The Prophet in the Quran

query, ‘Has God sent a human being as a messenger?’ (The Quran, 17:94) Here is an Arabic saying that will help to clarify these verses. That is, things can be understood properly only by their opposites. When we look at it in the light of this principle, two pictures of the Prophet, very different from one another, appear before us. One picture, according to the above verses, is that which was before his contemporaries. The other, the one we have today, has grown tremendously in stature over the fifteen centuries, which have elapsed since his coming to the world. In the ancient picture, the Prophet appears to be a common man standing all alone. In vivid contrast, the picture of him that has emerged after 1500 years has become so sublime that modern attempts to describe him, if they are to do him Justice, have to include such expressions as “the pride of all existence,” “the emperor of both the worlds,” “leader of the Universe,” “the crown king of Arabia,” and so on. What is the reason for these two starkly different pictures of one and the same personality? It is that a Prophet in his lifetime appears to his contemporaries as a common man. But over the centuries he acquires the status of an established personality and thus attains historical grandeur. In the first picture, the Prophet has yet to receive acclaim, while in the second, the Prophet is at the zenith of historical grandeur. The Quran tells us that only that faith is acceptable to God, which conforms to the example set by the Companions: If they believe as you have believed, then are they rightly guided; but if they turn back, then know that they are entrenched in hostility. God will surely suffice to defend you against them, for He is All Hearing, All Knowing. (The Quran, 2:137) The Companions are those believers who were the Prophet’s contemporaries. They saw the initial picture of the Prophet when he had not yet acquired an aura of historical grandeur, yet they recognized the greatness in him. At that time the Prophet appeared to be a common man like any other, and not at all like the extraordinary person that he is described as in today’s highflown terms. The first picture of the Prophet is the real one. The rest is the addition of history. The credit of believing in the prophet can be given, in the real sense of the word, only to a person who eliminates the additions of history and recognizes him as he actually was. The Knowledge of the Unseen We learn from the Quran that God alone has knowledge of the Unseen. As the Quran states: He alone has knowledge of what is hidden. He reveals this to none. (The Quran, 72:26) The Quran has repeatedly made it clear that the Prophet of Islam was not given full knowledge of the world unseen. On certain occasions God revealed something of the unseen world in advance to the Prophet through the angel Gabriel, for instance, the result of the Hudaybiya treaty in the form of a ‘clear victory’ (chapter 48). But he was not given the power to acquire