Greatness of Prophet Muhammad (V)

IN the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

The Holy Qur’an 10:14-16 says: “Then We made you heirs In the land after them, To see how ye would behave! But when Our Clear Signs Are rehearsed unto them, Those who rest not their hope On their meeting with Us, Say: “Bring us a Reading Other than this, or change this,” Say: “It is not for me, Of my own accord, To change it: I follow Naught but what is revealed Unto me: if I were To disobey my Lord, I should myself fear the Penalty Of a Great Day (to come).”  Say: “If God had so willed, I should not have rehearsed it To you, nor would He Have made it known to you. A whole life-time before this Have, I tarried amongst you: Will ye not then understand?”

The list of Western scholars’ comments on the Greatness of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is endless, as The Scottish Orientalist, Ronald A. Nicholson opines that, “The Quran is a splendid humanistic document, which explains in detail the secret of the behaviour of Muhammad in all the events of his life. We even find therein an additional subject matter through which we are able to follow the progress of Islam from its inception and appearance in its early history. We do not find the like in Buddhism or Christianity or any of the other ancient religions. These are the unique features of Islam and they confirm and prove that it is the complete religion for humanity and that it is the religion of the future”.

Besides, Edward Gibbon and Simon Oakley ‘History of the Saracen Empire’ London, 1870 say on Prophet Muhammad (SAW): “The greatest success of Mohammad’s life was affected by sheer moral force. It is not the propagation but the permanency of his religion that deserves our wonder; the same pure and perfect impression, which he engraved at Mecca and Medina is preserved after the revolutions of twelve centuries by the Indian, the African and the Turkish proselytes of the Koran….The Mohammedans have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the object of their faith and devotion to a level with the senses and imagination of man. ‘I believe in One God and Mohammad the Apostle of God’ is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honors of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue, and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion”.   

Moreover, T. W. Arnold says in his book, ‘The Preaching of Islam’ London 1913 about Prophet Muhammad (SAW): “Islam is a religion that is essentially rationalistic in the widest sense of this term considered etymologically and historically…. the teachings of the Prophet, the Quran has invariably kept its place as the fundamental starting point, and the dogma of unity of God has always been proclaimed therein with a grandeur a majesty, an invariable purity and with a note of sure conviction, which it is hard to find surpassed outside the pale of Islam…. A creed so precise, so stripped of all theological complexities and consequently so accessible to the ordinary understanding might be expected to possess and does indeed possess a marvelous power of winning its way into the consciences of men”.

Dr. William Draper notes in the book, ‘History of Intellectual Development of Europe’ about Prophet Muhammad (SAW): “Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born in Mecca, in Arabia, the man who, of all men, has exercised the greatest influence upon the human race… To be the religious head of many empires, to guide the daily life of one-third of the human race, may perhaps justify the title of a Messenger of God”.  

Furthermore, Lord Hadleigh says about Prophet Muhammad (SAW): “The Arabian Prophet had powerful and strong morals and a personality, which weighed up, examined, and tested every step he took in his life. There is no fault in his character whatsoever. Given that we are in need of a complete paradigm to fulfil our needs in life, the personality of Muhammad the Holy Prophet fulfils this need. It is the mirror, which reflects for us lofty reasoning, magnanimity, nobility, bravery, patience, kindness, humility, forgiveness, humbleness and modesty and all the essential morals of which humanitarianism. We see this present in the personality of the Prophet Muhammad in glowing colors”.

In his book, ‘The Prophet and the Eastern World’, Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) says: “I thought and prayed for forty years so that I might arrive at the truth. I must confess that my visit to the Islamic east filled me with respect for the serene [Islamic] faith, which induces one to worship God all throughout one’s life not just on Sundays. I am eternally grateful to God that he has guided me to Islam, which has become a firm reality in my heart and has allowed me to attain happiness and tranquility, which previously were not attainable. I was in a dark cavern, then Islam took me out into an expansive land illuminated by the Sun and I began to smell the pure fresh sea air”.

To further demonstrate the greatness of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the people and the poets at the time of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) were impressed with the Quran and praised it, and the great poets of that time converted to Islam such as, Labīd ibn Rabī’ah, and Hassan ibn Thabit, and Al-Khansa, and Ka’b ibn Zuhayr, and others.

Even the infidels of Makkah, although they were against Islam and its concept of worshiping only one god, but they were impressed with the Quran; al-Walid ibn al-Mughirah (father of Khalid ibn al-Walid) who was one of the known figures in Makkah, although he never converted to Islam, but he admitted to the greatness of Quran, and said about the Quran: “I have just heard Muhammad’s words, which for sure are neither a human’s nor a jinni. They are euphonious and relaxing, like a tree full of reachable fruits. They are of the highest quality and cannot be out-perfected.”

Regardless of the classical poetic form of the Makkah chapters of the Holy Qur’an, the Almighty Allah notes that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is not a poet or soothsayer. The Holy Qur’an, Haqqa, 69:40-43 says: “That this is Verily the word Of an honoured apostle; It is not the word Of a poet: Little it is Ye believe! Nor is it the word of a soothsayer: Little admonition it is Ye receive. (This is) a Message Sent down from the Lord Of the Worlds”.

Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, in his book ‘Mohammedanism: An Historical Survey’ wrote: “But the Meccans still demanded of him a miracle, and with remarkable boldness and self-confidence Mohammad appealed as a supreme confirmation of his mission to the Koran itself. Like all Arabs they were the connoisseurs of language and rhetoric. Well, then if the Koran were his own composition other men could rival it. Let them produce ten verses like it. If they could not (and it is obvious that they could not), then let them accept the Koran as an outstanding evident miracle.”

In fact, Dr. Maurice Bucaille author of ‘The Bible, the Quran and Science’ wrote on page 86 of his book: “The above observation makes the hypothesis advanced by those who see Muhammad as the author of the Qur’an quite untenable. How could a man, from being illiterate, become the most important author, in terms of literary merit, in the whole of Arabic literature? How could he then pronounce truths of a scientific nature that no other human being could possibly have developed at the time, and all this without once making the slightest error in his pronouncements on the subject? The ideas in this study are developed from a purely scientific point of view. They lead to the conclusion that it is inconceivable for a human being living in the Seventh century A.D. to have made statements in the Qur’an on a great variety of subjects that do not belong to his period and for them to be in keeping with what was to be known only centuries later. For me, there can be no human explanation to the Qur’an.” The greatness of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is endless.