Muhanna al-Hubail
What could the life of the Prophet Muhammed mean for our new world?
This is the question that is likely arise after the release of the English version of the ‘the intellectual legacy of the life of the Prophet’.
The first question is the tragic reality of the Muslim situation, its destiny that is deteriorating, internally and externally. How, then, could Muslims prescribe the medicine for the new world, while they themselves are suffering a variety of sicknesses?
Here are the first concepts to be corrected.
The evaluation of the heavenly messages, which are in essence one message, detailed according to time in their various branches, and the evaluation of the multiple man-made approaches, even the religions that are classified as pagan or superstitious, but have a divine origin, whose light was concealed by the accumulation of myth and legend, and are affected as unadulterated of the soul to unify the Creator, and the development of the mind by the singularity of monotheism, tawheed.
This evaluation is based on the existence of an intellectual document that people deliberate on the texts of devotion, and understanding this creation. Then, comes the question: what is its mission in life and where is its destiny, and how to bring it all together to its right to a decent living, and the partnership in the human viceregency to God with the whole human family- its believers and non-believers alike. How can this message be an emotional crucible for stability and social contentment for the reassured soul of the human creation, regardless of the religion they adhere to.
The text documented in the Qur’an, which is still valid evidence, despite rigorous intellectual debate and temporal challenges, and centuries-long attempts which failed to destroy its sacredness and inimitability. This opened up a very important topic for research, which is that God Almighty preserves the miracle of the word and the idea immortal in the Qur’an, and end other miracles each in its own time.
The fact that this Qur’an is the guiding line of awareness, thinking, reason and enlightenment towards the righteous guidance, and that the objective of the Islamic law, Shariah, are extended in time and space, and cannot be fathomed by anyone, or any legacy of time, and if each generation contributes its fortune and share, and the instinct of some of them may fail behind for its backwardness, and a psychological crisis of a legal scholar or an Islamic society, because they failed to take hold of the rope of God for righteousness, and fell into their own deviation and fanaticism.
Since the begging of time, the documented Qur’anic account has said to humanity that there are conditions for attaining the greatest deliverance, stability, and since the beginning of revelation, the development in human life. After life people go to their own destiny- and your Lord shall not be unjust to anyone.
This success and salvation, despite the abandonment of God’s laws and traditions in the universe, and that is the greatest offence committed by Muslims, which the life of the Prophet illustrated as a critical interpretative text, reveals the meaning of its necessities in human life and the Islamic message.
In the past, Muslim scholars have divided the Book of God Almighty, the Quran, into a Meccan Qur’an and a Madenian Quran – that which was revealed in Mecca and that which was revealed in Medina in order to understand the thematic context of the Holy Qur’an. This is a good sign of their eagerness to understand the trends and approach of legislation emanating from the Quran.
However, the other very important division did not receive the required attention in the history of Islamic legislation. Despite that, the imams of the Arab Maghrib, especially Ibn Khaldun, had recorded a qualitative transformation since the eighth century AH. Through this great, personal intellectual diligence, Ijtihad, the West went ahead to acknowledge Imam Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) as the West’s most celebrated father of modern of histography, sociology, economics, the science of demography and civilisation.
As the circulation of Ibn Khaldun’s message of transformation spread among Islamic figures and scholars, as a kind of necessary, objectives-based, Islamic revival relating to the legal texts of Shariah, except at a much slower pulse than was called for, and Western demand for Ibn Khaldun’s thought could not be ignored, as a jurisprudent, an interpreter, and a social and political commentator. His benefit to humanity could not be denied.
The problem, however, is that the secular, existentialist, extremist tendency did not allow the majority of Western thinkers to understand what it means to associate urbanisation with the message of divine revelation. A harmony between the two is unparalleled, due to a misunderstanding of the idea of religion and creation and the tendency of atheism, or to a racist idea against the religiosity of the East. The lack of information contributed to the domination of the old idea, and so Islam was coupled with belief in great sin in the distorted Christianity.
This division of meanings of divine revelation could have given out great concepts that would help in the awareness of the message, had it been distributed in the following manner:
- The Qur’an of the universe and urbanisation in life.
- The Quran for spreading Islam – da’wa to Islam.
- The Qur’an of the last resort.
This categorisation, as in Meccan and Madenian Quran, is a classification of meaning not form, which leads to a deeper understanding of the significance of the message and its great document, the Qur’an. It, therefore, facilitates an easier approach for those looking for universal and philosophcal knowledge, the two-pronged concept of faith and renaissance, an understanding of its features in the message, and its frequent arguments such as the mental hammers of alert and awareness.
Here, we can see the total failure in Islamic history, in achieving the milestones of victory and renaissance, when the balance was disturbed, exactly as the legislation, Shariah, warned. The Qur’an of Dawah was confused with the Qur’an of last resort, without the important separation between moral devotion and rituals. Neither of them was invoked at its suitable place, but rather the Qur’an of Dawah called as if it were a counter to the Qur’an of the universe, and, therefore, the Muslim mind exploded and disturbed, or protested regarding its failure and its shortcomings, with verses that contradict his arguments. Thus, the destiny, good and bad, became an argument to counter-mind the revealed Qur’an of the universe, in order to justify its failure and not believe with a calculated guess that will drive it to correct towards the guiding Qur’an of the universe.
Accordingly, this milestone is the most important feature of understanding the Prophet’s life, which when it is fully read and studied, with all its events, and its tracks dispensed, it helps to understand the Qur’an and the message. This is an explanation for those who asked the old question about the failure of Muslims, because God Almighty never made, for the Muslims, infallibility in the path of victory and success without the Qur’an of the universe and Sunnah, even though He caught up with them and took covenants from them with the Quran of his Da’wah.
Muslims violated the pledge of Shura (public consultation), justice and freedoms earlier on. Their grievances after the righteous Caliphs, multiplied, which the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, warned against. When they followed God’s natural laws, as given in His Quran of the universe, they delivered his message and the people understood the Quran of last resort; and then, they had the choice: to believe and not to believe.
Therefore, still a group of Western thinkers and figers convert to Islam voluntarily, either because of the rationality of his miraculous presentation, or his specificity to reach the human conscience, spirit, and the centre of reassurance, in a way that the individual does not find in any religion, and even if he finds something addressing the spirit in every religion, it would contributes to his tranquillity of the heart.
This way of studying the life of the Prophet transports the contemporary Muslim to the great human consciousness in a journey of the leader of humanity, Muhammed, may God blessing and peace be upon him. He would not be misled by this or that extremist or weak quotation. The precise understanding is explained by the sequence of events and the pragmatism which chartered the path of the Prophet, may God blessing and peace be upon him, in carrying his message and in his relations with humanity. Only at that moment, does the new world know the recipe for salvation, not through howling from the pulpits, preaching ideas that violating and contradict God’s universal wisdom, but with logical intellectual evidence and faith.
Muhanna al-Hubail
Independent Arab Researcher
