Prophetology Selections Part Two
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That the Prophet is closest to God and has the highest capacity for His gnosis and representation are proven far better, in fact almost infinitely better than any other spiritual giant has another additional proof which none other can match. That is the vast collection of his sayings which constitute without a shadow of doubt the greatest ever pearls of wisdom and gnosis stated in simplest and lucidest language which pearls contains almost no abstract or mysterious references but invariably contain most practical advice and information anybody of any level of normalish intelligence, education and sophistication can understand and appreciate. It is as if he is serving his audience such a user-friendly and universal spiritual diet which can be compared to serving one’s guests who are made of all ages and tastes of people fresh milk direct from nipple. Except in rare circumstances milk is overall the most comprehensively nutritious food-cum-drink as well as easiest to digest. By the same food analogy they range from milk to strong fatty sweets and from thick breakable bone for marrow to highly spiced tiger sausages. Abstruse aphorisms, paradoxes and impossible or improbable exaggerations and prophecies may be sprinkled among them. If one fact is that a prophet is for everybody and not for an arcane elite the other fact is that real truths are simple to state and easy to understand. Like “Do unto others what you would like done to you” and unlike “the metaphysical postulate of difference is justified by the doctrine of the Inner Witness” (Jayatirtha) or “Men of integrity in my community are different. The father conceals for the son and the son for his father, therein integrity is found” (Confucius) or “When smartness and erudition emerge, then there is dissimulation” all of which may contain some truth but can only appeal to a tiny elite and abandon the masses to superstition and exploitation God will not abandon His servants in favour of a few elites but send them a teacher very easy to understand and immediately rewarding, to give comfort and satisfaction or elevate and improve. What is more, Muhammad’s is the only major religion to lack a priestly class and has direct access to God and as much as he is capable to the sources of his religion whose simplicity is not short of wonderful as its effectiveness in giving relief and guidance who needs them. All these qualities of Muhammad and his sayings make him the most accessible and immediately beneficial spiritual leader ever. Beyond his words of advice like “ a true muslim is one from whose hand and tongue others are safe” or “one who sleeps fed while his neighbour is sleepless with hunger has no faith” or “do not oppress any creature of Allah, even an infidel. Because between the oppressed and Allah there is no bar for the former’s call of distress to reach Allah. Nor do Allah delay to respond his call and avenge his oppression”… beyond such lucid and explicit advice we have a records of his prayers to Allah which no heart with a mustard seed’s weight of humanity can fail to notice the glory of a heart love- and awe-stricken with God, a heart so humble, so sincere, so merciful. Read if you wish “O Allah, I am but a servant of yours and son of a man servant and woman servant of yours. My forehead (control and destiny) is in thy hand. I am turned in Thy hold. I believe in meeting Thee and trust Thy promise. (Yet) Thou commandest and I rebelled and Thou prohibited me and I disobeyed. This is the place of taking refuge in Thy kindness from the Fire, there is no god but Thee. Thou art blameless. I have wronged myself, please forgive me. It is that there is nobody to forgive me except Thee. O Allah, all praise are Thine and all complaints are to Thee and succour is with Thee and pleading for help is to Thee. There is no power or means except with Thee”. Or “O Allah, Thou art my Lord and I am Thy servant and on your covenant and promise as far as I am able. I take refuge in Thee from the evil I committed. I confess to the generous favours Thou bestowed on me as I confess my sin. Please do kindly forgive my sins. Only Thou can forgive sins o Allah”. Or every day on waking from sleep “Praise be to Allah, We and all Kingdom reached the morning as His. O Allah, I ask of Thee what is good in this day and what is good after it and I take refuge in Thee from what is evil in this day and what is evil after it”. In fact hundreds of prayers are reported from him which covers practically all human situations and plights and which glow like jewels of unequalled sincerity and humility as if the Last and Greatest Messenger and Top Saint of Allah is the weakest and guiltiest of men. It is only one realizes the overwhelming and dazzling brilliance and eloquence of these prayers that one sees that rather than being the weakest and guiltiest of men the owner of the golden heart uttering such prayers is the greatest man ever through being the most God-loving, God-fearing and with profoundest gnosis of the Lord Almighty with comparison to Whom everything and everybody is annihilated to zero. We need such gnosis, such love and fear of the Lord as Muhammad possessed and displayed.
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He is the most envied, unjustly accused, satanically hated and morbidly libelled and slandered of all prophets on the part of the pretentious and sanctimonious hypocrites of all other religions. Even For example Medieval Christian lore and literature are so imbued, obsessed and made sick with cursing, accusing, slandering, hating and condemning him that the green envy and inexorcisable satanicity of the revulsions and convulsions his name caused in the Medieval Christian mind, totally contrary to the desire and expectation of his enemies irresistibly indicates his unattainable and unassailable dearness and nearness to and electedness by God, provided of course the looker is not pre-poisoned from birth by his enemies’ propaganda. This last proof may look strange but we promise to prove that on the contrary it perhaps makes the most direct and potent proof because it is based on the deepest mechanics of human psyche wherein fear translate into hatred and love not dared to ridicule and abuse. Here ends Lesson 1.
LESSON 4
THE INFALLIBLE PROOF: HIS LOVE OF AND HUMILITY TOWARDS GOD
Sincerity is the greatest single quality which proves a supposed believer’s claim to faith. Of course both faith and sincerity are subjective experiences and even the experiencer may be deceived about them. But as every psychological quality a sincere faith finds its way into the visible acts of the believer if enough time is given to get enough proof in favour, enough to enable us to dismiss any seeming aberrations as insignificant, probably due to either misunderstanding on our part or only too human small lapses on the part of the observed. After all human beings are very complicated souls whose behavioural mechanisms and patterns may never be fully uncovered let alone explained.
Muhammad, by reliable historical standards, is undoubtedly the greatest man who ever lived. It is easy to praise the Buddha or Jesus more having wrapped them in all the convenient myths and invented divinity but if these are disallowed in the interests of objective, scientific history we are left with two near illusions whose supposed personal sources may have never existed or existed only quite differently than the their legends telling us. It is in human nature to distort personalities viewed with intense emotions by exaggeration and heavy editing, adding to and subtracting from their qualities and deeds and it is the case even today de spite. Had it not been still so we would not dispute about the merits and demerits of our favourite ideologies, ideologues, political parties and politicians. Each fan of something or somebody tries to fan the flames of admiration for his pets and throw ashes on the rivals. But thankfully in the case of Muhammad, and Muhammad alone, we have ample and enough historical evidence to prove, as far as humanly possible, one way or another. But one thing must never be lost sight of in judging a historical figure. It is this: What was the condition of people affected by him before and after his intervention in terms of a comparison on somewhat company accounts model; I mean a balance sheet and a profit and loss account.
Before Muhammad we had an extremely superstitious idolatry devoid of moral precepts and working only as a wish-fulfilling socio-psychological system for the residents of Arabia. Ignorance, tribalism and cruelty were universal among Arabs who had only few moral merits and civilised achievements. From burying little and even not so little daughters for economic and ‘honour’ reasons to interminable blood feuds and brigandage Arabs had nothing to show for arts except poetry and sciences except expertise on camels and horses and were universally despised as irrelevant boors suffered for their caravan trade utility relieving excess production here and under- or non- production there. They carried Syrian industrial products like textiles to Yemen for example and Yemeni spices to Syria etc. They were surrounded on all sides except the south with the territories of two top and competing civilisations of the times, namely the Greek-Roman (Byzantine) and Persian (Sassanid) who couldn’t be more powerful, advanced and sophisticated. Each boasted of marvellous architecture, great metropolitan centres, ample agricultural production, ingenuous engineering feats (especially the Byzantines) and ages old great learning and artistic and spiritual sophistication. Arabs looked like the American Indians in the face of European settlers or the tribal and mainly nomadic African natives in the face of European colonisers. Yet, for the first and probably last time in history thanks to ONE MAN, only one man all that was changed, all that within half a century and the tables were turned on all the neighbours- Now Arabs were the undisputed and unstoppable masters. In a single collision taking only days the Persian empire was gone for good and all its land and lands beyond it to the Altai mountains on the borders of China both came under Islam and their peoples were converted to it. The Byzantine had lost all Africa to Islam both politically and spiritually as well as its Holy Land and all lands up to the Taurus mountains in south east Asia Minor. Arab horsemen were raging and ranging on the Caucasian highlands and ravines today subduing Azerbaijan and tomorrow Armenia and the next Georgia. Nobody faced them including the famously hardy and winning Turks but collapsed like houses of cards. Although they didn’t force anybody to convert to Islam almost all did so. They didn’t force first because Islam banned forcible conversion except in the case of Arab idolaters which were no more anyhow and secondly because financially it was far more profitable to have unconverted subjects which were liable to poll tax. It was such that there was a quite a few decades when the less pious Umayyad caliphs discouraged their field commanders and provincial governors from accepting conversions or if conversions went ahead they instructed them to commit the impious innovation of charging the converts the poll tax all the same in order to keep their coffers overflowing with cash. And despite all conquered peoples rushed into Islam. More than half of the millions of Christians in Africa and formerly Byzantine Asia converted and almost all Persians and Turks. What is more these races mixed so well that within another half century all the accumulated merits and wisdoms of these races, from Greek learning and technology to Persian arts and Turkish horsemanship and strategic genius and empire building skills were rolled into one giant universal civilisation which discussed Aristotle and Euclid on the one hand and developed arts and industries and urban communities surpassing both the Byzantine and Persian equivalents. Encyclopaedias and dictionaries running into dozens of volumes were compiled in Arabic and Persian, the earth’s meridians and parallels drawn and the distances between locations calculated to the last mile on that spherical geometrical basis. Chinese inventions were also quickly imported and paper, gunpowder, silk, sugar etc production became large industries whose products were avidly sought by the Europeans. Universities and huge libraries with book counts up to three millions sprang up in great urban centres like Samarkand, Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba in Spain. Hospitals carrying out brain surgery and treating the mentally ill with music and artistic training were built all the breadth and length of the Islamic World, undoubtedly the greatest uniform, the fastest built and the longest lived empire the world has seen, extending from China and Indonesia in the east to Spain in the west and from Crimea in the north to Sudan and Zanzibar in the south. What is more it housed the most civilised commonwealth of races the world ever saw with schools and courts of law and forces of law and order found and effective everywhere and all forms of oppression and brigandage challenged in the name of the civilisation in charge. Of course many bad things could and did happen as in all societies but relatively speaking the House of Islam was a far more prosperous, just and secure place to live for all races and faiths- muslim, christian, jew, Hindu or Buddhist… In fact a Christian fared far better under a muslim government than a Christian both in terms of safety from persecution, lower taxation and better civil liberties. No one, neither Alexander, nor Caesar; neither Moses or Jesus could anywhere near what Muhammad did to men in such a short time to such a comprehensive and spectacular degree from such small initial means. Jesus might have been as poor as Muhammad but he at least had all the learning of a Jewish rabbi and an already spiritually and culturally advanced and sophisticated environment to draw nutrition from and deliver understandable messages. Contrary to him, Muhammad was hardly understood when he talked about a One God and shocked his audience when he told them that their wooden and stone gods weren’t gods at all.
From such a bottomless pit of ignorance and Stone Age superstition he raised his audience to the zenith of purest monotheism and most sophisticated and profound theology which was both perfectly logical and thoroughly moralistic and internationally inclusive. On his blessed shoulders rose all those glories of sufi spirituality in which stood the world’s greatest saints decorating human soul’s heavens of spirituality. His historical success encompassed both the outer and inner worlds of man and perfectly harmonised them. In Islam men were able to become both kings of this world and saints reigning over hearts or very rich due to honest worldly success and saintly due to massively redistributing that wealth in charity while living personally frugally. Scholars developed trigonometry and engineers built robots superb by the age’s standards while saints discovered and expounded the incomparably vaster and more important universe inside man in which universe God equally shone and reigned. In short he ignited such an explosion of human improvement that dwarfed all before and after it. And it still holds the same potential.
And with so much to his credit he was the humblest of men towards the Creator to Whom he could plead as in the following. If there have been a nobler, more respectful and loving and submitting collection of prayers reported from any other prophet or saint we shall stand corrected.
SOME PRAYERS REPORTED FROM THE MESSENGER OF ALLAH
(Sallallahu alaihi wa sellem)
1)(On waking up each morning he said) With the Name of Great Allah Who when prayed to responds and when asked of bestows. O Allah, I am asking Thee by virtue of my bearing witness that Thou art Allah, that there is no god but Thee, the Unique, the Self-sufficient and Who neither begat nor was begotten nor anyone can ever be an equal to. O Allah, I ask of Thee by virtue of all praises being Thine, being no god other than Thee, Thou without partner, the Most Kind, the Most Ingratiating, the Originator of the heavens and earth! O the Possessed of Greatness and Grace, o the Living and Keeping, the Most Merciful of the merciful. The Sublime Blameless One is my Lord, the High Exalted, the Supreme and Ultimate Giver! I take refuge in all the words of Allah from the evil of anything He created. With the name of Allah with Whose Name nothing whatsoever on earth or in the heavens can give harm. He is the Hearer and the Knower (3 times, all the time blowing to your palms and rubbing them all over you). We and all the Kingdom have reached the morning as entirely Allah’s . There is no god but Allah, One without partner, His is the Kingdom, to Him is all praise and over everything He is Powerful. O Lord I ask of the all the good which may be in this day and after it and I take refuge in Thee from the evil which may be in this day and after it. O Allah, I ask from Thee forgiveness and exemption from all trials in my faith, my world, my family, my property. O Allah cover up my defects and replace my fears with safety. I am pleased with Allah as my Lord and Islam my religion and Muhammad (peace be upon him) as messenger and prophet. The Sublime Blameless is Allah with His praise. No ability or power comes except from Allah. Whatever He wishes comes to pass, whatever He wishes not can never come to pass. Know that Allah is Able to do everything and that Allah encompasses everything in His knowledge. O the Living and Keeping, from Thy kindness I ask succour, please straighten all my affairs and do not abandon me to the devices of my weak self even for a moment.
2)O Allah Thou art my Lord, there is no god but Thee. Thou hast made me, I am Thy bondman and I am on Thy pledge and promise as much as I am able. I take refuge in Thee from what I have done, I confess my sin and I acknowledge Thy favours to me. Please then forgive me my sins, there is none to forgive sins but Thee o Allah.
3)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from worry and sadness and from helplessness and laziness and from cowardice and miserliness and from bankruptcy and men glowering at and humiliating me”
4)O Allah, I ask from Thee my acceptance of things once they irreversibly happened and the coolness of a happy existence after death and the deliciousness of looking at thy Face and an overwhelming love of meeting Thee without harms harming and trials perverting me. I take refuge in Thee lest I wrong others or others wrong me or I commit aggression or aggression is committed against me or I commit a mistake or sin Thou shalt not forgive
5)O Allah, I ask from Thee good health with faith and faith with beautiful character and salvation followed by realisation of desires and mercy from Thee and safety and forgiveness from Thee and Thy satisfied approval of me
6)O Allah, increase my knowledge and do not bend my heart after Thou hast guided me and give me loving kindness from Thee, Thou art the Generous Giver
7)O Allah, Thou art the first and there is none before Thee and Thou art the last and there is none after Thee and Thou art the Top and there is none higher than Thee and Thou are the Deep and there is none deeper than Thee. Pay off for me my debts and save me from want
8)O Allah, the Lord of Gabriel and Michael and Israfel, the Creator of the heavens and earth, the Knower of the visible and the invisible. Thou judgest between Thy servants in what they dispute about. Please guide me on to what is right in the matters men dispute. Indeed it is Thee Who guidest whom Thou willest on to the right path
9)O Allah, forgive believing men and women and submitting men and women and reconcile their hearts and improve their relations and help them against Thy enemies and their enemies. O Allah, curse the unbelievers who prevent from Thy path and deny Thy messengers and fight Thy friends.
10)O Allah, put disagreement between their words and let slip their feet and send down on them Thy violence which cannot be turned away from criminals
11)O Allah, I take refuge in Thy pleasure from Thy displeasure and in Thy kind indulgence from Thy vengeance; I take refuge in Thee from Thee, I cannot put in numbers the praise Thou deservest, Thou art as Thou praisest Thyself
12)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from being misleading or misled, and from causing others slip or slipping myself, and from wronging or being wronged or from treating others ignorantly of their worth or being treated rudely by the ignorant
13)O Allah, guide me on to the best character and highest morality- only Thou canst do that. And turn me away from bad character and bad morality- only Thou canst do that
14)O Allah put distance between me and errors as Thou put distance between east and west. O Allah, wash away my errors with water and snow and hail and cleanse me from errors as white garment is cleansed from filth
15)Lord, give my soul its required god-fearing, purify it, Thou art the best to purify it and its Friend and Guardian
16)O Allah, improve my piety which is the purifier of my works and improve my world in which is my livelihood and improve my hereafter where my last turn is. Keep me alive so long as life is better for me and make me die when death is better for me. Make my life a time in which I keep accumulating pious good and make my death comfortable rest from all evil
17)O Allah, I ask from Thee useful knowledge and ample provision and the cure of all my illnesses
18)O Allah, have pity on me by making me abandon all rebellion as long as Thou makest me last and have pity on me lest I take on myself things not my concern and instead provide me with nicely looking after things which make Thee pleased with me
19)O Allah, I turn to Thee in repentance for all my rebellions, I will never go back to them. O Allah, Thy compassion gives me more hope than my good works, O Allah, Thou art oft-forgiving, Thou lovest forgiving, please forgive me
20)O Allah, satisfy me with Thy halal (lawful) saving me from needing Thy haram (unlawful) and make me in need of nobody but Thee
21)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from the trials and the torments of the grave and from the evil of prosperity and from the evil of destitution and I take refuge in Thee from hardness of the heart, and heedlessness, and indolence, and being despicable, and from helplessness, and blasphemy, and factionalism, and attention-seeking and fame-seeking, and hypocrisy, and I take refuge in Thee from losing my hearing or speech or sight and from all bodily and mental and malignant illnesses
22)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from displaying disreputable qualities and acts and from vanities and diseases
23)O Allah I take refuge in Thee from useless knowledge and a heart devoid of reverence and prayer that goes unheard and an ego which is insatiable- from these four
24)O Allah, help us against whom oppress us and give us victory over whom fight us and let no misfortunes we may be hit by hit our piety, nor this world become our greatest concern and the end of our knowledge and do not place us under any one who won’t pity us
25)O Allah, inspire in me my spiritual maturity and protect me from the evil of my ego
26)O Allah I ask for Thy love and the love of those who love Thee and the works that lead to Thy love. O Allah, make Thy love lovelier to me than my own self and my family and refreshing cold water
27)O Allah, feed me Thy love and the love of those whose love for me will benefit me with Thee. O Allah, as Thou provided me with things of my liking make me to use them for doing things of Thy liking. O Allah, what things Thou withholdest from me of my liking, make me use the leisure thereof to do things of Thy liking
28)O Allah, I ask from Thee faith that is irreversible and favours that never end and the company of our Prophet Muhammad, Thy blessings and peace be on him, in the highest level of Paradise, the Paradise of Eternity
29)O Allah give me the benefits of what Thou taught me and teach me what will benefit me and increase my learning. Praise be to Allah under all conditions and I seek Allah’s protection from the condition of the people of the Fire
30)O Allah, provide me with ample lawful provision and make Thy amplest provision for me in my old age and at the end of my days and do not let me suffer poverty and indignity
31)O Allah Who does not hurry to grab the guilty and does not expose the hidden guilt, O Magnanimous in indulgence and Beautiful in tolerance and O Vast in forgiveness, O the Extender of Both Hands in Compassion, O the Respondent of all secret consultation and the Last Resort of all complaints, O the Gracious One in waiving liabilities, O the Great One in ingratiating and the Issuer of Favours before they are earned, O our Lord, O our Master, O our Protector, O the Goal of our enthusiasm! I ask Thee O Allah that Thou dost not stew my body in Fire. character and manners. O Allah feed me with good and employ me in doing good
32)O Allah I ask Thee to surprise me with sudden good fortune and seek Thy protection from being surprised by sudden misfortune
33)O Allah, make me pleased with Thy choices for me
34)O Allah, send me Thy mercy which will guide my heart and consolidate my affairs and console my sufferings and improve my piety and protect my interests in my absence and boost them when I am present and brighten my face with innocence and purify my works and inspire in me my spiritual maturity and redirect my friendship to whom Thou lovest and keep me innocent of all evil
35)O Allah, any blessings of Thine my vision could not reach or my works have been too weak to earn or even my desire and prayers failed to conceive but which blessings Thou promised to any of Thy servants or Thou are going to grant to any of Thy friends without asking I also run for it to Thee and ask for it from Thy mercy
36)(The following is the prayer of the Messenger of Allah when, after the demise of both his most protective and supportive wife Khatija and his fatherly uncle Abu Talib and despairing of Meccan’s giving him a fair hearing despite more than ten years preaching he had resorted to the neighbouring town Taif from where he had to run away equally badly, bleeding from sharp stones rained on him by heckling and mocking children put there by the townspeople who were no more disposed to hear the Truth than their Meccan neighbours. Having taken refuge in an orchard blood and dirt- covered and tearful he prayed- and note the shattering humility the best of creation had towards the Lord) O Allah, to Thee I complain about the weakness of my power and the poverty of my means and my insignificance in the sight of people. O the Most Merciful of the merciful, to whose hands art Thou entrusting me? To an enemy who will glower at me or a relation into whose hands Thou hast given my affairs? Still if Thou art not angry with me I don’t mind except I would continue to beg Thy indulging mercy which is most comforting for me. I take refuge in Thy Gracious Face which illuminates the heavens and earth and dispels the darknesses and on account of which the affairs of this world and the next are smoothed, lest Thy wrath descends on me. It is Thy right to be apologised to until Thou art pleased. There is no skill or power except with Thee
37)O Allah, I ask from Thee health and chastity and honesty and beauty of character and contentment with my lot. O Allah, I ask from Thee help in achieving what Thou wouldst like from me in works and a genuine trusting in Thee and the good manners of expecting only good from Thee
38)O Allah, purify my heart from hypocrisy and my works from show and my tongue from lying and my eyes from treachery, for Thou knowest the treachery in the eyes and what the bosoms conceal
39)O Allah, I ask Thy protection from that sort of conspiring ‘friend’ whose heart monitors me and whose eyes keep watch on me. If he sees something good he hides it, if he sees something bad he spreads it
40)O Allah, I take from Thee a pledge Thou dost not break; I am but a man; If I have ever hurt or reproached or hit or cursed a believer and couldn’t make amends make for him each such event an accepted prayer and a paid charity and a cause of nearness to Thee
41)O Allah do not devastate us as if with a bolt of lightning and do not grab us with sudden wrath and do not make us heedless of a right on us or of a will we have to make
42)O Allah, I am Thy bondman and the son of Thy bondman and the son of Thy bondwoman, my forehead id in Thy hand, I turn this way or that in Thy grasp. I confess the truth of eventually meeting Thee and believe in Thy promise. Thou commandest me but I rebelled and Thou forbade me but I committed. This is a place of taking refuge in Thee from the Fire. There is no god but Thee, Thou art blameless, It is I who wronged myself, please forgive me. It is only Thou Who can forgives sins
43)O Allah, Praise is Thine, complaints are to Thee and pleadings are to Thee and Thou art the One Whose help is sought. There is no capability or power except with Allah
44)O Allah, help my piety by making my world support it and help my next world by inspiring in me piety. Protect me from every danger that I am unaware of and do not abandon me to my devices in anything that I find facing me
45)O Whom sins do not harm and forgiveness do not diminish. Grant me what does not diminish Thee and forgive me what does not harm Thee, Thou art the Ample Giver. I ask from Thee a near and joyful relief and a comely patience and an ample provision and safety from all affliction and I ask from Thee the continuity of the safety and I ask from Thee my thankfulness for the safety and I ask from Thee exemption from finding myself in humiliating need of anybody’s favours. There is no capability or power except with Allah. O Lord, O Lord, O Lord.
46)O Allah, I have sins that are between me and Thee and sins that are between me and Thy servants. Which are between me and Thee please forgive them and which are between me and Thy servants take the burden thereof unto Thyself and enrich me from Thy bounty. O Allah illuminate my heart with knowledge and employ my body in Thy service and purify my heart from temptations and busy my mind with learning the right lessons and protect me from the worrying suspicions the Satan casts into hearts and save me from Him o the Comprehensively Merciful so that he retains no power over me
47)O Allah, I ask Thy protection from hard- to- bear trials and the scandal of losing my piety and being hit by any bad accidents and all causes which could give my enemies tumultuous joy
48)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from being in the debt of an unscrupulous hardened sinner whose interests I might have to serve in this world or carry the burden in the next
49)O Allah do not put me in need of anybody whom Thou made needless of me
50)Praise to Allah for His forbearance despite His knowledge and His withholding punishment despite His power
It is worth concluding these marvellous glorifications of Allah by His glorious Messenger with the following prayer of blessings.
O Allah, send Thy helping blessings on our master Muhammad, such blessings that for the sake of Thy pleasure with them Thou savest us from all terrors and disasters and Thou grantest us all our needs and Thou purifiest us from all evil and Thou raisest us to high ranks in Thy estimation and Thou makest us attain all good in life and all good after death. On account of Thy mercy, o the Most Merciful of the Merciful. Amen.
LESSON 6
THE GUIDES TO GOOD
The previous lessons showed us how explicitly and conclusively Allah chose Muhammad sws to almost exclusively represent Him to the whole humanity for all time to come and therefore He Almighty nearly wiped out all the memories and revelations of all prophets before him and made sure Muhammad’s survived. Without doubt no ancient and even modern figure enjoyed the comprehensive preservation of memory and output and influence that the rightly entitled ‘Seal of the Prophets’ did. Generations of best muslim brains kept doing research on and writing about him and their combined output constitutes the biggest library ever built up about and to the honour of a single person to this day. At the time this was an absolutely unprecedented event and what is more it still is. No man, repeat no man ancient or modern has been the focus of such consuming, obsessive and adoring interest. Muhammad’s has been the greatest and most comprehensive real life success story since than and no doubt even myth, legend or fiction haven’t produced a greater story of success. Furthermore it is a continuing success, unabated and full of hope for all time to come. As part of it the Book given him by the Creator has been both preserved even more perfectly than his memory and has caused the production of an even bigger library. Commentaries on the Qur’an began to be compiled from the first century of Islam and many ran into numerous large volumes of incredible erudition and sophistication. One of the earliest major commentaries has been that produced by imam Tabari (died 310 H/ 933 CE). It runs into thirty volumes and taking each of the 6000 plus verses and almost every word and phrase in them it hair-splits each as to the various meanings supported with superb grammatical and etymological arguments and proofs in the form of citations from famous Arab poets as well as speech of various Arab tribes or towns. Take today’s eight volume unabridged Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, look into its entries and the extensive morphological, etymological, historical, literary… treatments each is subjected to and the plethora of citations from men of letters throughout the history of the English language adduced and see for yourself that this vast modern dictionary is hardly an improvement over Tabari’s linguistic sophistication despite the more than eleven centuries that passed since. WHO WAS THIS MAN MUHAMMAD WHO WAS SO INCOMPARABLY MORE EFFECTIVE THAN ANYBODY IN HISTORY, BOTH ANCIENT AND MODERN IN MAKING FELLOW MEN STUDYING EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM WITH SUCH THOROUGHNESS, COMPREHENSIVENESS AND NEVER DIMINISHING PERSISTENCE and in the course designing and launching a great number of new sciences and academic disciplines with an absolutely modern flavour- IF NOT SOMEBODY CHOSEN FOR SOME INCOMPARABLE UNIQUE ROLE? All these despite Arabs of his times being the most illiterate people of all ancients of the otherwise brilliant Middle East. Millions and millions have been obsessed with and possessed by him to this day who have been variously celebrating his glories in a great number of ways from an unending string of biographies to hair-splitting study of his sayings and doings and that of the Book ascribed to the Creator of Everything through him. We have seen a lot about these in our preceding lessons.
In this lesson we shall study another facet of his commemoration and celebration. It is a unique and splendid literature of invoking blessings on him (salawat) and saluting him (salam or taslimat) as no other mortal similarly enjoyed even as much as 1% of his. Ulama and saints kept composing ‘salawat’ on him for ages and one particular collection of salawat shall be the subject of this lesson. Our aim is to show the reader through the study of some of these salawat the degree of love, awe and devotion the name Muhammad inspired in his believers who, again first time in history as well as to this day have been the only nation of believers not to fall into the blasphemous excesses almost all other nations (ummah) of believers fell regarding their spiritual leader(s). For example both Buddhists and Christians deified their respective leaders which from muslim point of view have been betrayals to those leaders. They came with wisdom and humility to give us the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven dormant within each and every one of us and of our ultimate self-worth thanks to the loving kindness of the Creator Who made us and of whom they were proud to be humble and mortal servants (which means we should be the same). Yet their ostensible followers, except perhaps for a short while after them, turned blind to this precious, saving message conveyed and examples personally given by the two and reverted to the paganism and idolatry IN THEIR NAME, infantile behaviour they were supposed to leave behind. They declared them gods and began to sing and dance at their altars as they would for Zeus, Diana, Ba’al, Isis or Krishna. Ritual and ceremony, acting as opiates, displaced moral and spiritual self-improvement which, unlike the opiates was too serious and sacrificial for the fickle. Also, ritual and ceremony was visible and physical events which provided the never absent spiritual confidence tricksters with ample opportunities of domination, mind control and economic gain. Among all religions only Islam noticed this and banned both priesthood and monasticism. Only this should be enough to make Muhammad the greatest spiritual genius and benefactor of mankind ever. Paintings and statues followed paintings and statues, richly dressed and palatially living and godly-perceived priests ruled and robbed as good as before and the masses were left to foot the bills for their luxuries and waste and bear the crosses and wear the crowns of thorns panting and sweating in the hope that such vain self-tortures could save them from worse. Again to the credit of Muhammad’s Islam, the believers are forbidden to hurt themselves or others in any way in the name of salvation except with civilised legal warrant, like fighting crime. The self-worth which is the birthright of every man and woman who is made to visit this earth the Buddha and the Christ knew, taught and represented only too well and attempted to awaken people to it and stir into action its blessings in the members of their audience. But the audience mostly failed to register this and continued to misunderstand what God was and what His Way (religion) was about. As another incomparable miracle only Muhammad sws and his audience looked and saw eye to eye in the matter of the Way of God. That is why the Seal of the Prophets, the Chosen One of Allah was spared the pain of being misunderstood and betrayed and the blasphemy and paganism that could result for his ummah. Since his advent his ummah, especially the more inspired among them praised him with increasing zeal and mastery and are and will be doing so to the end of the time.
As we said we shall now be seeing in the context of a famous book of salawat the degree of love, awe, faith and devotion the Messenger of Allah aroused in his spiritual subjects. Has any REAL (or imaginary) person been adored more intensely by more people and longer?
That the Prophet is closest to God and has the highest capacity for His gnosis and representation are proven far better, in fact almost infinitely better than any other spiritual giant has another additional proof which none other can match. That is the vast collection of his sayings which constitute without a shadow of doubt the greatest ever pearls of wisdom and gnosis stated in simplest and lucidest language which pearls contains almost no abstract or mysterious references but invariably contain most practical advice and information anybody of any level of normalish intelligence, education and sophistication can understand and appreciate. It is as if he is serving his audience such a user-friendly and universal spiritual diet which can be compared to serving one’s guests who are made of all ages and tastes of people fresh milk direct from nipple. Except in rare circumstances milk is overall the most comprehensively nutritious food-cum-drink as well as easiest to digest. By the same food analogy they range from milk to strong fatty sweets and from thick breakable bone for marrow to highly spiced tiger sausages. Abstruse aphorisms, paradoxes and impossible or improbable exaggerations and prophecies may be sprinkled among them. If one fact is that a prophet is for everybody and not for an arcane elite the other fact is that real truths are simple to state and easy to understand. Like “Do unto others what you would like done to you” and unlike “the metaphysical postulate of difference is justified by the doctrine of the Inner Witness” (Jayatirtha) or “Men of integrity in my community are different. The father conceals for the son and the son for his father, therein integrity is found” (Confucius) or “When smartness and erudition emerge, then there is dissimulation” all of which may contain some truth but can only appeal to a tiny elite and abandon the masses to superstition and exploitation God will not abandon His servants in favour of a few elites but send them a teacher very easy to understand and immediately rewarding, to give comfort and satisfaction or elevate and improve. What is more, Muhammad’s is the only major religion to lack a priestly class and has direct access to God and as much as he is capable to the sources of his religion whose simplicity is not short of wonderful as its effectiveness in giving relief and guidance who needs them. All these qualities of Muhammad and his sayings make him the most accessible and immediately beneficial spiritual leader ever. Beyond his words of advice like “ a true muslim is one from whose hand and tongue others are safe” or “one who sleeps fed while his neighbour is sleepless with hunger has no faith” or “do not oppress any creature of Allah, even an infidel. Because between the oppressed and Allah there is no bar for the former’s call of distress to reach Allah. Nor do Allah delay to respond his call and avenge his oppression”… beyond such lucid and explicit advice we have a records of his prayers to Allah which no heart with a mustard seed’s weight of humanity can fail to notice the glory of a heart love- and awe-stricken with God, a heart so humble, so sincere, so merciful. Read if you wish “O Allah, I am but a servant of yours and son of a man servant and woman servant of yours. My forehead (control and destiny) is in thy hand. I am turned in Thy hold. I believe in meeting Thee and trust Thy promise. (Yet) Thou commandest and I rebelled and Thou prohibited me and I disobeyed. This is the place of taking refuge in Thy kindness from the Fire, there is no god but Thee. Thou art blameless. I have wronged myself, please forgive me. It is that there is nobody to forgive me except Thee. O Allah, all praise are Thine and all complaints are to Thee and succour is with Thee and pleading for help is to Thee. There is no power or means except with Thee”. Or “O Allah, Thou art my Lord and I am Thy servant and on your covenant and promise as far as I am able. I take refuge in Thee from the evil I committed. I confess to the generous favours Thou bestowed on me as I confess my sin. Please do kindly forgive my sins. Only Thou can forgive sins o Allah”. Or every day on waking from sleep “Praise be to Allah, We and all Kingdom reached the morning as His. O Allah, I ask of Thee what is good in this day and what is good after it and I take refuge in Thee from what is evil in this day and what is evil after it”. In fact hundreds of prayers are reported from him which covers practically all human situations and plights and which glow like jewels of unequalled sincerity and humility as if the Last and Greatest Messenger and Top Saint of Allah is the weakest and guiltiest of men. It is only one realizes the overwhelming and dazzling brilliance and eloquence of these prayers that one sees that rather than being the weakest and guiltiest of men the owner of the golden heart uttering such prayers is the greatest man ever through being the most God-loving, God-fearing and with profoundest gnosis of the Lord Almighty with comparison to Whom everything and everybody is annihilated to zero. We need such gnosis, such love and fear of the Lord as Muhammad possessed and displayed.
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He is the most envied, unjustly accused, satanically hated and morbidly libelled and slandered of all prophets on the part of the pretentious and sanctimonious hypocrites of all other religions. Even For example Medieval Christian lore and literature are so imbued, obsessed and made sick with cursing, accusing, slandering, hating and condemning him that the green envy and inexorcisable satanicity of the revulsions and convulsions his name caused in the Medieval Christian mind, totally contrary to the desire and expectation of his enemies irresistibly indicates his unattainable and unassailable dearness and nearness to and electedness by God, provided of course the looker is not pre-poisoned from birth by his enemies’ propaganda. This last proof may look strange but we promise to prove that on the contrary it perhaps makes the most direct and potent proof because it is based on the deepest mechanics of human psyche wherein fear translate into hatred and love not dared to ridicule and abuse. Here ends Lesson 1.
LESSON 4
THE INFALLIBLE PROOF: HIS LOVE OF AND HUMILITY TOWARDS GOD
Sincerity is the greatest single quality which proves a supposed believer’s claim to faith. Of course both faith and sincerity are subjective experiences and even the experiencer may be deceived about them. But as every psychological quality a sincere faith finds its way into the visible acts of the believer if enough time is given to get enough proof in favour, enough to enable us to dismiss any seeming aberrations as insignificant, probably due to either misunderstanding on our part or only too human small lapses on the part of the observed. After all human beings are very complicated souls whose behavioural mechanisms and patterns may never be fully uncovered let alone explained.
Muhammad, by reliable historical standards, is undoubtedly the greatest man who ever lived. It is easy to praise the Buddha or Jesus more having wrapped them in all the convenient myths and invented divinity but if these are disallowed in the interests of objective, scientific history we are left with two near illusions whose supposed personal sources may have never existed or existed only quite differently than the their legends telling us. It is in human nature to distort personalities viewed with intense emotions by exaggeration and heavy editing, adding to and subtracting from their qualities and deeds and it is the case even today de spite. Had it not been still so we would not dispute about the merits and demerits of our favourite ideologies, ideologues, political parties and politicians. Each fan of something or somebody tries to fan the flames of admiration for his pets and throw ashes on the rivals. But thankfully in the case of Muhammad, and Muhammad alone, we have ample and enough historical evidence to prove, as far as humanly possible, one way or another. But one thing must never be lost sight of in judging a historical figure. It is this: What was the condition of people affected by him before and after his intervention in terms of a comparison on somewhat company accounts model; I mean a balance sheet and a profit and loss account.
Before Muhammad we had an extremely superstitious idolatry devoid of moral precepts and working only as a wish-fulfilling socio-psychological system for the residents of Arabia. Ignorance, tribalism and cruelty were universal among Arabs who had only few moral merits and civilised achievements. From burying little and even not so little daughters for economic and ‘honour’ reasons to interminable blood feuds and brigandage Arabs had nothing to show for arts except poetry and sciences except expertise on camels and horses and were universally despised as irrelevant boors suffered for their caravan trade utility relieving excess production here and under- or non- production there. They carried Syrian industrial products like textiles to Yemen for example and Yemeni spices to Syria etc. They were surrounded on all sides except the south with the territories of two top and competing civilisations of the times, namely the Greek-Roman (Byzantine) and Persian (Sassanid) who couldn’t be more powerful, advanced and sophisticated. Each boasted of marvellous architecture, great metropolitan centres, ample agricultural production, ingenuous engineering feats (especially the Byzantines) and ages old great learning and artistic and spiritual sophistication. Arabs looked like the American Indians in the face of European settlers or the tribal and mainly nomadic African natives in the face of European colonisers. Yet, for the first and probably last time in history thanks to ONE MAN, only one man all that was changed, all that within half a century and the tables were turned on all the neighbours- Now Arabs were the undisputed and unstoppable masters. In a single collision taking only days the Persian empire was gone for good and all its land and lands beyond it to the Altai mountains on the borders of China both came under Islam and their peoples were converted to it. The Byzantine had lost all Africa to Islam both politically and spiritually as well as its Holy Land and all lands up to the Taurus mountains in south east Asia Minor. Arab horsemen were raging and ranging on the Caucasian highlands and ravines today subduing Azerbaijan and tomorrow Armenia and the next Georgia. Nobody faced them including the famously hardy and winning Turks but collapsed like houses of cards. Although they didn’t force anybody to convert to Islam almost all did so. They didn’t force first because Islam banned forcible conversion except in the case of Arab idolaters which were no more anyhow and secondly because financially it was far more profitable to have unconverted subjects which were liable to poll tax. It was such that there was a quite a few decades when the less pious Umayyad caliphs discouraged their field commanders and provincial governors from accepting conversions or if conversions went ahead they instructed them to commit the impious innovation of charging the converts the poll tax all the same in order to keep their coffers overflowing with cash. And despite all conquered peoples rushed into Islam. More than half of the millions of Christians in Africa and formerly Byzantine Asia converted and almost all Persians and Turks. What is more these races mixed so well that within another half century all the accumulated merits and wisdoms of these races, from Greek learning and technology to Persian arts and Turkish horsemanship and strategic genius and empire building skills were rolled into one giant universal civilisation which discussed Aristotle and Euclid on the one hand and developed arts and industries and urban communities surpassing both the Byzantine and Persian equivalents. Encyclopaedias and dictionaries running into dozens of volumes were compiled in Arabic and Persian, the earth’s meridians and parallels drawn and the distances between locations calculated to the last mile on that spherical geometrical basis. Chinese inventions were also quickly imported and paper, gunpowder, silk, sugar etc production became large industries whose products were avidly sought by the Europeans. Universities and huge libraries with book counts up to three millions sprang up in great urban centres like Samarkand, Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba in Spain. Hospitals carrying out brain surgery and treating the mentally ill with music and artistic training were built all the breadth and length of the Islamic World, undoubtedly the greatest uniform, the fastest built and the longest lived empire the world has seen, extending from China and Indonesia in the east to Spain in the west and from Crimea in the north to Sudan and Zanzibar in the south. What is more it housed the most civilised commonwealth of races the world ever saw with schools and courts of law and forces of law and order found and effective everywhere and all forms of oppression and brigandage challenged in the name of the civilisation in charge. Of course many bad things could and did happen as in all societies but relatively speaking the House of Islam was a far more prosperous, just and secure place to live for all races and faiths- muslim, christian, jew, Hindu or Buddhist… In fact a Christian fared far better under a muslim government than a Christian both in terms of safety from persecution, lower taxation and better civil liberties. No one, neither Alexander, nor Caesar; neither Moses or Jesus could anywhere near what Muhammad did to men in such a short time to such a comprehensive and spectacular degree from such small initial means. Jesus might have been as poor as Muhammad but he at least had all the learning of a Jewish rabbi and an already spiritually and culturally advanced and sophisticated environment to draw nutrition from and deliver understandable messages. Contrary to him, Muhammad was hardly understood when he talked about a One God and shocked his audience when he told them that their wooden and stone gods weren’t gods at all.
From such a bottomless pit of ignorance and Stone Age superstition he raised his audience to the zenith of purest monotheism and most sophisticated and profound theology which was both perfectly logical and thoroughly moralistic and internationally inclusive. On his blessed shoulders rose all those glories of sufi spirituality in which stood the world’s greatest saints decorating human soul’s heavens of spirituality. His historical success encompassed both the outer and inner worlds of man and perfectly harmonised them. In Islam men were able to become both kings of this world and saints reigning over hearts or very rich due to honest worldly success and saintly due to massively redistributing that wealth in charity while living personally frugally. Scholars developed trigonometry and engineers built robots superb by the age’s standards while saints discovered and expounded the incomparably vaster and more important universe inside man in which universe God equally shone and reigned. In short he ignited such an explosion of human improvement that dwarfed all before and after it. And it still holds the same potential.
And with so much to his credit he was the humblest of men towards the Creator to Whom he could plead as in the following. If there have been a nobler, more respectful and loving and submitting collection of prayers reported from any other prophet or saint we shall stand corrected.
SOME PRAYERS REPORTED FROM THE MESSENGER OF ALLAH
(Sallallahu alaihi wa sellem)
1)(On waking up each morning he said) With the Name of Great Allah Who when prayed to responds and when asked of bestows. O Allah, I am asking Thee by virtue of my bearing witness that Thou art Allah, that there is no god but Thee, the Unique, the Self-sufficient and Who neither begat nor was begotten nor anyone can ever be an equal to. O Allah, I ask of Thee by virtue of all praises being Thine, being no god other than Thee, Thou without partner, the Most Kind, the Most Ingratiating, the Originator of the heavens and earth! O the Possessed of Greatness and Grace, o the Living and Keeping, the Most Merciful of the merciful. The Sublime Blameless One is my Lord, the High Exalted, the Supreme and Ultimate Giver! I take refuge in all the words of Allah from the evil of anything He created. With the name of Allah with Whose Name nothing whatsoever on earth or in the heavens can give harm. He is the Hearer and the Knower (3 times, all the time blowing to your palms and rubbing them all over you). We and all the Kingdom have reached the morning as entirely Allah’s . There is no god but Allah, One without partner, His is the Kingdom, to Him is all praise and over everything He is Powerful. O Lord I ask of the all the good which may be in this day and after it and I take refuge in Thee from the evil which may be in this day and after it. O Allah, I ask from Thee forgiveness and exemption from all trials in my faith, my world, my family, my property. O Allah cover up my defects and replace my fears with safety. I am pleased with Allah as my Lord and Islam my religion and Muhammad (peace be upon him) as messenger and prophet. The Sublime Blameless is Allah with His praise. No ability or power comes except from Allah. Whatever He wishes comes to pass, whatever He wishes not can never come to pass. Know that Allah is Able to do everything and that Allah encompasses everything in His knowledge. O the Living and Keeping, from Thy kindness I ask succour, please straighten all my affairs and do not abandon me to the devices of my weak self even for a moment.
2)O Allah Thou art my Lord, there is no god but Thee. Thou hast made me, I am Thy bondman and I am on Thy pledge and promise as much as I am able. I take refuge in Thee from what I have done, I confess my sin and I acknowledge Thy favours to me. Please then forgive me my sins, there is none to forgive sins but Thee o Allah.
3)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from worry and sadness and from helplessness and laziness and from cowardice and miserliness and from bankruptcy and men glowering at and humiliating me”
4)O Allah, I ask from Thee my acceptance of things once they irreversibly happened and the coolness of a happy existence after death and the deliciousness of looking at thy Face and an overwhelming love of meeting Thee without harms harming and trials perverting me. I take refuge in Thee lest I wrong others or others wrong me or I commit aggression or aggression is committed against me or I commit a mistake or sin Thou shalt not forgive
5)O Allah, I ask from Thee good health with faith and faith with beautiful character and salvation followed by realisation of desires and mercy from Thee and safety and forgiveness from Thee and Thy satisfied approval of me
6)O Allah, increase my knowledge and do not bend my heart after Thou hast guided me and give me loving kindness from Thee, Thou art the Generous Giver
7)O Allah, Thou art the first and there is none before Thee and Thou art the last and there is none after Thee and Thou art the Top and there is none higher than Thee and Thou are the Deep and there is none deeper than Thee. Pay off for me my debts and save me from want
8)O Allah, the Lord of Gabriel and Michael and Israfel, the Creator of the heavens and earth, the Knower of the visible and the invisible. Thou judgest between Thy servants in what they dispute about. Please guide me on to what is right in the matters men dispute. Indeed it is Thee Who guidest whom Thou willest on to the right path
9)O Allah, forgive believing men and women and submitting men and women and reconcile their hearts and improve their relations and help them against Thy enemies and their enemies. O Allah, curse the unbelievers who prevent from Thy path and deny Thy messengers and fight Thy friends.
10)O Allah, put disagreement between their words and let slip their feet and send down on them Thy violence which cannot be turned away from criminals
11)O Allah, I take refuge in Thy pleasure from Thy displeasure and in Thy kind indulgence from Thy vengeance; I take refuge in Thee from Thee, I cannot put in numbers the praise Thou deservest, Thou art as Thou praisest Thyself
12)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from being misleading or misled, and from causing others slip or slipping myself, and from wronging or being wronged or from treating others ignorantly of their worth or being treated rudely by the ignorant
13)O Allah, guide me on to the best character and highest morality- only Thou canst do that. And turn me away from bad character and bad morality- only Thou canst do that
14)O Allah put distance between me and errors as Thou put distance between east and west. O Allah, wash away my errors with water and snow and hail and cleanse me from errors as white garment is cleansed from filth
15)Lord, give my soul its required god-fearing, purify it, Thou art the best to purify it and its Friend and Guardian
16)O Allah, improve my piety which is the purifier of my works and improve my world in which is my livelihood and improve my hereafter where my last turn is. Keep me alive so long as life is better for me and make me die when death is better for me. Make my life a time in which I keep accumulating pious good and make my death comfortable rest from all evil
17)O Allah, I ask from Thee useful knowledge and ample provision and the cure of all my illnesses
18)O Allah, have pity on me by making me abandon all rebellion as long as Thou makest me last and have pity on me lest I take on myself things not my concern and instead provide me with nicely looking after things which make Thee pleased with me
19)O Allah, I turn to Thee in repentance for all my rebellions, I will never go back to them. O Allah, Thy compassion gives me more hope than my good works, O Allah, Thou art oft-forgiving, Thou lovest forgiving, please forgive me
20)O Allah, satisfy me with Thy halal (lawful) saving me from needing Thy haram (unlawful) and make me in need of nobody but Thee
21)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from the trials and the torments of the grave and from the evil of prosperity and from the evil of destitution and I take refuge in Thee from hardness of the heart, and heedlessness, and indolence, and being despicable, and from helplessness, and blasphemy, and factionalism, and attention-seeking and fame-seeking, and hypocrisy, and I take refuge in Thee from losing my hearing or speech or sight and from all bodily and mental and malignant illnesses
22)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from displaying disreputable qualities and acts and from vanities and diseases
23)O Allah I take refuge in Thee from useless knowledge and a heart devoid of reverence and prayer that goes unheard and an ego which is insatiable- from these four
24)O Allah, help us against whom oppress us and give us victory over whom fight us and let no misfortunes we may be hit by hit our piety, nor this world become our greatest concern and the end of our knowledge and do not place us under any one who won’t pity us
25)O Allah, inspire in me my spiritual maturity and protect me from the evil of my ego
26)O Allah I ask for Thy love and the love of those who love Thee and the works that lead to Thy love. O Allah, make Thy love lovelier to me than my own self and my family and refreshing cold water
27)O Allah, feed me Thy love and the love of those whose love for me will benefit me with Thee. O Allah, as Thou provided me with things of my liking make me to use them for doing things of Thy liking. O Allah, what things Thou withholdest from me of my liking, make me use the leisure thereof to do things of Thy liking
28)O Allah, I ask from Thee faith that is irreversible and favours that never end and the company of our Prophet Muhammad, Thy blessings and peace be on him, in the highest level of Paradise, the Paradise of Eternity
29)O Allah give me the benefits of what Thou taught me and teach me what will benefit me and increase my learning. Praise be to Allah under all conditions and I seek Allah’s protection from the condition of the people of the Fire
30)O Allah, provide me with ample lawful provision and make Thy amplest provision for me in my old age and at the end of my days and do not let me suffer poverty and indignity
31)O Allah Who does not hurry to grab the guilty and does not expose the hidden guilt, O Magnanimous in indulgence and Beautiful in tolerance and O Vast in forgiveness, O the Extender of Both Hands in Compassion, O the Respondent of all secret consultation and the Last Resort of all complaints, O the Gracious One in waiving liabilities, O the Great One in ingratiating and the Issuer of Favours before they are earned, O our Lord, O our Master, O our Protector, O the Goal of our enthusiasm! I ask Thee O Allah that Thou dost not stew my body in Fire. character and manners. O Allah feed me with good and employ me in doing good
32)O Allah I ask Thee to surprise me with sudden good fortune and seek Thy protection from being surprised by sudden misfortune
33)O Allah, make me pleased with Thy choices for me
34)O Allah, send me Thy mercy which will guide my heart and consolidate my affairs and console my sufferings and improve my piety and protect my interests in my absence and boost them when I am present and brighten my face with innocence and purify my works and inspire in me my spiritual maturity and redirect my friendship to whom Thou lovest and keep me innocent of all evil
35)O Allah, any blessings of Thine my vision could not reach or my works have been too weak to earn or even my desire and prayers failed to conceive but which blessings Thou promised to any of Thy servants or Thou are going to grant to any of Thy friends without asking I also run for it to Thee and ask for it from Thy mercy
36)(The following is the prayer of the Messenger of Allah when, after the demise of both his most protective and supportive wife Khatija and his fatherly uncle Abu Talib and despairing of Meccan’s giving him a fair hearing despite more than ten years preaching he had resorted to the neighbouring town Taif from where he had to run away equally badly, bleeding from sharp stones rained on him by heckling and mocking children put there by the townspeople who were no more disposed to hear the Truth than their Meccan neighbours. Having taken refuge in an orchard blood and dirt- covered and tearful he prayed- and note the shattering humility the best of creation had towards the Lord) O Allah, to Thee I complain about the weakness of my power and the poverty of my means and my insignificance in the sight of people. O the Most Merciful of the merciful, to whose hands art Thou entrusting me? To an enemy who will glower at me or a relation into whose hands Thou hast given my affairs? Still if Thou art not angry with me I don’t mind except I would continue to beg Thy indulging mercy which is most comforting for me. I take refuge in Thy Gracious Face which illuminates the heavens and earth and dispels the darknesses and on account of which the affairs of this world and the next are smoothed, lest Thy wrath descends on me. It is Thy right to be apologised to until Thou art pleased. There is no skill or power except with Thee
37)O Allah, I ask from Thee health and chastity and honesty and beauty of character and contentment with my lot. O Allah, I ask from Thee help in achieving what Thou wouldst like from me in works and a genuine trusting in Thee and the good manners of expecting only good from Thee
38)O Allah, purify my heart from hypocrisy and my works from show and my tongue from lying and my eyes from treachery, for Thou knowest the treachery in the eyes and what the bosoms conceal
39)O Allah, I ask Thy protection from that sort of conspiring ‘friend’ whose heart monitors me and whose eyes keep watch on me. If he sees something good he hides it, if he sees something bad he spreads it
40)O Allah, I take from Thee a pledge Thou dost not break; I am but a man; If I have ever hurt or reproached or hit or cursed a believer and couldn’t make amends make for him each such event an accepted prayer and a paid charity and a cause of nearness to Thee
41)O Allah do not devastate us as if with a bolt of lightning and do not grab us with sudden wrath and do not make us heedless of a right on us or of a will we have to make
42)O Allah, I am Thy bondman and the son of Thy bondman and the son of Thy bondwoman, my forehead id in Thy hand, I turn this way or that in Thy grasp. I confess the truth of eventually meeting Thee and believe in Thy promise. Thou commandest me but I rebelled and Thou forbade me but I committed. This is a place of taking refuge in Thee from the Fire. There is no god but Thee, Thou art blameless, It is I who wronged myself, please forgive me. It is only Thou Who can forgives sins
43)O Allah, Praise is Thine, complaints are to Thee and pleadings are to Thee and Thou art the One Whose help is sought. There is no capability or power except with Allah
44)O Allah, help my piety by making my world support it and help my next world by inspiring in me piety. Protect me from every danger that I am unaware of and do not abandon me to my devices in anything that I find facing me
45)O Whom sins do not harm and forgiveness do not diminish. Grant me what does not diminish Thee and forgive me what does not harm Thee, Thou art the Ample Giver. I ask from Thee a near and joyful relief and a comely patience and an ample provision and safety from all affliction and I ask from Thee the continuity of the safety and I ask from Thee my thankfulness for the safety and I ask from Thee exemption from finding myself in humiliating need of anybody’s favours. There is no capability or power except with Allah. O Lord, O Lord, O Lord.
46)O Allah, I have sins that are between me and Thee and sins that are between me and Thy servants. Which are between me and Thee please forgive them and which are between me and Thy servants take the burden thereof unto Thyself and enrich me from Thy bounty. O Allah illuminate my heart with knowledge and employ my body in Thy service and purify my heart from temptations and busy my mind with learning the right lessons and protect me from the worrying suspicions the Satan casts into hearts and save me from Him o the Comprehensively Merciful so that he retains no power over me
47)O Allah, I ask Thy protection from hard- to- bear trials and the scandal of losing my piety and being hit by any bad accidents and all causes which could give my enemies tumultuous joy
48)O Allah, I take refuge in Thee from being in the debt of an unscrupulous hardened sinner whose interests I might have to serve in this world or carry the burden in the next
49)O Allah do not put me in need of anybody whom Thou made needless of me
50)Praise to Allah for His forbearance despite His knowledge and His withholding punishment despite His power
It is worth concluding these marvellous glorifications of Allah by His glorious Messenger with the following prayer of blessings.
O Allah, send Thy helping blessings on our master Muhammad, such blessings that for the sake of Thy pleasure with them Thou savest us from all terrors and disasters and Thou grantest us all our needs and Thou purifiest us from all evil and Thou raisest us to high ranks in Thy estimation and Thou makest us attain all good in life and all good after death. On account of Thy mercy, o the Most Merciful of the Merciful. Amen.
LESSON 6
THE GUIDES TO GOOD
The previous lessons showed us how explicitly and conclusively Allah chose Muhammad sws to almost exclusively represent Him to the whole humanity for all time to come and therefore He Almighty nearly wiped out all the memories and revelations of all prophets before him and made sure Muhammad’s survived. Without doubt no ancient and even modern figure enjoyed the comprehensive preservation of memory and output and influence that the rightly entitled ‘Seal of the Prophets’ did. Generations of best muslim brains kept doing research on and writing about him and their combined output constitutes the biggest library ever built up about and to the honour of a single person to this day. At the time this was an absolutely unprecedented event and what is more it still is. No man, repeat no man ancient or modern has been the focus of such consuming, obsessive and adoring interest. Muhammad’s has been the greatest and most comprehensive real life success story since than and no doubt even myth, legend or fiction haven’t produced a greater story of success. Furthermore it is a continuing success, unabated and full of hope for all time to come. As part of it the Book given him by the Creator has been both preserved even more perfectly than his memory and has caused the production of an even bigger library. Commentaries on the Qur’an began to be compiled from the first century of Islam and many ran into numerous large volumes of incredible erudition and sophistication. One of the earliest major commentaries has been that produced by imam Tabari (died 310 H/ 933 CE). It runs into thirty volumes and taking each of the 6000 plus verses and almost every word and phrase in them it hair-splits each as to the various meanings supported with superb grammatical and etymological arguments and proofs in the form of citations from famous Arab poets as well as speech of various Arab tribes or towns. Take today’s eight volume unabridged Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, look into its entries and the extensive morphological, etymological, historical, literary… treatments each is subjected to and the plethora of citations from men of letters throughout the history of the English language adduced and see for yourself that this vast modern dictionary is hardly an improvement over Tabari’s linguistic sophistication despite the more than eleven centuries that passed since. WHO WAS THIS MAN MUHAMMAD WHO WAS SO INCOMPARABLY MORE EFFECTIVE THAN ANYBODY IN HISTORY, BOTH ANCIENT AND MODERN IN MAKING FELLOW MEN STUDYING EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM WITH SUCH THOROUGHNESS, COMPREHENSIVENESS AND NEVER DIMINISHING PERSISTENCE and in the course designing and launching a great number of new sciences and academic disciplines with an absolutely modern flavour- IF NOT SOMEBODY CHOSEN FOR SOME INCOMPARABLE UNIQUE ROLE? All these despite Arabs of his times being the most illiterate people of all ancients of the otherwise brilliant Middle East. Millions and millions have been obsessed with and possessed by him to this day who have been variously celebrating his glories in a great number of ways from an unending string of biographies to hair-splitting study of his sayings and doings and that of the Book ascribed to the Creator of Everything through him. We have seen a lot about these in our preceding lessons.
In this lesson we shall study another facet of his commemoration and celebration. It is a unique and splendid literature of invoking blessings on him (salawat) and saluting him (salam or taslimat) as no other mortal similarly enjoyed even as much as 1% of his. Ulama and saints kept composing ‘salawat’ on him for ages and one particular collection of salawat shall be the subject of this lesson. Our aim is to show the reader through the study of some of these salawat the degree of love, awe and devotion the name Muhammad inspired in his believers who, again first time in history as well as to this day have been the only nation of believers not to fall into the blasphemous excesses almost all other nations (ummah) of believers fell regarding their spiritual leader(s). For example both Buddhists and Christians deified their respective leaders which from muslim point of view have been betrayals to those leaders. They came with wisdom and humility to give us the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven dormant within each and every one of us and of our ultimate self-worth thanks to the loving kindness of the Creator Who made us and of whom they were proud to be humble and mortal servants (which means we should be the same). Yet their ostensible followers, except perhaps for a short while after them, turned blind to this precious, saving message conveyed and examples personally given by the two and reverted to the paganism and idolatry IN THEIR NAME, infantile behaviour they were supposed to leave behind. They declared them gods and began to sing and dance at their altars as they would for Zeus, Diana, Ba’al, Isis or Krishna. Ritual and ceremony, acting as opiates, displaced moral and spiritual self-improvement which, unlike the opiates was too serious and sacrificial for the fickle. Also, ritual and ceremony was visible and physical events which provided the never absent spiritual confidence tricksters with ample opportunities of domination, mind control and economic gain. Among all religions only Islam noticed this and banned both priesthood and monasticism. Only this should be enough to make Muhammad the greatest spiritual genius and benefactor of mankind ever. Paintings and statues followed paintings and statues, richly dressed and palatially living and godly-perceived priests ruled and robbed as good as before and the masses were left to foot the bills for their luxuries and waste and bear the crosses and wear the crowns of thorns panting and sweating in the hope that such vain self-tortures could save them from worse. Again to the credit of Muhammad’s Islam, the believers are forbidden to hurt themselves or others in any way in the name of salvation except with civilised legal warrant, like fighting crime. The self-worth which is the birthright of every man and woman who is made to visit this earth the Buddha and the Christ knew, taught and represented only too well and attempted to awaken people to it and stir into action its blessings in the members of their audience. But the audience mostly failed to register this and continued to misunderstand what God was and what His Way (religion) was about. As another incomparable miracle only Muhammad sws and his audience looked and saw eye to eye in the matter of the Way of God. That is why the Seal of the Prophets, the Chosen One of Allah was spared the pain of being misunderstood and betrayed and the blasphemy and paganism that could result for his ummah. Since his advent his ummah, especially the more inspired among them praised him with increasing zeal and mastery and are and will be doing so to the end of the time.
As we said we shall now be seeing in the context of a famous book of salawat the degree of love, awe, faith and devotion the Messenger of Allah aroused in his spiritual subjects. Has any REAL (or imaginary) person been adored more intensely by more people and longer?