MUHAMMAD (S. A. W. S.)

his person, life & teachings

LECTURES
based on Non Moslems Centuries Long Research
By
Professor
MASOOD AHMED ABBASI

A PERPETUAL LEGACY TO THE WORLD

1- MORE THAN HONEST

An honest man, as the saying goes, is the noblest work of God. Muhammad was more than honest. He was human to the marrow of his bones. Human sympathy, human love was the music of his soul. To serve man, to elevate man, to purify man, to educate man, in a word, to humanize man – this was the object of his mission, the be-all and end-all of his life. In thought, in word, in action, he had the good of humanity as his sole inspiration, his sole guiding principle.

He was most unostentatious and selfless to the core. What were the titles he assumed? Only two, Servant of God, and His Messenger; Servant first and then a Messenger. A Messenger and, Prophet like many other prophets in every part of this world, some known to us and many not known. If one does not believe in any of these truths one ceases to be a Muslim. It is an article of faith: with all Muslims.

“Looking at the circumstances of the time and the unbounded reverence of his followers” says a Western writer” the most miraculous thing about Muhammad is that he never claimed the power of working miracles”.

Miracles were performed but not to propagate his faith and were attributed entirely to God and his inscrutable ways. He would plainly say that he was man like others. He had no treasures of earth or heaven. Nor did he claim to know the secrets that lie in the womb of future. All this was in an age when miracles were supposed to be ordinary occurrences, at the beck and call of the commonest saint and when the whole atmosphere was surcharged with supernaturalism in Arabia, and outside Arabia.

2- ISLAM -A COMPLETE WAY OF LIFE

It is the same practical character of the teaching of Prophet Mohammed that gave birth to the scientific spirit, that has sanctified the daily labours and the so-called mundane affairs. The Qur’an says that God has created man to worship him but the word worship has a connotation of its own. God’s worship is not confined to prayer alone, but every act that is done with the purpose of wining the approval of God and is for the benefit of humanity comes under its purview. Islam sanctifies life and all its pursuits provided they are performed with honesty, justice and pure intents. It obliterates the age long distinction between sacred and profane.

The Quran says if you eat clean things and thank God for it. it. is an act of worship. It is a saying of the Prophet of Islam that- a morsel of food that one places in the mouth of his wife is an act of virtue to be rewarded by God.

“HE WHO IS SATISFYING THE DESIRE OF HIS HEART WILL BE REWARDED BY GOD PROVIDED THE METHODS ADOPTED ARE PERMISSIBLE: A person who was listening to him exclaimed ‘O PROPHET OF GOD, HE IS ANSWERING THE CALLS OF PASSIONS, HE IS ONLY SATISFYING THE CRAVINGS OF HIS HEART.’ Forthwith came the reply: “HAD HE ADOPTED THE UNLAWFUL METHOD FOR THE SATISFACTION OF HIS URGE, HE WOULD HAVE BEEN PUNISHED; THEN, WHY SHOULD HE NOT BE REWARDED FOR FOLLOWING THE RIGHT COURSE?”

3- DISCIPLINE & EQUALITY

(Edward Gibon and Simon Ockley) in “History of the Saracen Empire”)
( London 1879 p 54)

“I BELIEVE IN ONE GOD, AND MAHOMET, 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 HONOUR OF THE PROPHET HAS 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”.

4- SCIENTIFIC ORIENTATION – A LEGACY FROM MUHAMMAD (P. B. U. H.)

The Qur’an says:

“WE (GOD ALMIGHTY) DID NOT CREATE THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH, AND ALL BETWEEN THEM MERELY IN (IDLE) SPORT”

“WE CREATED THEM NOT EXCEPT FOR JUST ENDS: BUT MOST OF MANKIND DO NOT UNDERSTAND”. (Holy Qur’an 44/38:39) 

He turned the attention of his followers towards the study of nature and its laws, to understand them and appreciate the Glory of God. The world is not an illusion, not without purpose. It has been created with truth. The number of verses in the Qur’an inviting close observation of nature are several times more than those that relate to prayer, fast, pilgrimage, etc., all put together, the Muslims under its influence began to observe nature closely and this gave birth of the scientific spirit of observations and experiments which was unknown to the Greeks. What the Muslim Botanist Ibn Baiter wrote on botany after collecting plants, from all pans of the world, described by Mayer in his Gesch der Botanika as a monument of Industry, while Al Biruni travelled for forty years to collect mineralogical specimens, and Muslim astronomers made some observations extending even over twelve years, Aristotle wrote on Physics without performing a single experiment wrote on natural history carelessly stating without taking the trouble to ascertain the most easily verifiable fact that man have more teeth than animal.

5- DEBT OF WEST TO ARABS FOR SCIENCE

Galen, the greatest authority on classical anatomy, informed that the lower jaw consist of two bones, a statement which is accepted unchallenged for centuries till Abdul Latheef takes the trouble to examine a human skeleton. After enumerating several instances, Robert Briffalut concludes in his well-known book, The Making of Humanity. “The debt of our science to the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories. Science owes a great deal more to the Arab culture: it owes its existence”. The same writer says: “The Greeks systemized, generalized and theorized but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute methods of science, detailed & prolonged observation, experimental enquiry, were altogether alien to Greek temperament. What we call science arose in Europe as a result of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks That spirit and these methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs”.

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‘0 Muhammad We thee not save as a mercy for the peoples