The Finality of Prophethood

reassuringly. The Prophet gave this advice, for he was convinced that the Daus tribe was no exception. They were also human beings like the others. They were also invested with the same God-given nature as others had. And it turned out that the Prophet had rightly trusted human nature. When Tufayl went back to his people and called them again to the call of monotheism, the miracle happened. Gradually all the men and women embraced the call of the faith of monotheism. Trust in human nature is a great sunnah of the Prophet of Islam, and we find examples of it in every stage of his life. In the Madinan period when the call of Islam spread all over Arabia, delegations from different tribes in and around Arabia started coming to the Prophet and accepting Islam. One such incident of this period concerns the tribe of Thaqif. A delegation from this tribe came to Madinah in 9 AH. The Prophet of Islam conveyed to them the teachings of Islam. They were ready to accept Islam, but they insisted on many conditions being met. They said that they would say prayers, although it was an act of humiliation, but they would neither pay charity nor perform jihad. In spite of all these conditions, the Prophet accepted their oath of allegiance and admitted them into the fold of Islam. Certain Muslims had reservations about this kind of conversion, but the Prophet said: After they have accepted Islam, they will pay charity as well as perform jihad (Seerah ibn Kathir, Vol. 4, p. 56). If the Prophet of Islam had concentrated only on the utterances of the people of Thaqif, he would not have accepted their Islam. But the Prophet had full trust in human nature. Instead of seeing them in terms of the present, the Prophet saw them as they would be in the future. His estimate was proved entirely right. The people of Thaqif took no time in accepting and practicing all Islam’s teachings willingly and wholeheartedly. It was a result of this policy that the Prophet never felt the need to resort to violence against opponents. He treated his enemies as if they were his friends. That is why for the first time in human history he was able to bring about an almost bloodless revolution throughout the whole nation. The Quran tells us that God created all human beings with the same nature. “And follow the nature [constitution] as made by God, that nature in which He has created mankind. There is no altering the creation of God.” (The Quran, 30:30). This same point has been made in a Hadith in these words: “Every child is born according to nature.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith No. 1385) There is another Hadith to this effect: “God has created human beings with an upright nature.” (Sahih Muslim, Hadith No. 2865) This shows that all human beings are born with the same nature. There is no person in whom enmity to the truth has become an inseparable part of his nature. From the dawah point of view, this is an extremely important reality. It means that if the dayee