great jihad.' It is this great jihad
which is of particular spiritual significance as a war against
all those tendencies which pull the soul of man away from the
Centre and Origin and bar him from the grace of heaven.
The nobility or generosity of the Prophet shows itself most of
all in charity towards all men and more generally towards all
beings. Of course this virtue is not central as in Christianity
which can be called the religion of charity. But it is important
on the human level and as it concerns the person of the Prophet.
It points to the fact that there was no narrowness or pettiness
in the soul of the Prophet, no limitation in giving of himself
to others. A spiritual man is one who always gives to those
around him and does not re- ceive, according to the saying, 'It
is more blessed to give than to receive'. It was characteristic
of the Prophet to have always given till the last moment of his
life. He never asked anything for himself and never sought to
receive.
The aspect of serenity, which also characterizes all true
expressions of Islam is essentially the love of truth. It is to
put the Truth before everything else. It is to be impartial, to
be logical on the level of discourse, not to let one's emotions
colour and prejudice one's intellectual judgment. It is not to
be a rationalist, but to see the truth of things and to love the
Truth above all else. To love the Truth is to love God who is
the Truth, one of His Names being the Truth (al-haqq).
If one were to compare these qualities of the Prophet, namely,
strength, nobility and serenity, with those of the founders of
the other great religions one would see that they are not
necessarily the same because firstly, the Prophet was not
himself the Divine Incarnation and secondly, because each
religion emphasizes a certain aspect of the Truth. One cannot
follow and emulate Christ in the same manner as the Prophet
because in Christianity Christ is the God-man, the Divine
Incarnation. One can be absorbed into his nature but he cannot
be copied as the perfection of the human state. One can neither
walk on water nor raise the dead to life. Still, when one thinks
of Christianity and Christ another set of characteristics come
to mind, such as divinity, incarnation, and on another level
love, charity and sacrifice. Or when one thinks of the Buddha
and Buddhism it is most of all the ideas of pity for the whole
of creation, enlightenment and illumination and extinction in
Nirvana that stand out.
In Islam, when one thinks of the Prophet who is to be emulated,
it is the image of a strong personality that comes to mind, who
is severe with himself and with the false and the unjust, and
charitable towards the world that surrounds him. On the basis of
these two virtues of strength and sobriety on the one hand and
charity and generosity on the other, he is serene extinguished
in the Truth. He is that warrior on horseback who halts before
the mountain of Truth, passive towards the Divine Will, active
towards the world, hard and sober towards himself and kind and
generous towards the creatures about him.
These qualities characteristic of the Prophet are contained
virtually in the sound of the second Shahadah, Muhammadun rasul
Allah, that is Muhammad is the Prophet of God, in its Arabic
pronunciation, not in its translation into another language.
Here again the symbolism is inextricably connected to the sounds
and forms of the sacred language and cannot be translated. The
very sound of the name Muhammad implies force, a sudden breaking
forth of a power which is from God and is not just human. The
word rasul with its elongated second syllable symbolizes this
'expansion of the chest' {inshirah al-sadr), and a generosity
that flows from the being of the Prophet and which ultimately
comes from God. As for Allah it is, of course, the Truth itself
which terminates the formula. The second Shahadah thus implies
by its sound the power, generosity and serenity of reposing in
the Truth characteristic of the Prophet. But this repose in the
Truth is not based on a flight from the world but on a
penetration into it in order to inte- grate and organize it. The
spiritual castle in Islam is based on the firm foundations of
harmony within human society and in individual human life.
In the traditional prayers on the Prophet which all Muslims
recite on certain occasions, God's blessing and salutation are
asked for the Prophet who is God's servant ('abd), His messenger
(rasul), and the unlettered Prophet (al-nabi al-ummi). For
example, one well-known version of the formula of benediction
upon the Prophet is as follows:
'Oh, God, bless our Lord Muhammad, Thy servant and Thy
Messenger, the unlettered Prophet, and his family and his
companions, and salute them.'
Here again the three epithets with which his name is qualified
symbolize his three basic characteristics which stand out most
in the eyes of devout Muslims. He is first of all an 'abd; but
who is an 'abd except one whose will is surrendered to the will
of his master, who is himself poor (faqir) but rich on account
of what his master bestows upon him. As the 'abd of God the
Prophet exemplified in its fullness this spiritual poverty and
sobriety which is so characteristic of Islam. He loved fasting,
vigilance, prayer, all of which have become essential elements
in Islamic religious life. As an 'abd the Prophet put everything
in the hands of God and realized a poverty which is, in reality,
the most perfect and enduring wealth.
The rasul in this formula again symbolizes his aspect of charity
and generosity and metaphysically the rasul himself is sent
because of God's charity for the world and men whom He loves so
that He sends His prophets to guide them. That is why the
Prophet is 'God's mercy to the worlds.' For the Muslim the
Prophet himself displays mercy and generosity, a generosity
which flows from the nobility of character. Islam has always
emphasized this quality and sought to inculcate nobility in the
souls of men. A good Muslim must have some nobility and
generosity which always reflect this aspect of the personality
of the Prophet.
Courtesy: al-Sirat, Vol III No. 1 , 1397A.H.
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