PROPHET MUHAMMAD—PART II

Biographies of the Prophet are full of incidents, which show his life to be a perfect model for mankind. “and I am His servant.” He then asked the desert-dweller, “Hasn’t it made you afraid, the way you treated me?” He said not. The Prophet asked him why. “Because I know that you do not requite evil with evil,” the man answered. The Prophet smiled on hearing this, and had one camel-load of barley and another of dates given to him. The Prophet lived in such awe of God that he was always a picture of humility and meekness. He spoke little and even the way he walked suggested reverence for God. Criticism never angered him. When he used to put on his clothes, he would say: “I am God’s servant, and I dress as befits a servant of God.” He would sit in a reverential posture to partake of food, and would say that this is how a servant of God should eat. He was very sensitive on this issue. Once a Companion started to say, “If it be the will of God, and the will of the Prophet ... “ The Prophet’s face changed colour in anger when he heard this. “Are you trying to equate me with God?” he asked the man severely. Rather say: “If God, alone, wills.” On another occasion a Companion of the Prophet said: “He that obeys God and His Prophet is rightly guided, and he who disobeys them has gone astray.” “You are the worst of speakers,” the Prophet observed, disliking a reference, which placed him in the same pronoun as the Almighty. Three sons were born to the Prophet, all of whom died in infancy. His four daughters, all by his first wife, Khadijah, grew to adulthood. Fatimah was the Prophet’s youngest daughter, and he was extremely attached to her. When he returned from any journey the first thing he would do, after praying two rak’at (units of prayer) in the mosque, was to visit Fatimah and kiss her hand and forehead. Jumai’ ibn Umayr, a Companion, once asked Aisha (the Prophet’s wife) whom the Prophet loved most. “Fatimah,” she replied. But the Prophet’s whole life was moulded by thoughts of the Hereafter. He loved his children, but not in any worldly way. Ali ibn Abi Talib, Fatimah’s husband, once told Ibn Abdul Wahid a story about the Prophet’s most beloved daughter. Fatimah’s hands, he said, were blistered from constant grinding; her neck had become sore from carrying water; her clothes would become dirty from sweeping the floor. When the Prophet had received an influx of servants from some place, Ali suggested to his wife that she