Badges mark quoted or attributed material (Qur'an, hadith, another author, an opposing view). Unbadged passages are Maulana Wahiduddin Khan's own words.
PROPHET MUHAMMAD
Prophet Muhammad was the final Prophet for all mankind. Through him Islam’s original sources were preserved: God’s Book, the Quran was revealed and preserved, and his traditions, Hadith and Sunnah were recorded.
Mohammad bin Abdullah bin Abdul Muttalib was chosen as the last prophet by Almighty God in 610 AD in Mecca. In the Prophet Mohammad (May peace be upon him), God saw a man in whom the fires of human nature burnt bright, and in whom there was no contradiction of thought, word and deed. In the forty years before he attained prophethood, he had never once betrayed a trust. He was strictly honest in his dealings, true to his word, and deeply compassionate towards the human beings all around him. Most important of all, he had a profound desire for the truth, which went far and beyond all craving for profit.
In Mohammad, son of Abdullah, (peace and God’s blessings be upon him) God found a pure soul, untarnished by self-interest, and totally uncompromising on the question of right and wrong. He saw in him a man selflessly devoted to the discharge of his duties, and one who would never stoop to idolatrous beliefs. Most important, God had found in this desert Arab a genuine seeker after the truth. It could only be such as he who would appreciate to the full the divine revelations with which he would be entrusted, and who would be fully alive to the resultant obligation. It was precisely because this most perfect of men had shown himself to be so consistently virtuous over the first forty years of his life that God chose him as His final Prophet for all mankind. During the ensuing thirty-three years of his prophethood, Mohammad proved that God’s trust in him had not been misplaced, for he carried out his prophetic duties with the highest imaginable degree of integrity. There could have been no conceivably superior fulfillment of the responsibilities entailed by prophethood.
It is thanks to the Prophet that God’s Book, the Quran, as communicated to him by God’s Angel, has been handed down to us in pure and pristine form, thus making it possible for us to find in His Scriptures a clear description of all those qualities and observances, which our Lord requires of us. In the Quran, God converses with us in human language, and, if His words are as clear to us today as at the time of their utterance, it is because of the special care taken by the Prophet and his companions to ensure that God’s Book would be preserved in its original form, unmarred by interpolation, alteration or omission.
Not only did the Prophet receive God’s Revelations, but he also practiced them to perfection throughout his entire life. He thus provided a living example of how Quranic teaching should be followed. They are recorded in the traditions of the Prophet, the Sunnah for all to follow. It was easy for people to see and understand the examples he set, for he lived the life of any normal family – mixing freely with people in the town and market place. Like any other ordinary individual he had friends and enemies, and knew what it meant to win or lose, fail or succeed. But what made him different from the ordinary run of men was the sublimity of his character. No matter what situation he found himself in, he always set a shining example. From a position of affluence and security he was reduced to suffering poverty, hunger, pain and rejection – all in the attempt to preach the Faith. But, no matter how adverse the circumstances in which he found himself, he never failed to evince this perfection of character. Conversely, when he rose from the level of an ordinary man to become a judge and a ruler, having ultimately set up the pillars of Islam, this excellence of disposition never left him for an instant. Indeed, his entire life was marked by such divine characteristics that it has become a model for mankind for all eternity.