KHUTAB III - 10. THE IDEAL PROPHET (1)
10. THE IDEAL PROPHET (1)
Brothers in Islam
Al-Nadawī in his Biography of the Prophet, Muhammad
the Ideal Prophet, says that man is in need of “a perfect and a universal
exemplar who could place in his hands a guide-book of practical life, so that
every wayfarer may reach his destination safely” and that man was Prophet
Muhammad s.a.w. who brought unchanged teachings till the Last Day. He states
further that the ideal or model for humanity must fulfil certain conditions in
his character: (1) historicity, (2) comprehensiveness, and (3) practicality.
1. Historicity
What is meant with historicity is that
the ideal prophet must have his genuine biography in detail. We have to know
what he said and did in his life and the information must be perfectly genuine.
It is not based on fable or a legendary tale, which cannot be followed.
There are 124 000 prophets according to
tradition, but very little is known of the lives of many of them. Zoroaster,
for example, is doubted by many Orientalists in Europe and America, if he had ever lived. Even
those who accepted his existence gave contradictory accounts of him, his birth
date, his family, nationality, religion and scripture the genuineness of which
is all doubted. He was said to be born somewhere in Azerbaijan, preached around
Balkh, converted King Vistaspa, performed some miracles, got married and had
children.
The Hindus claimed to have the oldest
civilization. They mentioned many sages and saints in their sacred writings,
but they were only known by name. The names mentioned in the Mahabharata and
Ramayana are in more detail, but their age and the century they lived are
unknown. The majority of Western scholars doubted them to be genuine.
Siddharta Gautama (Buddha), the founder
of Buddhism, was born about 2500 years ago in about 563 BC near Kapilavastu,
South of Nepal in the foothills of the Himalaya. His mother was Maya or Mahamaya. It is said that she conceived him after
having a dream that a white elephant entered her womb. Therefore, elephants are
considered sacred in Buddhism. His father, Suddhodama, was a prince. He wanted
his son to become a great king, and kept him away from seeing “four signs”,
namely, an old man, a diseased man, a dead man, and a monk. He married and had
a child. At the age of 29 he saw them all, and realized their suffering. Then
he left his wife and child for good, roaming in cities, mountains and forests,
then he took refuge in the forest to discover the meaning of human destiny.
Finally he reached Gaya,
where he sat and mediated under a Bodhi tree in order to achieve “the highest
immortality.” He spent seven weeks in
meditation. Before sunset the army of Mara (Buddhist Satan) attacked him with
arrows, and retreated after sunset. It is said that the arrows that reached Siddharta
turned into flowers. In deep meditation the following night he claimed to have
attained “enlightenment,” to become Buddha, “the enlightened one”, when
the secrets of the universe were open to him. He kept teaching and preaching
until he died at the age of over eighty years. It is said that at the time of
his death “the earth quaked, firebrands fell from heaven, violent storms raged
and the river boiled.”
With regard to Semitic prophets, there
were hundreds prophets among them, but history knows hardly anything about them
except their names. The Torah, the main source of information about the Prophet
Moses that is extant today, was written hundreds of years after the death of
Moses, according to the authors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Gospels recorded
the life of Jesus, but the Christians accept four only, namely, Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John, and reject others, such as that of Thomas and Barnabas as
apocryphal, namely, of doubtful authority. None of the four writers of the
so-called “authentic” gospels had ever seen Jesus.
With regard to the biography of Prophet
Muhammad s.a.w. Islam preserved even more. We know that he was born on 9th
of Rabī‘ al-Awwal, the first year of the Elephant (22 April 571 CE). His
genealogy can be traced back to Prophet Ismā‘īl in about 40 generations. We
know how he lived in his childhood. We
learned that at the age of twenty-five he married the rich widow Khadījah who
was forty years old. When H.alīmah (the
Prophet’s wet nurse and foster mother who suckled him when he was a baby)
visited them, Khadījah gave her a camel and forty sheep. In general, anything
connected with him was recorded by narrators, traditionists and biographers
among his companions, and people of later generations till the 4th
century A.H. The Orientalist Sprenger who published al-Wāqidī’s Maghāzī said
in his work Life of Muihammad as follows: “If the biographical
records of the Muhammadans [i.e. the Muslims] were collected, we should
probably have accounts of the lives of half a million of distinguished persons…”
It is said that more than 1500 Muslims lived in Madinah shortly after the
Prophet’s migration to that city. It is also said that more than one hundred
thousand people joined the Prophet in his farewell pilgrimage. There were about
eleven thousands of his companions (sahābah) narrated from him. We are
living at the beginning of the 21st century, the age of advanced
technology, and this is the time to put all these records in a computer, so
that we can have access to them easily.
After the Prophet’s death, some of his
companions were still alive over eighty years later in different parts of the
Muslim land, such as: Abu Umāmah Bāhilī in Syria d. 86/705, Abdullah ibn Hārith
ibn H.azr, in Egypt, 86/705, Abdullah ibn Abī
Awfá in Kūfah, 87/705, Sā’ib ibn Yazīd in Medinah, 91/709, and Anas ibn Mālik
in Basrah 93/711. They were all teachers and preachers delivering the message
of Islam from the Prophet to the following generation. (tābi‘īn). They
were all the students of the s.ah.ābah who reported what they
knew and saw about him, following his order. He said, “Disseminate whatever
you hear from me. Inform those not present whatever you hear or see of me.”
Ibn Sa‘d reported that there were 355 tābi‘īn
in Medinah, 131 in Makkah, 413 in Kūfah, and 164 in Bas.rah.
The last tābi‘ī was the student of ‘Āmir ibn Wā’ilah called Khalaf ibn
Khalīfah who died in 181/797.
Some of the s.ah.ābah who narrated hadīths
from the Prophet are as follows:
1.Abū Hurayrah (d. 59/678) 5374
h.adīths
2. Abdullah ibn ‘Abbās (d. 68/687) 2660
“
3. ‘Ā’ishah (d. 58/677) 2220 “
4. Abdullah ibn ‘Umar (d. 73/692) 1630 “
5. Jābir ibn ‘Abdullah (d. 78/697) 1560 “
6. Anas ibn Mālik (d. 93/711) 1280 “
7. Abū Sa‘īd al-Khud.rī (d. 74/693) 1170 “
This is to indicate that the biography
of the Prophet is genuinely recorded in history. It is the most complete one
compared to that of prophets before him. With this, the first condition for an
ideal prophet has been fulfilled by Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. We shall
continue with the comprehensiveness of teachings as the second condition laid
down for an ideal prophet. (ANUMA, 6 January 06).
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