Chapter Five:
The perpetual legacy To the world
More Than Honest
An honest man, as the saying goes, is the noblest work of God. Muhammad
was more than honest. He was human to the marrow of his bones. Human sympathy,
human love was the music of his soul. To serve man, to elevate man, to purify
man, to educate man, in a word, to humanize man - this was the object of his
mission, the be-all and end-all of his life. In thought, in word, in action he
had the good of humanity as his sole inspiration, his sole guiding principle.
He was most unostentatious and selfless to the core. What were the
titles he assumed? Only two, Servant of God, and His Messenger; Servant first
and then a Messenger. A Messenger, and Prophet like many other prophets in
every part of this world, some known to us and many not known. If one does not
believe in any of these truths one ceases to be a Muslim. It is an article of
faith; with all Muslims.
" Looking at the circumstances of the time and the unbounded
reverence of his followers", says a Western writer," the most
miraculous thing about Muhammad is that he never claimed the power of working
miracles". Miracles were performed but not to propagate his faith and
were attributed entirely to God and His inscrutable ways. He would plainly say
that he was man like others. He had no treasures of earth or heaven. Nor did he
claim to know the secrets that lie in the womb of future. All this was in an
age when miracles were supposed to be ordinary occurrences, at the beck and
call of the commonest saint and when the whole atmosphere was surcharged with
super-naturalism in Arabia and outside Arabia.
Scientific Orientation -
Legacy from Muhummed (peace and blessings of
Allah be upon him)
He turned the attention of his followers towards the study of nature and
its laws, to understand them and appreciate the Glory of God. The Qur'an says
(the meaning):“ We (god almighty) did not create the heavens and the
earth, and all between them merely in (idle) sport [5]: we created them not except for just ends: but most of mankind do not
understand” (Holy Qur'an 44:38-39).
The world is not an illusion, nor without purpose. It has been created
with truth. The number of verse in the Qur'an inviting close observation of
nature and several times more than those that relate to prayer, fast,
pilgrimage, etc., all put together. The Muslims under its influence began to
observe nature closely and this gave birth to the scientific spirit of
observation and experiments which was unknown to the Greeks. While the Muslim
Botanist, Ibn Baitar wrote on Botany after collecting plants from all parts of
the world, described by Mayer in his Gesch der Botanika as a monument of
industry, while Al Biruni traveled for forty years to collect mineralogical
specimens, and Muslim astronomers made some observations extending even over
twelve years. Aristotle wrote on Physics without performing a single
experiment, wrote on natural history carelessly stating without taking the
trouble to ascertain the most easily verifiable fact that men have more teeth than
animal.
Debt Of West To Arabs For
Science
Galen, the greatest authority on classical anatomy, informed that the
lower jaw consists of two bones, a statement which is accepted unchallenged for
centuries till Abdul Latheef takes the trouble to examine a human skeleton.
After enumerating several instances, Robert Briffalut concludes in his
well known book, The Making of humanity:" The debt of our science to
the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories.
Science owes a great deal more to the Arab culture: it owes its existence".
The same writer says:" The Greek systematized, generalized and
theorized but the patient ways to investigation, the accumulation of positive
knowledge, the minute methods of science, detailed and prolonged observation,
experimental enquiry, were altogether alien to Greek temperament. What we call
science arose in Europe as a result of new methods of investigations, of the
method of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of
mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks…… That spirit and these methods
were introduced into the European world by the Arabs".
[5] All creation is for a wise and just purpose. But men usually do not
realise or understand it, because they are steeped in their own ignorance,
folly or passions.
to be continued . . . .
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