July 18,
2017
By Henry Bayman
How to
Respect the Prophet
Nâbi
(pronounced “Nobby”) was an Ottoman poet who flourished in the 17th century.
Master Ahmet Kayhan once related the following about him:
The poet
Nâbi goes to Medina with the sultan [Mehmed IV, or perhaps with an envoy of the
sultan]. The sultan lies down with his feet extended. Nâbi says:
Beware of
breaching courtesy,
this
is the land of God’s Beloved
It’s the
place where the Divine looks,
the station of the Chosen One. (1)
[This is the
first couplet of a longer eulogy. Note on the meanings of the Prophet’s names:
Mohammed: “highly praised,” Mustapha: “chosen.” Medina is his final resting
place.]
The sultan
says, “If you said this out of spite, I know how you’ll be punished. If it was
with divine inspiration, I know how you’ll be rewarded.”
At the
Morning Prayer-call, exactly this same praise is recited from all the minarets
of Medina. Nâbi runs to a Prayer-caller: “Where did you learn this?”
“In my dream
the Prophet of God came, he taught me. He said, ‘One who loves me has recited
this.’ His name is supposed to be Nâbi.”
He makes him
repeat it three times, on the fourth the Prayer-caller exclaims, “Enough, man!
What do you want?” He replies, “If you’d said it one more time, I would’ve
given up my soul. I’m Nâbi.”
This
anecdote draws attention to the high esteem in which Moslems hold their
Prophet.
God’s Praise
for the Prophet
In the
Koran, God clarifies the value of His Prophet in no uncertain terms. Here are
just a few instances of God’s acclaim for the Prophet:
- “The Prophet is dearer to believers than their own selves” (33:6).
- “God and His angels pronounce blessings upon the Prophet. Believers, you too pronounce blessings and peace upon him, with a mature surrender” (33:56).
- In 15:72, God swears an oath on the Prophet’s life: “By your life” or “For the sake of your life…” In the Koran, God swears such oaths only upon events or entities of immense importance. One interpretation of this phrase has been expressed as: “(My Beloved,) I swear by your eternal sweet memory…” (H.B. Çantay.) The value of the Prophet can be inferred from this verse alone.
These are
not the only examples of this sort to be found in the Koran, but they are
enough to prove the point. If God Himself praises the Prophet so highly, who
are we, as mere mortals, to disagree?
The Living
Koran
Despite all
the mud and dross of the world, some people are, with great effort, able to
overcome its obstacles and display a Godly morality in the face of all
adversities. And God loves them for that. The Prophet was the one to achieve
this to the highest degree. The following sentence can be considered a summary
of his life: His moral conduct never wavered, even as he overcame incredible
odds stacked up against his success. Which is why God called him His “Beloved”
and raised him to the Station of Praise (maqam al-mahmud).
One day,
some people visited the Prophet’s wife, Aisha, and asked her to tell them about
the Prophet’s character traits/morality (khulq, plural akhlaq).
Aisha replied: “Haven’t you read the Koran? The Prophet’s morality was that of
the Koran.” Or, equivalently, “His character traits were those of the Koran.” (Muslim, Salât al-Musafirîn,
139.) God Himself
praises the Prophet in the Koran: “You are indeed upon a mighty morality”
(68:4).
This means
that the Prophet was the living embodiment of the Koran, which has
prompted some to call him “the living Koran.” Since the Koran is the Word of
God, it would not be inappropriate to call the Prophet “the Word of God made
flesh.” The Koran (as holy book) has also been called “the silent Koran” (qur’an
al-sâmid) and the Prophet “the speaking Koran” (qur’an al-nâtiq).
The Prophet
told his Companions: “I leave you two things. The
Koran, and my Way.”
Indeed, there are many things that a written book cannot deal with, or can
cover only implicitly. These are made explicit by the Prophet’s exemplar as a
living, breathing human being, by his words and deeds (sunnah).
Of course,
Moslems stop short of deifying their Prophet, but clearly they otherwise hold
him in the highest regard. They accept him as the best of men, as the best
Moslem, and therefore as their role model. And this is as it should be: to
reduce the Messenger of God to the status of a postman, who came, delivered
God’s message, and left, is to radically misunderstand the office of
prophethood. A person chosen by God for this task, though human, can be no
ordinary man. A prophet represents humanity to God and God to humanity. Just
think of Moses, and it will become clear how difficult this is.
Christians
love and revere Jesus. Buddhists love and revere the Buddha. Certainly Moslems
are entitled to love and revere Mohammed.
This also
implies that Traditions attributed to the Prophet that exhibit
less-than-exemplary ethics are of dubious truthfulness, even if they may appear
in canonical collections of Traditions (the “Six Books”). The Koran is the only
book for which God vouchsafes divine protection. The Prophet himself advised us
to consult our hearts, and to reject any Tradition that leaves us with a queasy
feeling. I have said this before and I will say it
again: Any report—no matter how authentic or reliable it may be deemed—that
represents the Prophet as having less than perfect ethics, is automatically
suspect. Over the centuries until the Traditions were compiled, spurious
Traditions seem to have crept in, despite the compilers’ best efforts. These,
however, are in a tiny minority, so that in practice, the collections are by and
large reliable.
Sufis regard the
Prophet as
the zenith of human perfection.
I have said this before and I will say it
again: Any report—no matter how authentic or reliable it may be deemed—that
represents the Prophet as having less than perfect ethics, is automatically
suspect.
The Prophet
in Sufism
Sufism is
the deeper understanding of the Koran and the Traditions. The purpose of Sufism
is to take human beings and make them better, to improve them and, ideally, to
perfect them, to make them “Perfect Humans” (insan al-kâmil). For Sufis
also, the Prophet is the archetype of the Perfect Human, the example to be
imitated and emulated.
Master Ahmet
Kayhan will someday come to be recognized as the Saint of the Age. Based on
long years of close association, I and many others can testify to the fact that
he was free of flaws. If one who was the most accomplished follower of the
Prophet in our times had no personality blemishes, it stands to reason that the
one who was followed must have been even more impeccable.
Every
religion has had its role model for the improvement of human beings. The
historical/biographical circumstances of a particular human being rarely
disclose much regarding the wisdom s/he possesses. Only as one delves into the
details do certain indications become apparent. The broad outlines of the life
of the Prophet, or indeed of any prophet, may conceal more than they reveal.
In a
purported Holy Tradition, God tells the Prophet: “If not for you, I would not
have created the heavens.” (2) In the Koran, God also says: “We have not sent
you, except as a mercy to the worlds” (21:107).
The
following Turkish Sufi couplets highlight the importance of the Prophet for
Sufism:
This
universe is a mirror,
everything stands with God
From the
mirror of Mohammed
God
always is seen.
And:
Mohammed was
the outcome of love
Without
Mohammed, what outcome has love?
In the words
of Maximo Lameiro,
… the
Prophet Muhammad was “a living Koran.” But to say that is the same, in the
strict sense, as saying that the Prophet was a Perfect Human. For it is
not only that the Prophet was a man consistent with the Revelation he received,
since he practiced its precepts and lived according to its values, but that his
own nature was that of the Koran. And just as Revelation transcends the
empirical limitations within which ordinary consciousness perceives it, so the
reality of the Prophet transcends the historical individual who lived in the
Arabian peninsula during the seventh century. … the reality of the Prophet is
inexhaustible because it is the image of God. (3)
The potential for spiritual excellence
resides in us all.
Following
the Tradition(s): “The first thing God created was my light/spirit/intellect,
and all else He created from that,” “the Reality of Mohammed” is regarded by
Sufis as the originator of the entire universe. (4) According to Abdulqader
Jilani (Geylani), one of the very topmost Sufi saints:
God Most
High first created, from the divine light of His own Beauty, the light of
Muhammad. He declares this in a Holy Tradition related from Him by the Prophet:
“I have
created the soul of Muhammad from the light of my Manifestation (wajh).”
This is
declared by the Messenger of God in his words, ‘God first created my soul. He
first created it as a divine light;’ ‘God first created the Pen;’ ‘God first
created the Intellect.’ What is meant by all that … is the creation of the
truth of Muhammad, the hidden reality of Muhammad. He is also [like his Lord]
called by many beautiful names. He is called Nûr, the Divine Light,
because he was purified of [all] darkness … God Most High says in the Koran:
“There has
come to you from God a Light and a perspicuous Book” (5:15).
He is called
the Total Intellect (aql al-kull) because he saw and understood
everything. He is called the Pen (al-qalam) because he spread wisdom and
knowledge, and he poured knowledge into the realm of letters.
The soul of
Muhammad is the essence of all beings, the beginning and the reality of the
universe. He indicates this with the words, ‘I am from God and the believers
are from me’. God Most High created all souls from his soul in the realm of the
first created beings, in the best of forms. ‘Muhammad’ is the name of all
humanity in the realm of souls (âlam al-arwâh). He is the source, the
home of each and every thing. (5)
Hence, all
human beings belong to Mohammed: they are his constituents, whether they
realize it or not. And because of this they participate, at least
potentially, in much that was bestowed on Mohammed—with
the exception, of course, of his Prophethood. The potential for spiritual
excellence resides in us all. (Since the Prophet was a True Human, it is a
mistake to diminish human beings by using bestial names for them, despite the
obvious fact that they share many traits with the animal kingdom.)
In an early
work, the Sufi Grand Master Ibn Arabi defines the place of man within the
cosmic symphony as follows:
When the Holy Spirit was breathed
into man, he bound himself to the Absolute Existent [mawjud mutlaq,
namely God] with a sanctified, principial attachment. Such is his participation
in the Divine Activity. That is why we acknowledge man as having two
dimensions, one external, the other internal.
His external
dimension corresponds to the world in its totality, conforming to the
categories we have identified.
His internal
dimension corresponds to the Divine Presence [hadra ilahiyya].
Man is the
Universal (kulli) par excellence, since he is capable of
receiving all of the categories together, be they eternal or temporal, while
other existents do not possess this property.” (6)
When a human
being becomes endowed with the whole range of innumerable Divine
Names/Attributes, s/he becomes a Universal Human. This will not produce a
change in appearance, because it is a matter of inner transformation. But it
will become subtly—sometimes massively—apparent in one’s conduct. And the
Prophet Mohammed possessed these inner qualities to the highest degree. This is
why the Sufis uphold the Prophet as a role model, and why they regard him as
the zenith of human perfection.
NOTES
(1) Ali Fuat
Bilkan (ed.), Nâbi Divanı (Turkish), Ankara: Akçağ Y., 2011 [2000], vol.
2, p. 952.
(2) Although
the authenticity of this Tradition has been disputed because of
chain-of-transmission problems, several other Traditions support its meaning,
and famous scholars and saints alike have agreed that its meaning, if not its
wording, is authentic. See this discussion: http://www.sunnah.org/msaec/articles/hadith_of_lawlaak.htm
(3) Maximo
Lameiro, “The Perfect Human in Buddhism and Islamic Gnosis” (Spanish), March
2016. Rough translation by Google, polished by yours truly. http://laescalera-sophia.info/teosofia/Hombre_perfecto_budismo_tasawwuf.pdf,
p. 6.
(4) Similar
concepts also exist in other religions. As Maria Reis Habito has pointed out,
there is a parallel here with “Buddha-nature” in Mahayana Buddhism. Originally,
this was conceived of as the “Buddha-seed” (tathagatagarbha), meaning
that every human being possessed the potential for Enlightenment, the ability
to become “Awakened” (a buddha). This, of course, is the same thing as
the potential within every human being to become a Perfect Human in Sufism.
Later, Dogen claimed that Buddha-nature (Chn. Fo xing) resides within
all beings, in a manner quite similar to the way in which the Reality of
Mohammed is within all beings as their primordial Essence. (See Maria Reis Habito, “The Notion of Buddha-Nature:
An Approach to Buddhist-Muslim Dialogue,” in The Muslim World,
April/July 2010, Vol. 100, Issue 2-3: Special Issue on Islam and Buddhism,
pp. 233–246. http://traditionalhikma.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Muslim-World-100-no.-2-3-2010-Special-Issue-on-Islam-and-Buddhism.pdf.)
Again, the
concept of the Perfect Human in Sufism has its exact equivalent in the
Taoist/Daoist concept of “Real Man” or “True Man” (shen-jen/zhen-ren).
In Chinese Chan (Jap. Zen) Buddhism, Lin Chi (Linji, known in Japan as Rinzai)
took this and rephrased it as “True human of no rank” (zhen ren wu wei).
Compare this with the great Sufi mystic/poet Rumi: “My rank is no-rank (bî-nishân)”
(has also been translated as “My trace is the traceless.”). And as another
great Sufi poet, Niyazi Misri, observed: “The People of Truth possess no
signs/rank.” This is also what Ibn Arabi calls “the Station of No Station” (maqam
lâ-maqam).
The
understanding of such concepts has reached its culmination in Sufism.
(5)
Abdul-Qadir Al-Jilani, The Secret of Secrets (interpr. Tosun Bayrak
al-Jerrahi), Cambridge, UK: Islamic Texts Society, 2014 [1992], pp. 5-6. Edited
for clarity.
(6) Ibn
Arabi, “The Book of the Description of the Encompassing Circles” (Kitab
insha ad-dawa’ir al-ihatiyya), translated in Stephen Hirtenstein and
Michael Tiernan (eds.), Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi: A Commemorative Volume,
Shaftesbury, UK: Element Books, 1993, p. 29. (Slightly edited.)