Islamic Inlightment

                                                
Starts with Name of God

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most MercifulA verse from the Holy Quran

He is Allah the Creator the Evolver the Bestower of Forms (or colors). To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names: Whatever is in the heavens and on earth doth declare His Praises and Glory: and He is the exalted in Might the Wise.

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Boon to Humanity

Finality of Prophethood, a Boon to Humanity

Divine wisdom decided to terminate prophethood when humanity came of age. From the confined limits of ignorance, in which mankind had been detained for several hundred years, for reasons more than one, it was now crossing over to the wide, open world of knowledge, intellectual development and universal solidarity, and was ready to plumb the secrets of nature. For the nations of family, tribe, race, colour and country were then giving place to the concepts of cosmic transcendentalism, one-ness of mankind, heavenly guidance and the benefits of joint endeavour, enlightenment and edification, man could be expected to overcome all the dark, divisive forces hampering his well-being. Now, at that crucial stage, man had had to build his life on the revelation vouchsafed to the last of prophets, pin his faith in him and follow the law promulgated by the Book which testifies, completes and guards the truth of the earlier revelations. Thenceforward advancement of humanity was to depend only on his own endeavour, thinking and working, and, also, march forward in the light of this very Book of Books.

The time past bear witness to the chaos and tumult which man had had to face in ascertaining the claims of soothsayers and false prophets who professed to possess miraculous powers and revelations from God. Oftentimes the whole communities were plunged in disorder and wasted their energies in trying to shield themselves from the menace of these pretenders.

Advent of a truthful Messenger of God was, on the other hand, not something insignificant like the appearance of political leader, or a ruler, or a reformer, for the rejection of the latter has never meant provoking divine condemnation and chastisement. Unlike other people claiming leadership of a country or community whose call for obedience is not backed by pleasure or displeasure of God, the prophets come as a criterion of truth and justice and the rejection of their call amounts to aligning oneself with falsehood and evil; the prophets constitute the determinant of divine dispensation for their peoples. The nations of the bygone times were not destroyed, as the Quran tells us, by their blasphemy and irreligious, or else by their moral corruption and prodigality but because of their contemptuous rejection and derision of the prophets and insolent behavior towards them. The Quran narrates the appalling behavior of evil-minded people to their prophets in innumerable verses, some of which are given here.

“And every nation purposed to seize their messenger and argued falsely, (thinking) thereby to refute the Truth. Then I seized them, and how (awful) was My punishment.”1

“Whenever its messenger came unto a nation they denied him; so We caused them to follow one another (to disaster) and We made them bywords. A far removal for folk who believe not:”2

“He said: My Lord! Help me because they deny me.

“He said: In a little while they surely will become repentant.

“So the (Awful) Cry overtook them rightfully, and we made them like as wreckage (that a torrent hurleth). A far removal for wrongdoing folk.”3

“Messengers (of Allah) have been derided before thee, but that whereat they scoffed surrounded such of them as did deride.”4

“And verily messengers (of Allah) were mocked before thee, but long I bore with those who disbelieved. At length I seized them, and how (awful) was My punishment!”5

“Not one of them but did deny the messengers, therefor My doom was justified.”6

“And We destroyed no township but it had its warners.”7

Termination of prophethood has saved mankind from the ordeal to which it was exposed every now and then. For a true prophet constitutes the saving principle for the entire humanity, man had to put off all his business and ascertain the truthfulness or falsehood of every new messenger of God. Termination of this process, thus, has spared man from this effort which had, it the past, always proved to be onerous. Had the prophets been still coming, every new claimant to prophethood, coming forward time and again, would have demanded the obedience of his fellowmen; each would have condemned his detractors as infidels and fought them to the end; carved out a separate community out of the existing followers of different religions; and the world would have still been engaged in a war of attrition. Many of those pretending to be apostles of God sent from On High, would have, surely, been eccentrics, or tricksters, or else crafty persons seeking power or pelf, or tools of the powers that be; even among the simplehearted claimants to prophethood would have found men misled by their own ignorance of thrown off the scent by misdirected meditations and travails or a false sense of piety. World has come across impostors of all these categories during the times past. Their fallaciousness can now be easily discerned by us with our widened experience and knowledge, greater insight into human psychology and better understanding of the concealed aims of political intriguers.

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