Mercy for the worlds By S.G Jilanee EVEN after the passage of nearly fifteen hundred years the personality and character of Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) continues, still, to amaze and fascinate thinkers, historians and intellectuals. And not only Muslims but even those who have little love lost for him — even the Jews, Christians, and others — are impressed and charmed. Countless treatises have been written on the subject but there always remains something more to be said. If you look for any unusual factor or any spectacular feature such as in the field of miracles, that distinguished him from his “colleagues,” — the other Messengers of Allah, you may be disappointed. For Muhammad was a “plain,” down-to-earth human, and the message he propagated was equally plain and down-to-earth. There was nothing supernatural about either his person or his work. Yet, this very factor, this want of any superhuman traits, this absence of incredible performances, was what separated him from other Prophets. For example he performed no such miracles as Noah, Abraham, Swaleh, Hud, Loot, et al. He did not sail in an ark over an all-consuming flood. He was not swallowed by any fish. He was not thrown into a pit of flaming fire. He was not asked to sacrifice his son in the way of Allah. He was not a king like David and Solomon. His club did not turn into a snake, nor did the palms of his hand emit any effulgence. Born like any other human, Muhammad did not speak in his cradle. He did not make birds with clay and breathe life into them. He did not heal lepers and congenitally blind people nor bring the dead to life. Nor were there jinns to do his biddings nor did he communicate with birds. Yet, he was designated as “Mercy for the worlds,” the “Seal of the Prophets,” blessed with “Me’raj,” — the celestial journey by night into Divine presence, and he stood “on an exalted standard of character.” As a Messenger of Allah, Muhammad was like unto all other Messengers. Men of faith “make no distinction between one and another (2:285).” However, the miracles his predecessors performed were, by their very nature, beyond human comprehension. But they were also transitory, ephemeral, like a flood or a rain of rocks or other calamity. It came and went and became history. On the other hand, what Muhammad performed and achieved was something tangible; concrete; comprehensible. His miracle was reality, enduring, abiding, permanent. He transformed a wild people into law-abiding citizens, disciplined the undisciplined, civilized the uncivilized, and established a “modern” society with a working system of governance all within a span of about ten years. In response to defiance, denial and persecution he did not invoke Divine retribution upon his tormentors and have them wiped out like the ‘Aad, Thamud and others. This is the most glaring testimony to his being an embodiment of mercy, and one that largely distinguishes him from other Prophets. Answering those who wanted him to perform miracles, he pointed to the miracles scattered all around them, in the earth and in the sky. As truth can be stranger than fiction so realities can be miracles, calling for open-jawed amazement. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly “a sign to you,” if your eyes were open! This earth, Allah made it for you; “appointed paths in it;” you can live in it, move about in it. Great clouds, black, awesome, with their thunder and lightning, — where do they come from! They pour down copious showers on a parched, dead earth, and grass springs, and “tall leafy palm-trees with their date-clusters hanging round, wherein is a sign.” Your cattle too, he points out, Allah made them; serviceable dumb creatures; they change the grass into milk; you have your clothing from them. Ships, like huge moving mountains, with their cloth wings spread out, go bounding over the waves, driven by Heaven’s wind, His wind, under His command. And when Allah has withdrawn the wind, they lie motionless, dead, and cannot stir! These, indeed, are miracles par excellence! Besides, look at the creation of humans. Is that anyway less than a miracle? Allah made you, he says, “created you out of dust, then out of sperm, then out of a leech-like clot, then out of a morsel of flesh partly formed and partly unformed.” (22:5). Ye were small once; then ye grew. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts and then old age overtakes you; your strength fades into feebleness; ye sink down, and again are not. And, above all, “Ye have compassion on one another.” Is that not a great miracle in itself, — mutual compassion? What if Allah had made you having no compassion on one another? As among Allah’s Messengers, so with other people; Muhammad (S.A.W.) was like a common human, yet uncommon; similar, yet different. Totally free from cant, he never pretended to be what he was not. He therefore repeatedly emphasized, “I am a human like unto you.” (basharum mithlukum). But Muhammad (S.A.W.) was not an ordinary person. The purpose of emphasizing the likeness was to generate empathy with his interlocutors and his audience and to reassure them that he was on the same grid with them. He felt the anguish of pain and the comfort of pleasure, hunger and thirst, joys and sorrows, same as any human. Another reason for repeating this reminder, frequently, was to prevent his followers from lapsing into the same pitfall as the Christians, who, in their zeal called him the son of God. So he pointed out that what distinguished him from ordinary humans was that he received wahi, — the Revelation. “I am like unto ye, (but) on whom Divine Revelation has come that assuredly there is no other deity for you but only One, Allah!” Events about his birth and childhood are too well-known to require any detailed treatment. The man who was to be ordained as the last Messenger of Allah and who would testify to the credentials of all other Messengers of Allah before him, was yet born an orphan. His mother also died when he was only a child. His grandfather, a hundred year old man, Abdul Muttalib, deeply loved the little orphan boy, the child of his youngest and most beloved son, Abdullah. But Abdul Muttalib also died when Muhammad (S.A.W.) was only two years old, leaving him to the care of his eldest uncle, Abu Talib. What put him way above other humans was Muhammad’s character. That was his forte — character born of Sincerity and nurtured by truth. His companions, friends and relatives named him Al Amin, “The Faithful, the Trustworthy.” Even at a young age, he was recognized as a man of truth and fidelity; true in what he did, in what he spoke and thought. From an early age he had been remarked as a thoughtful man. He was silent when there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise and sincere, when he did speak; always throwing light on the matter. Throughout his life he was regarded as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man, a serious and sincere character; amiable, cordial, and companionable. Why would the Bedouins obey him, recognize him unless he had the mesmerizing power of sincerity, the magic of truth and plain words? They were wild men, bursting ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce fights; no one without right worth and manhood could have commanded them. Yet they accepted him as Prophet of Allah, because, there he stood face to face with them; “bare, not enshrined in any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them.” They had seen what kind of a man he was, judged him and then bowed before him. “No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting.” Muhammad had to deal with the ferocious bloodthirsty Arab heathens, who drove him out of his home. He had to deal with the plots of the scheming Jews. It was a life-and-death war with them. Carlyle takes note of the fact that in such situations “cruel things could not fail,” but asserts that “neither are acts of mercy, of noble natural pity and generosity wanting.” Such acts were each the free dictate of his heart; each called for, there and then, on the spur of the moment, yet each done not as a self-seeker, not for personal aggrandizement or ambition but in the way of Allah. A tender heart was another facet of his character. His emancipated and beloved slave, the first among slaves to embrace Islam, had fallen in the Battle of Tabuk. He said it was well of the man. He had done his Master’s work and has now gone to his Master. Yet the martyr’s daughter found him weeping over the body, melting in tears! “What do I see?” said she. “You see a friend weeping over his friend,” answered the Prophet. Muhammad personally led at least nineteen engagements with the heathens. There was booty from those battles. Yet, his household was the most frugal; his common diet barley-bread and water and occasionally some dates: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. He would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak, — a true paradigm of the man who “having nothing yet hath all.”
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 10:08:35 +0000
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