The Mission of the Prophets

Prophethood, Part 2 Muhammad ibn Abdullah spent forty years as an ordinary, respected man of Makkah — then, in a single moment inside a cave, he became somebody else entirely. He was orphaned three times over before he was ever a prophet: his father died before he was born, his mother shortly after, and his grandfather a few years later, leaving his uncle Abu Talib to raise him. As a young man he joined a justice pact known as the Alliance of the Virtuous (Hilf al-Fudul), formed in Makkah after a Yemeni merchant was cheated and could get no redress — he later said he would honour that pact even if it cost him every red-haired camel in Arabia. He lived among ordinary people as a good man, never bowing to an idol, never seeking power. Then came the cave on Jabal an-Nur, the single word Iqra — "Read" — and afterwards a silence some say lasted forty days, others two or three years. When revelation resumed, the Qur'an tells him plainly: your Lord has not forsaken you. This is the pivot the evening traces — the Arabic word for a prophet's raising up, bi'that, literally means to quicken something dormant, the very word used for bodies quickened from the grave on Judgement Day. What actually changes in a person the moment God chooses him? What the evening covers The orphan and the pact. The ordinary life Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, lived before prophethood, and the justice pact he never renounced. Two raisings, not one. How the resurrection inside the prophet's own heart is mirrored, afterwards, in the resurrection of his entire society. Iqra, and the silence that followed. The first revelation, and the uncertain gap before the second. Two bows' length. What the Qur'an's account, in Surah al-Najm, of the Prophet's nearness to God during revelation describes — and what it does not.

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Sermon: The Mission of the Prophets

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Nohe: Imam Reza 2

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Ziyarah: Ziyarat Aal-e-Yasin

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