MUHAMMAD THE IDEAL CHARACTER

~ 13 ~ this world was only by way of preparation. In all matters his attitude was determined by the thought of how it would affect the quality of his existence in the hereafter. Whether the occasion for him was one of happiness or sorrow, success or failure, domination or oppression, praise or obloquy, love or hatred, the guiding thought was always that of the hereafter. He was in no way lacking in human qualities, but his mind attached value only to things which were in some manner connected with the Hereafter, and when any such connection was absent, he found it difficult to take an interest in the purely mundane. He would often say to those who found him indifferent to the affairs of this world, “You know your worldly matters better than I do myself”. This conviction of the Prophet is no mere intellectual assumption. When it takes root, a man’s whole course of life and plane of living are altered by it; it turns a man into a being of an entirely different order. The lesson of the Prophet’s life is that unless the plane of living is radically changed, there can be no improvement in the quality of one’s actions. When the Prophet arrived at this truth, its propagation became his greatest concern. Paradise, tidings of which he brought to his fellowmen,