PROPHETS AND THEIR VIRTUES BY BABA ALI MUSTAPHA
In the name of Allah the Beneficient,
the Merciful, Peace be Upon Our Leader Muhammad and his household and his
companions. The Prophets and their virtues and the remaining believed, i.e. to
believe in Angels, the Sacred Books, The Day of Resurrection and Qadar are also
principles of belief (TAWHID) in
Islam. This article THE PROPHETS AND
THEIR VIRTUES has two parts; Part one, necessary qualities in respect of
the Messengers of Allah Ta’ala and their opposites was purposely written for
the undeveloped minds (children) while the second part which is Prophets and
their virtues and the remaining beliefs (Iman) was written for the developed
and matured minds (Adults and Intellectuals).
PART
I
The necessary qualities in respect of
Messengers of Allah Ta’ala
1.
Assidqu – Trustworthiness
Is necessary qualities of the Messengers
of Allah Ta’ala
2.
Wal-amanatu – Truthfulness
Is necessary quality of the Messengers
of Allah Ta’ala
3.
Wa tablighu ma Umiru – The Conveyance of the Message
Is necessary in respect of the
Messengers of Allah
4.
Allawazimu Wa Jawazul-a-aradil basha riyattu – Being
subjects to influence of nature
Is possible in respect of the Messengers
of Allah
5.
Wal-Imanu bi Rusulilahi – To believe in all the Messengers
of Allah is necessary
6.
Wal-Imanu bil yawmil-Akhiri – To believe in the Hereafter is
necessary
7.
Wal-Imanu bil-Malaikati wa Kutabis Samawaiyyati
– To believe in Angels and the Holy Books, which are 114 Books in number: is
compulsory
This is the end of necessary qualities
of the Messengers of Allah. Then followed by the opposite (of those qualities)
they are as follows:
1.
Al-Kazibu – Telling lie
Is impossible in respect of the Messengers of Allah
2.
Al-Alhlyanatu – cheating
Is impossible in respect of the
Messengers of Allah
3.
Wal- Kitmanu – Hiding (some part of the message)
Is impossible to them
4.
Wal adamu jawazil aradi nashariyyati – being above the
influence of nature
Is impossible to them
5.
Wa adamul imanu bi Rasulillahi – Disbelieve in teaching of the Messengers of Allah
Is impossible to them
6.
Wal adamul Imani bil yawmil Akhriti – Disbelieve in the Hereafter
Is impossible to them
7.
Wal adamul Imani bi malaikati – Disbelieve in Angels
Is impossible to them
8.
Wa Katubis – Samawiyati – Disbelieve in the Holy Books
Is impossible to them
PART
II
B.
PROPHETS AND THEIR VIRTUES
Meaning
of the Term “Prophet”
In addition to believing in Allah and in
His Attributes, we should also believe that He sent some men with His Divine
teaching for our guidance. Each one of those men is called NABI, which means “Prophet”. Sometimes, he is called RASUL which means Messenger. The two
words are usually used synonymously, but they are sometimes used as two
distinct terms. According to this latter use, NABI means someone who was given a divine message for himself to
follow, but if he was instructed to teach his message to others as well, he
would then be called RASUL.
The first of all Prophets and Messengers
was Adam, and the Last was Muhammad, Peace and Praise be upon on them all. We
believe that all those Prophets and Messengers were models of good conduct. They
possessed all human virtues and were free from all vices.
The
Need for the Prophets
Now an important question arise: Was the
advent those Messengers necessary? In other words, was there any important need
for sending these Messengers to Mankind? We now proceed to answer the question.
There are many important questions the
answers of which we cannot, easily reach by ordinary means. There is, for example.
The question of the Creator of the World and His nature. Another important
question is the ultimate end of the World and the consequences of human deeds. Will
the end of the people who are kind and helpful be the same as that of those
whose felony causes pain and miseries to millions of people?
Man, as an intellectual being, is
inquisitive. He seek to know the secrets of the universe and what is hidden
behind it. Man crave for the knowledge of how the world was started. Even when
man realizes that the world must have been created by a Benevolent and
Righteous Creator, he further seek to learn something about the nature of the
creator.
People often wandered, moreover, what
end the processes of life would lead to, and what this end would be like. What
would be the reward of the righteous, and the fate of the aggressor? Gropping
in the dark, they arrived at erroneous ideas and developed harmful beliefs and
practices. Some worshipped figures like idols and statues, and some were victim
of superstitions and magical ideas.
The worship of stones and helpless
figure is not at all in keeping with the dignity of man. Moreover, superstition
and wrong beliefs retard progress and lead to widespread miseries.
Society, in order to survive, was in
need of an organization that would a minimum degree of consistency and
orderliness. If left to itself, in the early times, guided by the desire, greed
and promiscuity of its individuals, it would have disintegrated and would have
perished. Society was there in need of guidance to familiarize it with the
basic framework of virtues and the distinction between good and evil. This
guidance was needed until the fundamental moral concepts struck roots within
the body of social traditions, and mankind matured to such a degree as to develop
for itself codes and laws based on this foundation.
In order to deliver man from the plight
of ignorance and from the claws of a superstitious life, God in His Grace sent
His Prophets to teach man what he needed to know about God and to guide him in
the way of worshipping and expressing devotion to God. They also taught us how
the end of the world would be, and brought moral teachings for our guidance in
life from God who knows best what is good for us.
Thus there was a great need of divine
guidance revealed through the Prophets. They taught the truths about God and
the future of man, and laid down the foundation of model life.
The
Character of Prophets
The great task entrusted to the Prophets
could be undertaken only by men of exceptional ability and of perfect
character. Therefore, the Prophets were the best men. They held task to all
virtues, and they were free from serious vices. Muslims, therefore, believe
that all Prophets are to be described generally by all moral perfections, and
that they were free from vices, four specific virtues are to be asserted and
ascribed to the Prophets, and their opposite are to be denied.
There four virtues are:
1.
SIDQ
– ‘Truth’ i.e. that they held to the truth. To lie is a grave sin, inconsistent
with the integrity of the Prophets.
2.
AMANAH ‘Honesty’ this virtue means that they were sincere
and faithful, and free from all kind of sins.
3.
TABLIGH ‘ Transmitting’, i.e. that all the Messengers,
peace be upon them, conveyed their message fully without any failure. Concealing
their divine message or any part of it would be disobedience and dishonesty,
from which they were all free.
4.
FATANAH ‘ Intelligence’, i.e that the Prophets were quick
minded that were of the highest degree of intelligence and intellectual
ability. Unless they were so highlight intelligent, they would not have been
able to combat the vehement arguments which were levelled against them by their
adversaries.
Those four particularly virtues of the
Prophets, namely; truth, honesty, conveying their messages and intelligence imply that their opposites cannot be ascribed
to any of them namely; telling lies, dishonesty, failure to convey their
messages and stupidity.
While Muslims ascribe all human virtues
to Prophets, and deem them free from all vices, they believe that the Prophets
were susceptible, like other human beings, to all human needs and crises. None
of them appropriated to himself a divine nature or claim to godship.
Who
are the Prophets?
Prophets were sent from the beginning of
human life on earth. The first Prophet was Adam, the father of Man, who was
created from mud, Many others followed at intervals. The last was Muhammad
whose mission started in A.D. 610.
It may be wandered why so many Prophets
were sent one after another. In early times, in the absence of permanent
records, succeeding generations tended to forget ideas and beliefs transmitted
to them by their ancestors, leading to the deterioration of divine teachings. Deliberate
corruption by interested individuals and leaders was another factor. Moreover,
society in its progress, moving from one stage to another, needed a guidance
that would suit the stage of its progress in a given era.
Prophets were therefore sent from time
to time to correct the errors and restore the genuine teachings of the faith.
Moreover, each mission contained a system for the guidance of people in their
human relations as suited their needs.
So we Muslims believe that many Prophets
come in the past, but we are not required to determine their numbers. Twenty
five of those Prophets, however, are mentioned in the Qur’an, and therefore we
are to learn their names. Most of these
Prophets were also mentioned in the Bible. The Biblical version of the names of
the Prophets is different from the Arabic version, and they are as follows:
Qur’anic
Version Biblical
Version
1.
Adam Adam
2.
Nuh Noah
3.
Idris Enoch
4.
Ibrahim Abraham
5.
Isma’il Ishmael
6.
Ishaq Isaac
7.
Yaqub Jacob
8.
Dawud David
9.
Sulaiman Solomon
10.
Ayyub Job
11.
Yusuf Joseph
12.
Musa Moses
13.
Harun Aaron
14.
Ilyas Elias
15.
Al-Yasa Elisha
16.
Yunus Jonah
17.
Lut Lot
18.
Hud Heber
19.
Sha’aib Jethro
20.
Salih Methusele
or Saleh
21.
Dhul’lkif Ezekiel
or Isaiah
22.
Zakariyya Zechariah
23.
Yahaya John
the Baptist
24.
Isa Jesus
25.
Muhammad (x)
Five of those Prophets are given the
honorific title Ulu’l Azm, which
means people of determination and perseverance. They are Muhammad, Nuh,
Ibrahim, Musa and Isa.
The
place of honour assigned to the Prophet Muhammad and his Mission
Muslims believe that the advent of
Muhammad was foretold by earlier Prophets, especially Moses and Jesus. Both of
them described Muhammad and advised their people to follow and support him when
he was to appear, but reference to Muhammad in the books of Moses and Jesus are
said to have been tampered with.
Muhammad’s message is global and
universal. It appeals and applies to all mankind, to his contemporaries and to
all succeeding generation, regardless of colour, place or tongue. His message
promotes the welfare and wellbeing of people, and provides a degree of
flexibility, within its basic framework for the need of adaptation to meet the
requirements of growth and change in the condition of society.
Muhammad’s message is therefore eternal,
it has replaced all past religions, and Muhammad is the last and the seal of
the noble series of the Prophets. Muslims are urged to invite others to
consider and to accept- if they are persuaded – the faith of Islam. The desire
to spread our faith is because it is the surest measure towards peace, progress
and happiness for all mankind. There should be no coercion, however. Coercion
in religion is not only forbidden, it is also meaningless. Faith is an act of
the heart, and it can only be attained through persuasion. However, those
innocently fail to reach what we regard to be the right conclusion, should not
be condemned. Neighbourliness with them should be maintained. A day will come,
we believe when Islam will prevail and triumph.
WAHY
“REVELATION”
“And it is not vouchsafed to a mortal
that God should speak to him except by revelation or from behind a veil, or by
sending a Messenger and revealing by His permission what He pleases. Surely He
is High, Wise.
“And this did we reveal unto you an
insidered Book by Our command. You knew not what the Book was, nor (what) faith
(was), but we made it a light, guiding thereby whom we please of our servants.
And surely you guide to the right path (QXLI, 51-52).
The way in which God communicated with
His Prophets is called WAHY i.e
Revelation. This communication between God and this Prophets need not
necessarily be in the form of direct speech, but by sending dawn message to the
Prophets.
One way in which the divine message
reached them was the creation of the sound of the words. The Prophet would hear
the words and recognize them to be God’s words. It is believed that the Ten
commandments was revealed to Moses on the Mount Sinai in the same way.
Another type of revelation was by true
dream. The Prophets, being free from complexes that would seek outlets in false
dreams, did not suffer from the type of misguiding dreams. Their dreams, were
therefore true. When they were taught something in their dreams as an
instruction from God, they knew that it was a divine revelation. The command
given to Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael, for example was given in this
form.
The most important form of WAHY was by sending dawn the divine
messages through a special envoy or messenger; namely the Arch-angel Gabriel
who appeared to the Prophets and spoke to them in their own tongues. This was
the most important and most effective form of the divine revelation. It was in
this form that the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.
It became clear from this discussion
that each one of the Prophets received his message fully from God, with no
other influence. It is wrong, therefore, to claim, for example, that Moses was
in any way influenced by a pre-existing law, or that Jesus or Muhammad borrowed
from some earlier religion. Parallels that arise from the fact that revealed
religion came from the same source and dealt with the same truths.
It is important, however, to bear in
mind that the teachings given to the Prophet Muhammad were two types. One the
Prophet conveyed to his followers in his own words. This category is called HADITH.
The second category of revelation given
to the Prophet Muhammad consisted not actual words. The Prophet was commanded
to keep the words and to transmit them as they were to his followers. The total
messages revealed in this form is called THE
QUR’AN. The Qur’an is therefore the word of God. Muhammad merely learned
the words from Gabriel and then transmitted them to his disciples. Muslims read
the Qur’an as they heard it from the mouth of the Prophet, and subsequent
generations read it as each generation heard from the preceding one. Thus, the
Qur’an as we read it today is the same as was read by the Prophet. It will
forever remain as it is, unaltered and untampered with, as God has assured
(Qur’an Chapter XV Verse 13)
Apart from the two belief (Iman) already mention, those are A God
and His Attribute which was posted on Tuesday 21st April 2020 and B,
Belief in Prophets (The Prophets and their virtues) which is this article. The
remaining (IMAN) belief in Islam are:
C.
BELIEF IN ANGELS
A Muslim believe that there are angels,
those angels are the servants of God. They worship Him day and night and carry
out His commands. They do not disobey Him because they have not the power and
the ability to do so. They, therefore, differ from man who can break the Laws
of God and can disobey His commands. This is because God has given man the
power of free will, men can employ this power to do good and do evil. The
angels have not given this power, so they are sinless.
There are many angels appointed by God
to carry out different duties and to help good men and women on earth. The
greatest of them and the most famous is Jibril
(Gabriel) who carried God’s messages to the Prophets. Other important ones
are:
1.
Mikail – who is said to be in charge of the supply of rain
which give life to mankind, animals and plants on earth.
2.
Israfil – who is said to be in charge of the trumpet which
he would blow on the Last Day when every creature shall rise from the grave to
appear before God to give an account of what he did while alive. This is the
Day of Judgement
3.
Izra’il – who is said to be in charge of the souls of all living
creature. He takes away the soul from the body when the time becomes due for
the soul to get out of the body, and the person from whose body the soul is
taken away is said to be dead.
4.
Ridwan – Angel in charge of paradise
5.
Maliku – Angel in charge of hellfire.
6.
Atibu and Rakibu – Those are angels responsible for
recording the good and evil deeds of human beings.
7.
Minkirun and Wanakirun – Those are the two angels who
responsible of asking question of the soul of human beings in their graves.
8.
Iblis or Satan – he is a Jinn which lived among the
angels and which disobeyed God and has become cursed. It is the only angel
which has the power of free will and has misused it. He invited all other
creature to do evil and to disobey God, so all evil thoughts and action are
attributed to him.
Muslims shall believe in those angels
which encourage them to do good deeds, but they shall disobey and shun the
devils. Qur’an 2:256 read, ‘He who disbelieves the devils and believes in
Allah, has surely laid hold on the firmest handle”
D.
BELIEF IN THE HOLY BOOKS
Islam also requires belief in all
revealed books. Those holy books contain the messages of the apostles of God at
the different times. A belief in the Prophets also carries along with it a
belief in the messages which are revealed to them. The number of those revealed
books is said to be 104. But four of those said to be more important than the
others those four are:
1.
al Tawrah – (The Torah or the Pentateuch) which is given to
Moses
2.
al-Zabur –(The Psalms) given to David
3.
al-Injil (The Gospel) given to Jesus
4.
al-Qur’an (The Koran) given to Muhammad
E.
BELIEF IN THE LAST DAY
The fifth part of IMAN is the belief that at the end world there will be the DAY OF RESURRECTION. We believe that
death is not the end, but that there will be life after death. We shall be all
rewarded for all our deeds, as God records all our acts. We shall be brought to
account for even the weight of an atom of our deeds.
After everything on earth has perished,
people will be revived. This revival or resurrection is called AL-NASHR.
After the revival of the dead, they will
all gather in one place which will be very crowded and intolerable hot, except
for those who did well in their lives. This is called AL-HASHR.
The deed of the people will be weighed and
assessed, and this process is called AL-WAZN.
Then everyone will be brought to account by God. This trial is called AL-HISAB.
The righteous will receive their good
rewards in an eternal abode called AL-JANNAH
i.e. ‘paradise’, and those of evil acts will get their punishment in an abode
called JAHANNAM, i.e. “Hell”.
Believing sinners, unless forgiven by God, receive their punishment in Hell for
sometimes, after which they are restored to paradise.
F.
QADAR – ‘PREDESTINATION’
Muslims believe that God created the
Universe as predetermined by Him. This predetermination is called qadar. Things do not occur haphazardly.
The constitution of the human body and the harmonious functioning of its parts,
the construction of the heavenly bodies and their movements in space; and the
exact regularity of the occurrence of natural event to mention only of few of
God’s works all reveal full knowledge and a careful planning of uncomparable
degree. Muslims therefore believe in God’s eternal knowledge and decreeing all
happenings in the universe according to His will and wisdom.
Muslims because of their belief in
qadar, are sometimes accused of being ‘fatalistics’. This is not correct. After
all, what is fatalism? If fatalism means the acceptance of everything or
condition as inevitable and assumes an attitude of apathy, or implies a denial
of human freedom, it is certainly something different from our concept of
qadar. We do not believe in fate but in God, the creator of the universe, and
of everything in it. We believe at the sametime that the universe, being so
wonderful and complex and yet running so smoothly, efficiently and accurately,
must have been planned and predetermined by God in eternity, according to His
wisdom and His will. When some misfortune befall us, we resign ourselves to it
as something coming from God instead of despairing. We also believe in human
freedom and the ability of the individual to determine the course of this
voluntary acts. God is foreknowledge of what we shall do it is inconsistent
with human freedom.
Baba Ali Mustapha is with Department of
Planning/Research/Statistics, Ministry of Environment, Maiduguri, Borno State,
Nigeria.
Ramadan Kareem
Reference:
1.
KAW’IDUS
–SALAT IN ENGLISH, translated by Hamza Jibril Ahmad,
published by Anwar Arabic Bookshop, P.O. BOX 892, Kano, Nigeria
2.
ISLAM
AS RELIGION (FAITH AND DUTIES) by MUSA O.A. ABDUL,
Ph.D. University of Ibadan, published by ISLAMIC PUBLICATION BUREAU, 136a Isolo
road, Mushin, Lagos, Nigeria
3.
ISLAM,
FAITH AND DEVOTION by MUHAMMAD ABDUL RAUF, Ph.D, Director,
The Islamic Centre, Washington DC, U.S.A, Published by Islamic Publication
Bureau, 136a Isolo road, Mushin, P.O. Box 5106, Lagos, Nigeria
No comments