Understanding the Prophet

Loyalty to the Prophet is possible above all by following the exemplary model he set forth by Allah's command, education and instructions, that is, to put it more concisely, by reviving his Sunnah. But to revive his Sunnah, one must first understand him. And understanding him is not something that can be accomplished by putting forth a standard interpretation valid at once and for all times.

We pass through very different histories, in different societies, along very different paths, living different experiences. Knowing, from within each of these paths and experiences, what the Prophet's Sunnah is like requires both effort and wisdom. Wisdom, that is, again by Allah's grace, an interpretation and a courtesy of conduct, a sagacity, that the Prophet taught his ummah along with the Book.

Just as Allah did not send the Book alone but sent it together with the concrete interpretation of a Prophet, the Prophet too did not hand over the Book alone and withdraw; he taught wisdom as a way to the people who would interpret it.

THE BOOK BECOMES A WEAPON IN THE HANDS OF THE IGNORANT

Without wisdom, while expressions taken from within the Book without knowing their before and after are hastily adapted to equally irrelevant, inappropriate contexts, a veritable terror of text is unleashed and the Book turns into a terrible weapon in the hands of the ignorant. The case of the Kharijites against Ali is the first typical example of this. The later years of Islamic history, too, are full of problems created by both readings of the Qur'an and literal readings of the Sunnah. Of course, alongside the mainstream accurate and wise interpretations that produced that glorious history... But as the greatest ignorances that even these wise interpretations have had to cope with...

Today, the correct determination of the relationship between text and reality, the relationship between text and interpretation, is the most important subject of the quest called hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, which first emerged as the question of translating the Divine Message, which possesses eternal knowledge and horizon, to mortal people, is today largely met as the question of how, or whether, what a mortal human wrote or said reaches a mortal human most accurately.

A LIFETIME IN PURSUIT OF THE DIVINE MESSAGE

Yet even if "one of us," what the Prophet did and said, in the expression of the Divine Message carried into our language and our world of meaning, has dimensions that exceed ordinary communication between people. Even so, our effort of understanding, we mortals, is ultimately a human effort. It has remained an effort that takes place within the limits of human knowledge and understanding. This is our limit, and exceeding this limit, or claiming to exceed it, can have no result other than further increasing the likelihood of error.

Understanding the Prophet, understanding the message he brought, is not a task that can be accomplished at once and for all times. It must be an endeavor that never ends over a lifetime, on every occasion, at every level, in every event, in every experience...

One needs to know that among all people, the Prophet is the only person who can be followed in every respect, whose every movement, every behavior, every gesture can be taken as an example. It is declared, again in the Qur'an, that he was given no miracle other than the Qur'an. But this state of his, through the blessed personality he displayed and his human conditions, ensured that he existed as a miracle in himself. As one who is "one of us, who walks in the marketplace, bargains in his trade, eats and drinks like us, rejoices and grieves, laughs and weeps, marries, has children, acquires sons-in-law, gets angry and furious, and fights," he is at the same time a perfect role model accessible, exemplary and imitable for all people. Moreover, he is the only human being whose every action was verified as correct by the Creator.

ONE OF US, BUT AN EXCEPTION

You cannot imitate even Jesus in every respect, for example. Because of the miracles granted to him, he is impossible to imitate, someone extremely exceptional. His like is Adam. Or Moses, Noah, Job... Each of them has, of course, much to say and teach humanity through magnificent truths they carried into the world, from which lessons are to be drawn, to which ears are to be lent, from which admonition is to be taken. But as a whole, it is impossible to imitate them in every area of life. In this sense Muhammad (peace be upon him) is, among all the prophets, an exception who constitutes a miracle by his very own existence, for whom, together with the Qur'an, no other miracle is left needed. An exception as one of us. An exception at an accessibility that all of us can imitate. An exception as someone who can be taken as a model. An exception from whom, when followed, only mercy, compassion, tenderness and wisdom proceed at every moment of his life.

THE UMMAH'S LOYALTY TO THE PROPHET

It is quite clear that to revive his Sunnah one must know and understand his sira very well. Indeed, regarding the Prophet's life, in a way not granted to any other historical or religious figure, there is almost no detail that has not been recorded. Some of these details, raw, and some thoroughly processed, were turned into important sira works from early times. The quality of the studies on the Prophet's sira alone is remarkable in itself and is an important indicator of this ummah's loyalty to its Prophet.

But sira studies, if we repeat, are not studies that can be accomplished at once and for all times. In every period they need to be renewed according to the understanding, needs and means of the day. We can say that there are very serious studies in this direction today as well. As we also noted here before: from Kuramer there is also a Sira Chronology study, of remarkable volume and quality, and prepared with equal mastery of sources and details.

THE QUR'ANIC VIEW OF EVENTS

The life of our Prophet, his struggle, the revelation of the Holy Qur'an during that time, the wars, the meetings, and all the events pointed to by verses and hadiths have been established chronologically and cataloged. There is certainly a serious gap in this field. For producing a work with this meticulousness and this detail, Professor Mehmet Apaydın should be congratulated. I can say that he has set a new bar for academic level in the field of theology in our country.

A fine work published in recent days is also the book The First Spring by Wadah Khanfar, one of the brightest names of contemporary Arab-Islamic thought. We have no room left for the details of the book, which looks at the sira from the angle of the concept of "strategy"; let us go into it in our next piece.