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Belief In Prophets
SERIES ON ISLAM
NO. 5
Man is animal - a higher animal"
so goes the saying.
However, the mind in man makes him different from the animal.
The mind is the greatest gift that God has bestowed upon man. Tamed and cultivated the mind can control matter, yet subservient to God. Wild and unschooled, the mind is able to master the forces of destruction and turn rebellious to God. Hence, although man is endowed with intellect, he has to be instructed, preached to and shown examples for his upliftment in line with his destiny in this world - to be the vice-regent of God-as in Surah 2:30
It takes a man to guide a man, for a man has emotions and ever confronted with all kinds of temptations unlike angles. Thus God chose among human beings, men whom He raised as prophets to guide men to attain perfection. But the guidance comes from His as He warned in Surah 2: 38-39:
"When there comes to you a guidance from Me, then who so follows My guidance, no fear will be on them, nor shall they grieve. But those who reject Faith and belief Our signs, they shall be companions of the fire; and there, they shall abide."
Belief in All prophets
Although every people, generation or nation has had its prophet, Islam enjoins its followers to believe in all the prophets as ordained by God in Surah 4:152:
"Those who deny Allah and His apostles, and those who wish to separate Allah form His apostles, saying: "We believe in some but reject others," and those who wish to take a middle course, they are in truth unbelievers; and We have prepared for unbelievers a humiliating punishment."
"To those who believe in Allah and His apostles and make no distinction between any of the apostles, We shall give their due rewards for Allah is All Forgiving and Most Merciful."
According to a hadith the number of prophets is 124,000 but the Quran mentions only 25 of them namely, Adam, Nuh (Noah), Hud, Salih, Ibrahim (Abraham), Lut (Lot), Ismail (Ismael), Ishaq (Isaac), Yaqub (Jacob), Yusuf (Joseph), Shu'aib, Yunus (Jonah), Ayub (Job), Musa (Moses), Harun (Aaron), Daud (David), Sulaiman (Soloman), Zakaria (Zachariah), Yahya (John the Baptist), Elias (Elijah), Dzulkifli (Ezekiel), Elisha, Idris, Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad.
In surah 40:78 Allah revealed to Muhammad s.a.w. "We did aforetime send apostles before thee: of them there are some whose story We have not related to thee."
An outstanding aspect of the Islamic belief in prophethood is that Muslims believe in and respect all the messengers of God with no exceptions. Since all the prophets came from the same One God, for the same purpose - to lead mankind to God - belief in them all is essential and logical; acceptiong some and rejecting others has to be based on miconceptions of the prophet's role or on racial bias. The Muslim are the only people in the world who consider the belief in all the prophets of God as an article of faith. Thus the Jews reject Jesus Chirst and Muhammad (PBHU) : the Christians reject Muhammad (PBUH) and in reality reject Moses because they do not abide by his laws. The Muslims accept them all as messengers of God who brought guidance to manking. However, the revelation which those prophets brought from God had been tampered with in one way or another. The belief in all the messengers of God is enjoined on the Muslim by the Quran:
"Say (O Muslims) : we believe in Allah and that which is revealed to us and that which was revealed to Abraham and Ismael, and Isaac and Jacob, and their children, and that which Moses and Jesus received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them and Unto Him we submit The Quran continues in the following verses to instruct the muslims that this is the true and imperial belief. If any other nations believe in the same, they are following the right track. If they do not, they must be following their own whims and biases and God will take care of them. Thus we read:
"And if they believe in what you believe, then they are rightly guided. But if they turn away, then they are in disunity, and Allah will suffice you against them. He is the Hearer, the Knower. This is God's religion and who is better than God in religion?" (2:137-38)
Attribute of Prophets
What type of beings are the prophets?
Prophets were all human beings since human beings alone could serve as models and become reformers of mankind.
According to Surah 21:7-8: "...The apostle we sent before thee were men to whom We granted inspiration. Ask the people of the Book if you know not. Nor did We give them bodies that ate food; nor were they exempt from death."
Besides being human, they are:
Miracles
Miracles which occurred uring the life of several of the prophets should not be attributed to powers of the prophets or certain faculties of the prophets, like Musa's splitting the sea nad drowning Pharoah and his army; Yunus' deliverence from fish's mouth; and Isa' a raising the dead to life, restoring sight to the blind and curing all kinds of ailments. A prophet has to effect a moral and spiritual transformation. In a society "seeing is believing" miracles became just a means to appeal to the reasoning faculty.
The miracle of Islam is the Holy Quran. It has transindividuals and families; societies and nations. It has awakened the material as well as the moral, intellectual as well as the spiritual being in a man.
Prophecy
While miracles are generally the manifestation of the powers of Allah, prophecy gives prominence to God's knowledge which comprehends the future as well as the past and present. Among the prophecies, the triumph of Islam finds a prominent place in the Holy Quran.
These prophecies were revealed when Muhammad s.a.w. stood alone against the mighty forces of polytheism and idolatry. True to the prophecy, Muhammad s.a.w. succeeded in delivering the message of The Unity of the Divine Being, and inviting the people of the world to obey this Being and to do good to their fellow men. And thus Muhammad s.a.w. becomes the world prophet as in Surah 25:1:
Blesses is He Who sent down the Criterion upon His servant that he ammy be a warner to all the people of the world.
Unlike his predecessors Nuh, Hud, Salleh, Shu'aib - each of whom was raised to be the prophet "to his people" and Musa, was commanded to "bring forth thy people from darkness into light" (14:5) and Isa is spoken of as "a messenger to the children of Israel"
Finality of Prophethood
With the appearance of the world-Prophet in the person of Muhammad s.a.w. comes the truth of Surah 2: 213:
"All the mankind are one single community..."
We have seen how Islam sweep away all barriers of geographical, colour, racial-to unify the human race under the banner of One God.
A religion brought to perfection whereby one has only to seek in the Quran to find the requirements of the present-day world or for the future generations. For no other religious book has ever claimed thus as in Surah 5 Verse 3 of the Holy Quran:
This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed on My blessing.
With the perfection of religion comes the finality of prophethood for there is no need for another prophet and another religion after the Holy Prophet Muhammad and Islam.
Muhammad s.a.w. appeared some six hundred years after the prophecy of Jesus. It is now nearly fourteen hundred years after the advent of Muhammad without any other prophets.
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