"Muhammad is not the father of any man among you; rather, he is the Messenger of God and the Seal of the prophets. And God is Knower of all things."
Quran 33:40
This last spring in the travel version of my Dar al-Islam class we read Qasim Rashid's The Wrong Kind of Muslim, which the students found deeply moving. As I've chronicled earlier in this series, Rashid was kind enough to Skype in with us and talk about his experiences as a human rights lawyer, political candidate and the persecution that he faces as an Ahmadiyya Muslim. One of the reasons why the Ahmadiyya face such persecution from mainstream Muslims is the belief that they view their founder as a prophet (it's not quite that simple, and even Nasr when he Skyped with us glossed over it a bit as he walked us through the complexity of the Ahmadiyya belief system). It's a theological problem inside of Islam because Muhammad is commonly viewed as the final prophet, or the "Seal of the prophets." Logically, then, this topic must be a constant theme that runs throughout the Quran, right? Actually, no. The verse above, which is drawn from the 33rd surah, al-Ahzab, here rendered as "The Parties," is the only time it is referenced in the entire Quran.
Every other reference to Muhammad being the final prophet are found in the ahadith, that is, the sayings of the Prophet himself. As Nasr explains in the Study Quran:
"That the Prophet is the Seal of the prophets is understood to mean that he is last Prophet sent to humanity. The Prophet is reported to have said, 'No prophethood shall remain after me, save for true visions', and 'Messengerhood and prophethood have ceased. There will be no messenger or prophet after me.' The most frequently cited hadith pertaining to his place as the Seal of the prophets states, 'My likeness among the prophets before me is that of a man who has built a house, completed it, and beautified it, yet left empty a place for a brick. Then the people come to the house, are amazed by it, and say, "If only you were to place this brick, your house would be complete!" I am this brick.' According to the Prophet, being the Seal of the prophets if one of six qualities that distinguish him from other prophets: 'I have been favored above the prophets in six things: I have been endowed with consummate succinctness of speech; I have been made triumphant through dread; war booty has been made lawful for me; the whole earth has been made a place of worship for me and a means of purification; I have been sent to all created beings; and the succession of prophets has been completed in me.'" (Nasr, pp. 1031-1032)
Coming back around to the Ahmadiyya, there rationale (and I'm dramatically simplifying here) is that they are not arguing that Muhammad was not that Seal of the prophets, rather they are reading the definition of Seal of the prophets differently. Essentially, they are completely agreeing that Muhammad delivered a final version of the faith, but that other prophets might arise in response to specific needs, but that these later prophets would not be changing any the foundational decisions delivered through Muhammad (again, I'm over-simplifying out of necessity, and doubtless both sides would disagree with my shortened take on things; still, I think it serves our purposes here).
I could get into a big discussion about the validity and value or the ahadith as compared to the Quran itself, which is potentially a big issue here because the majority of claims that Muhammad was the final prophet are from the ahadith and not from the Quran itself, but let's put that aside for the moment (and I may or may not come back to this touchy subject, not because I'm afraid of angering anybody, but rather that I don't like to talk, at least not too deeply, about subjects that I don't know a lot about). Let me take worst case scenario here (at least worse case scenario from a traditional Islamic view): that Muhammad was not, in fact, the final prophet. Do I, personally, think that this would somehow damage the integrity and importance of the Prophet's message? Of course not. We've talked before about how all religions can be guilty of falling into the tyranny of the most recent. Buddhism grew out of Hinduism, and certainly there had to be some early Buddhists who thought, "Wow, thank goodness we showed up and fixed that mess." Just as Christianity grew out of Judaism, and felt so certain of the superiority of their refined vision that they slapped their holy scripture on the back of the Jewish one and called things complete. I would argue that there's at least a danger that our emphasis on Muhammad as the final prophet could easily become a version of the same sort of chronological tyranny. What matters to me (and, again, this is just me talking) is the extraordinary clarity and beauty of the vision laid out in the Quran and the ahadith, not whether or not there may or may not have been later prophets. We are reminded to complete with others only in excellence, and I think we should turn that lens on ourselves as well.
And finally, this brings us back to the Ahmadiyya again. They are so incredibly and consistently dedicated to serving humanity that they perpetually lap more "mainstream" Muslims, but yet they are persecuted horribly inside of Islam because of their views of their founder. If we're quite willing to persecute and in fact kill members of a sect of our faith - and a sect that routinely does a hell of a lot more for the world than we do - then we have a strange view of what the faith is about.
Quran 33:40
This last spring in the travel version of my Dar al-Islam class we read Qasim Rashid's The Wrong Kind of Muslim, which the students found deeply moving. As I've chronicled earlier in this series, Rashid was kind enough to Skype in with us and talk about his experiences as a human rights lawyer, political candidate and the persecution that he faces as an Ahmadiyya Muslim. One of the reasons why the Ahmadiyya face such persecution from mainstream Muslims is the belief that they view their founder as a prophet (it's not quite that simple, and even Nasr when he Skyped with us glossed over it a bit as he walked us through the complexity of the Ahmadiyya belief system). It's a theological problem inside of Islam because Muhammad is commonly viewed as the final prophet, or the "Seal of the prophets." Logically, then, this topic must be a constant theme that runs throughout the Quran, right? Actually, no. The verse above, which is drawn from the 33rd surah, al-Ahzab, here rendered as "The Parties," is the only time it is referenced in the entire Quran.
Every other reference to Muhammad being the final prophet are found in the ahadith, that is, the sayings of the Prophet himself. As Nasr explains in the Study Quran:
"That the Prophet is the Seal of the prophets is understood to mean that he is last Prophet sent to humanity. The Prophet is reported to have said, 'No prophethood shall remain after me, save for true visions', and 'Messengerhood and prophethood have ceased. There will be no messenger or prophet after me.' The most frequently cited hadith pertaining to his place as the Seal of the prophets states, 'My likeness among the prophets before me is that of a man who has built a house, completed it, and beautified it, yet left empty a place for a brick. Then the people come to the house, are amazed by it, and say, "If only you were to place this brick, your house would be complete!" I am this brick.' According to the Prophet, being the Seal of the prophets if one of six qualities that distinguish him from other prophets: 'I have been favored above the prophets in six things: I have been endowed with consummate succinctness of speech; I have been made triumphant through dread; war booty has been made lawful for me; the whole earth has been made a place of worship for me and a means of purification; I have been sent to all created beings; and the succession of prophets has been completed in me.'" (Nasr, pp. 1031-1032)
Coming back around to the Ahmadiyya, there rationale (and I'm dramatically simplifying here) is that they are not arguing that Muhammad was not that Seal of the prophets, rather they are reading the definition of Seal of the prophets differently. Essentially, they are completely agreeing that Muhammad delivered a final version of the faith, but that other prophets might arise in response to specific needs, but that these later prophets would not be changing any the foundational decisions delivered through Muhammad (again, I'm over-simplifying out of necessity, and doubtless both sides would disagree with my shortened take on things; still, I think it serves our purposes here).
I could get into a big discussion about the validity and value or the ahadith as compared to the Quran itself, which is potentially a big issue here because the majority of claims that Muhammad was the final prophet are from the ahadith and not from the Quran itself, but let's put that aside for the moment (and I may or may not come back to this touchy subject, not because I'm afraid of angering anybody, but rather that I don't like to talk, at least not too deeply, about subjects that I don't know a lot about). Let me take worst case scenario here (at least worse case scenario from a traditional Islamic view): that Muhammad was not, in fact, the final prophet. Do I, personally, think that this would somehow damage the integrity and importance of the Prophet's message? Of course not. We've talked before about how all religions can be guilty of falling into the tyranny of the most recent. Buddhism grew out of Hinduism, and certainly there had to be some early Buddhists who thought, "Wow, thank goodness we showed up and fixed that mess." Just as Christianity grew out of Judaism, and felt so certain of the superiority of their refined vision that they slapped their holy scripture on the back of the Jewish one and called things complete. I would argue that there's at least a danger that our emphasis on Muhammad as the final prophet could easily become a version of the same sort of chronological tyranny. What matters to me (and, again, this is just me talking) is the extraordinary clarity and beauty of the vision laid out in the Quran and the ahadith, not whether or not there may or may not have been later prophets. We are reminded to complete with others only in excellence, and I think we should turn that lens on ourselves as well.
And finally, this brings us back to the Ahmadiyya again. They are so incredibly and consistently dedicated to serving humanity that they perpetually lap more "mainstream" Muslims, but yet they are persecuted horribly inside of Islam because of their views of their founder. If we're quite willing to persecute and in fact kill members of a sect of our faith - and a sect that routinely does a hell of a lot more for the world than we do - then we have a strange view of what the faith is about.
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