by Dr. Ali Shehata
The Character and Teachings of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH
In keeping with the summary nature of this book, only a few hadith will be mentioned here in order to effectively describe the mission and character of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH. The first hadith chosen actually describes the Prophet Muhammad PBUH in the words of his then enemy, Abu Sufyan. During the Prophet’s time, he would send out letters to all of the leaders and nations inviting them to accept Islam, and one such letter was sent to Heraclius, the Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) Caesar. When Heraclius receives Muhammad’s letter, he searches his city of Constantinople for any Arabs that may have been there from Makkah so that he could inquire about this man Muhammad PBUH and his message.
He discovers Abu Sufyan and a group of his men there on a trade caravan and brings them before him to ask them about Muhammad PBUH. What is most interesting about this recorded conversation is that at this point in time, Abu Sufyan was engaged in major hostilities against the Prophet and the Muslims. Yet, this is what he had to say in response to the questioning of the Emperor Heraclius:
Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Abbas: Abu Sufyan bin Harb informed me that Heraclius had sent a messenger to him while he was in the company of a caravan from Quraish. They were merchants doing business in Greater Syria (present day Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan) at the time when God's Prophet had a truce with Abu Sufyan and the Quraishi disbelievers. So Abu Sufyan and his companions went to Heraclius at Ilya (Jerusalem).
Heraclius called them into the court and he had all the senior Roman dignitaries around him. He called for his translator who, translating Heraclius's question said to them, "Who amongst you is closely related to that man who claims to be a Prophet?" Abu Sufyan replied, "I am the nearest relative to him (amongst the group)."
Heraclius said, "Bring him (Abu Sufyan) close to me and make his companions stand behind him." Abu Sufyan added, Heraclius told his translator to tell my companions that he wanted to put some questions to me regarding that man (the Prophet) and that if I told a lie they (my companions) should contradict me." Abu Sufyan added, "By God! Had I not been afraid of my companions labeling me a liar, I would not have spoken the truth about the Prophet. The first question he asked me about him was:
'What is his family status amongst you?'
I replied, 'He belongs to a good and noble family amongst us.'
Heraclius further asked, 'Has anybody amongst you ever claimed the same (i.e. to be a Prophet) before him?'
I replied, 'No.'
He said, 'Was anyone amongst his ancestors a king?'
I replied, 'No.'
Heraclius asked, 'Do the nobles or the poor follow him?'
I replied, 'It is the poor who follow him.'
He said, 'Are his followers increasing or decreasing?'
I replied, 'They are increasing.'
He then asked, 'Does anybody amongst those who embrace his religion become displeased and renounce the religion afterwards?'
I replied, 'No.'
Heraclius said, 'Have you ever accused him of telling lies before his claim (to be a Prophet)?'
I replied, 'No. '
Heraclius said, 'Does he break his promises?'
I replied, 'No. We are presently in a truce with him, but we do not know what he will do in it.' I could not find opportunity to say anything against him except that.
Heraclius asked, 'Have you ever fought with him?'
I replied, 'Yes.'
Then he said, 'What was the outcome of these battles?'
I replied, 'Sometimes he was victorious, and sometimes we.'
Heraclius said, 'What does he order you to do?'
I said, 'He tells us to worship God and God alone and not to worship anything along with Him, and to renounce all that our ancestors had said. He orders us to pray, to speak the truth, to be chaste and to keep good relations with our family and relatives.'
Heraclius asked the translator to convey to me the following, ‘I asked you about his family and your reply was that he belonged to a very noble family. In fact all the Prophets come from noble families amongst their respective peoples.’
‘I next questioned you whether anyone else amongst you claimed such a thing, and your reply was in the negative.If the answer had been in the affirmative, I would have thought that this man was following the previous man's statement.’
‘Then I asked you whether anyone of his ancestors was a king. Your reply was in the negative, and if it had been in the affirmative, I would have thought that this man wanted to take back his ancestral kingdom.’
‘I further asked whether he was ever accused of telling lies before he said what he said, and your reply was in the negative. So I wondered how a person who does not tell a lie about others could ever tell a lie about God.’
‘I then asked you whether the rich people followed him, or the poor. You replied that it was the poor who followed him. And in fact, all the Prophets have been followed by this very class of people.’
‘Then I asked you whether his followers were increasing or decreasing. You replied that they were increasing, and in fact this is the way of true faith, till it is complete in all respects.’
‘I further asked you whether there was anyone, who, after embracing his religion, became displeased and discarded his religion. Your reply was in the negative, and in fact this is (the sign of) true faith, when its delight enters the hearts and mixes with them completely.’
‘I next asked you whether he had ever betrayed you. You replied in the negative, and likewise the Prophets never betray.’
‘Then I asked you what he ordered you to do. You replied that he ordered you to worship God and God alone, and not to worship anything along with Him. And the he forbade you to worship idols and ordered you to pray, to speak the truth and to be chaste.’
‘If what you have said is true, he will very soon occupy this place underneath my feet, and I knew it (from the scriptures) that he was going to appear, but I did not know that he would be from among you (the Arabs). And if I could reach him definitely, I would go immediately to meet him, and if I were with him, I would certainly wash his feet.’” [Bukhari and Muslim]
Looking further into the Islamic scriptures, one will discover that God describes Muhammad in the Quran thus:
“And We have not sent you forth except as a mercy to the universe.” {21:107}
Muhammad’s father died while he was but an infant, and his mother died of illness when he was only five or six years old. Yet, despite being orphaned at such a young age, he still grew up to be “a mercy to the universe” when he received that first revelation from God at the age of forty. The Prophet Muhammad PBUH is the Prophet of Mercy, sent by God as a mercy to all mankind; believers, non-believers, and hypocrites. His mercy sheltered all of humanity: men, women and children. As a family man, he raised four daughters, loving them and providing for them, and he cherished the memory of Khadijah, their mother and his wife of 25 years, till the end of his life. Muhammad PBUH was also merciful to all creatures, including animals and plants. He taught that feeding an animal can take one to Heaven, whereas mistreating it could take one to Hell.
When he began calling his townspeople in Makkah to worship God alone, as opposed to their many idols, he faced immediate resistance from many sectors of his society, including some of his own relatives. When people began submitting themselves to the worship of God alone, his townspeople – the people of Quraish as they were called – only escalated their resistance to him and began actively persecuting Muhammad PBUH and his followers. There are many stories from Islamic history that tell of the torture, humiliation and abuse faced by the first believers, and even by Muhammad PBUH himself.
One such heartrending story from the Prophet’s life describes how one day he went out to pray in public while some of the pagan idol worshippers looked on. When the Prophet had prostrated his face down to the ground in prayer, one of the idol worshippers came and poured a large bucket of bloody animal intestines over Muhammad’s head. Witnessing this tremendous abuse, his young daughter Fatimah ran over to her father and wiped away the filth from over his head with tears running down her young cheeks. Later, the pagans tried to kill Muhammad PBUH and his followers, both secretly and openly, to stop the spread of Islam. In fact, the first person ever killed simply because of their belief in Islam was an elderly woman named Sumayyah, who was killed in the first decade of the spread of Islam, after she refused to return to the worship of idols.
The seriousness of the torture to the early Muslims, and the threat of death to Muhammad PBUH and his followers, led to their eventual migration from their home town of Makkah, to the city of Madinah, about 13 years after the Prophet first received revelation from Almighty God. It was there that Muhammad established a city-state, and it was there that Islam took a strong foothold from where it would later grow to cover almost half of the world.
Almost ten years after leaving Makkah, the Prophet Muhammad PBUH returned with a force of 10,000 Muslims to conquer it and rid it of the worship of idols. Knowing that they could never fight or resist such a force, those people who had abused and tortured the Prophet and his followers wondered what would be their fate. Would he punish them, or even execute them, for their serious crimes? Yet, the Prophet’s response to their crimes was to set his enemies free on that day, declaring Makkah to be a city of peace; a sanctuary and refuge for all. It was on that same day that one of his Companions erroneously called out, "Today is the day of the battle. Today God will humiliate the people who drove us out." Yet the Prophet objected to this and corrected him by saying, "No. Today is the day of mercy. Today God honors the Quraish." [Raheeq Makhtum and Zaad al-Ma’aad]
That is just one of so many examples illustrating how this man, whom God describes as a "mercy to the universe," dealt with those who opposed him. It is just one of many examples in the life of a person who faced constant death threats, assassination attempts, as well as abuse and humiliation at the hands of those threatened by his simple, yet profound, message; there is nothing worthy of worship except for God alone, and Muhammad PBUH is His Messenger.
Yet, the people of Quraish were not the only ones who tasted this mercy. It was his habit to pray for his enemies much of the time. Two of his most bitter enemies, Abu Jahl and Umar ibnul Khattab, were also the objects of his prayers. God later accepted his prayers for Umar by guiding his heart to Islam, allowing him to thereafter become the second Caliph, as well as one of the greatest and most righteous personalities in all of Islamic history.
The Prophet made similar prayers for his own people on a regular basis. "O God! Guide my people, for they know not," he would pray, as he and his followers were beaten, humiliated, scorned and ridiculed. When the people of Makkah made things difficult for him, persecuted him and his companions, he could still be heard saying while wiping blood from his face, “O God! Forgive my people for they know not what they are doing.”
There are also numerous examples that show us the love of his Companions for him:
Anas said, "I did not touch any brocade, nor silk, softer than the palm of the Messenger of God, may God praise him and grant him peace. I did not smell any scent sweeter than the scent of the Messenger of God. I served the Messenger of God for ten years, and in that time, he never said to me a word of annoyance, nor did he say about anything that I had done, 'Why did you do that?' or about anything I had not done, 'Why did you not do that?'" [Bukhari and Muslim]
Sa’d ibn Mu’aath said, in reply to the Prophet’s shyness about asking his new hosts from Madinah to embark on a dangerous military mission to help other Muslims, "O Messenger of God, we have believed in you, affirmed your Prophethood, and pledged obedience to you. By God, who has sent you as a Messenger, if you were to command us to jump into the ocean we will do that. Not one soul among us will remain behind.” [Sealed Nectar]
Yet, it was not only his close Companions who loved him so much, as was demonstrated by a simple and unnamed Companion who was seen by the Prophet to be wearing a gold ring. In Islam, it is prohibited for a man to wear gold, and so the Prophet took the man’s ring and threw it to the ground, telling him it was like wearing a burning coal from the Hell-fire. Later on, some people suggested to that man that he pick up the ring as it could be sold or used for other legitimate purposes. But he refused saying: "No, by God, I will never take it, when it has been thrown away by the Messenger of God." [Muslim]
Indeed, the Prophet was true to his own advice when he would say, “God will show mercy to those who show mercy to others. Show mercy to those on earth, and the One Who is in Heaven will show mercy to you.” [Tirmithi]
Looking further into the life of this noble man, we see how he used to also defend and stand up for his brothers amongst the Prophets and Messengers who were sent by God before him. While some of the ignorant people amongst the Children of Israel were describing Jesus with the ugliest and most demeaning words imaginable, Muhammad PBUH was teaching humanity:
“And Remember when the angels said, ‘O Mary! Truly God gives you glad tidings of a Word from Himself whose name will be the Christ, Jesus the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and in the Hereafter and of those nearest to God.’” {3:45}
While these same people were accusing the Virgin Mary of adultery, Muhammad PBUH was teaching:
“And Mary, the daughter of Imran, who guarded her chastity. And We breathed into her of our spirit and she testified to the truth of the words and scriptures of her Lord, and she was one of the devout servants.” {66:12}
And even now, we still find people bent on attacking the Prophets, yet now they focus their insults on the persona of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH by calling him a murderer and butcher. Yet it was this same man, Muhammad, who taught his followers the following words of God:
“Whoever kills another soul for any reason, except as a punishment for murder or for spreading corruption in the land, it is as if he has killed all of humanity.” {5:32}
Though he came at a time when the world was steeped in barbarism, he taught humanity mercy and justice, even during war. There were no treaties, accords, or international laws back then to regulate battle. He was sent by God with laws of justice that were to be applied during all times, both in peace and in war. He prohibited abuse during war as well as mutilation, and he forbade the killing of women, children and innocent people, as well as the destruction of property and trees in times of war.
But before moving on to other topics, a few more important questions need to be answered; questions that many of the readers of this work will likely feel need to be explored at this point in time. Amongst these questions are the following:
· Was Muhammad prophesied in other scriptures as the others, like Jesus, were?
· What prophecies, if any, did Muhammad make to show he was really a prophet?
· Is the Prophet Muhammad relevant today, and if so, how?
These are, without doubt, very important issues that deserve an in-depth review before proceeding further, and to make things easier, they all flow together as you shall now see.
TO BE CONTINUED ....
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