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      THE NEED FOR A DIVINE MESSAGE

      THE ANGEL CAME when Muhammad was in seclusion in the cave of Mount Ḥirā’, and told him to read the first five short verses of the Qur’ān. Muhammad’s prophethood started at the moment he received these first revelations.

      Like other scholars, Imam Ibn Hazm defines prophethood as the acquisition of knowledge that is absolutely certain and cannot be gained through human endeavour or experience. Such knowledge can only be bestowed by God, and He gives it only to those of His servants whom He chooses to be Prophets. Some Prophets may be given Divine messages, which they then deliver to the people to whom they are addressed. If a Prophet is not given a message of his own, he works with the message of an earlier Messenger. The Children of Israel had countless Prophets: but the Messengers among them were few. Moses and Aaron are perhaps the clearest examples of this. God chose Moses to relay the message contained in the Torah, whereas Aaron was a Prophet working with Moses’ message. A number of God’s Messengers are mentioned in the Qur’ān by name, but God states that He also sent Messengers of whom He chose not to tell us. Addressing the Prophet, He says in the Qur’ān: “We sent other Messengers before your time; some We have given you an account of, while others We have not.” (40: 78)

      Shortly after the beginning of his revelations, Muhammad became God’s Messenger, as God revealed to him the verses: “You, wrapped in your cloak, arise and give warning” (74: 1-2).¹ This meant that the Prophet would advocate the Divine faith in accordance with the message that he would be receiving. Whatever remained intact from previous Divine messages (that is, free from distortion) would be endorsed or amended by the new message. In all previous cases, God’s Messengers were sent to their own peoples, speaking their languages and calling on them to believe in God and to conduct their lives in accordance with the messages delivered to them. The Prophet was declared God’s final Messenger and his message was the last to be given by God to mankind. For this reason, his message is contained in a book – the Qur’ān – which God has guaranteed to preserve intact for the rest of time.

      That humanity is always in need of a Divine message is beyond doubt, and this is closely related to the purpose of man’s creation. According to all Prophets and to God’s Messengers, man undertakes the task of building virtuous life on earth. As the Prophet Ṣāliḥ urged his people to worship God alone, he said to them: “He it is who brought you into being out of the earth and settled you therein.” (11: 61) With settlement comes progress and the enhancement of the beautiful and beneficial (as its Arabic equivalent istaʿmarakum, which is used in this Qur’ānic verse, connotes). When we consider our position in the universe, it becomes clear that despite all the discoveries and advancements that we have made over the centuries, we can only move within a limited area and our abilities are finite. Man has always felt that there is a vast world beyond, and it is the endeavour to reach to this and discover its secrets that has motivated his research, scientific pursuit, philosophical theories, poetry and fiction. This has given rise to every advancement made by man. Yet, even those who make the most exciting discoveries are the first to acknowledge that they are only scratching the surface and that there is much more beyond.

      This applies to human nature, psychology, feelings and emotions as much as it applies to the material world around us. When we deal with the material world, we may make mistakes. However, we can always revise our methods and correct our errors. The situation is not so straightforward when we regulate for feelings, emotions and human nature. A small mistake in these areas could have far-reaching adverse consequences. The need to avert such consequences by correcting an initial mistake is often resisted by a section of the population, because every human situation has its positive and negative aspects. Those who stand to benefit by its positives will – understandably – resist the change. Moreover, when we try to correct such consequences, we often go too far in the opposite direction, so that after some time another correction is needed. Had there been proper guidance in the first place, many errors of society could be averted.

      For example, looking at sexual morality in Western society, and its development over the last two centuries, we find that the nineteenth century applied strict values. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed two world wars, which took away almost all of this strictness. Once the contraceptive pill was deemed safe, the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s was hailed as liberation from arbitrary values. Intellectual discussion contrasting nineteenth and twentieth century values in this area tended to dismiss the earlier strict approaches as hypocritical: it was assumed that the earlier population did not really believe in strict values, but were compelled by society to keep up pretences. Any argument that the literature of the time did not support such

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