WHO IS PROPHET MUHAMMAD(saw) IN THE VIEW OF ISLAMIC SCHOLARS. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is the Light of Allah, something a believer can say because the Qur’an affirms it in the verse There has come to you a Light from Allah, and a Manifest Book (Qur’an 5:15). in which the word Light has been explained by a number of classic Qur’anic exegetes as follows: (Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti:) It is the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) (Tafsir al- Jalalayn, 139). (Ibn Jarir al-Tabari:) By Light He means Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), through whom Allah has illuminated the truth, manifested Islam, and obliterated polytheism; since he is a light for whoever seeks illumination from him, which makes plain the truth (Jami‘ al-bayan, 6.161). (al-Baghawi:) It means Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), or, according to a weaker position, Islam (Ma‘alam al-Tanzil, 2.228). And Qurtubi (Ahkam al-Qur’an , 6.118) and Mawardi (al-Nukat wa al-‘uyun, 2.22) mention that interpreting Nur as Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) was also the position by [the Imam of Arabic grammar Ibrahim ibn Muhammad] al-Zajjaj (d. 311/923). All of which shows that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), is a light from Allah, according to the Qur’an . Say: I am but a man like you who is divinely inspired that your god is but One God (Qur’an 18:110) Qasida al-Burda [the Prophetic Mantle] by al-Busayri: Muhammad is a human being, but not like humankind; He is a ruby, while people are as stones. the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, I was the first of the Prophets to be created and the last of them to be sent. Suyuti records nine other hadiths indicating that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was the first of the prophets to be created; among them the hadith reported by Bukhari in his Tarikh [History], and by Ahmad, Tabarani, Hakim, and Bayhaqi, that Maysara al- Fajr (Allah be well pleased with him) said, I asked, ‘O Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), when were you a Prophet?’ and he said, ‘While Adam was between soul and body’ (al-Khasa’is al-kubra, 3-4). As for a hadith in Tirmidhi that states that the prophets (upon whom be peace) were created from the Nur of Allah and the first amongst them was the prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), I find it hard to imagine that it is in Tirmidhi or elsewhere with an acceptable channel of transmission, for Suyuti would hardly have failed to mention it in his Khasa’is, since this is the sort of thing the book is about, and Suyuti is a hadith master (hafiz), yet it is not there. In any case, the Qur’an is sufficient about the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) being a light from Allah. Finally, in the metaphysic of the Sufis, or at least those whom I have met, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is both the ‘Light of Allah’ and ‘a human being’, and the inability to join between the two aspects is a lack of understanding of the greatness of al-Haqiqa al-Muhammadiyya, the ‘Muhammadan Reality’.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 20:04:07 +0000
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