- Methodology and terminology
- The life of Muhammad
- Muhammad and the Qurʾān
- The Sunnah and Hadith
- The ethical and spiritual character of Muhammad
- Muhammad and Islamic law and theology
- Muhammad and Sufism
- Muhammad in Islamic art and literature
- Muhammad and Islamic piety
- The image of Muhammad in the West
The ethical and spiritual character of Muhammad
Muslims believe that Muhammad was the most perfect of God’s creatures, and, although not divine, he was, according to a famous Arabic poem, not just a man among men but like a ruby among ordinary stones. In the same way that in Christianity all virtues are associated with Jesus Christ, in Islam they are associated with the Prophet. The ethical teachings of Islam are rooted in the Qurʾān, but the model of perfect ethical character, which is called Muhammadan character by Muslims, has always been that of the Prophet. The virtues that characterize him are humility and poverty, magnanimity and nobility, and sincerity and truthfulness. Like Jesus Christ, Muhammad loved spiritual poverty and was also close to the economically poor, living very simply even after he had become “the ruler of a whole world.” He was also always severe with himself and emphasized that, if exertion in the path of God (al-jihād; commonly translated as “holy war”) can sometimes mean fighting to preserve one’s life and religion, the greater jihad is to fight against the dispersing tendencies of the concupiscent soul.
These virtues have served as models and sources of inspiration for all Muslims and have been applied on many levels from the most outward to the most inward. The great classical texts of Islamic ethics, such as those of al-Qushayrī and al-Ghazzālī, which are still widely read, are expositions of ethical and spiritual virtues that all Muslims believe the Prophet possessed on the highest level. Along with these works, there is a genre of prophetic biography based on Muhammad’s inner reality and ethical character rather than the external episodes of his life. These biographies parallel a certain type of “lives of Christ,” which were written in the West in such a way as to make possible the imitatio Christi (“imitation of Christ”).
Muhammad and Islamic law and theology
All schools of Islamic law (Sharīʿah), both Sunni and Shīʿite, agree that the Sunnah and Hadith of the Prophet serve as the most important source of Islamic law after the Qurʾān. In Islam even a prophet is not by himself a legislator; instead, God is ultimately the only legislator (al-Shāriʿ). Muslims believe, however, that, as God’s prophet, Muhammad knew the divine will as it was meant to be codified in Islamic law. His actions and juridical decisions therefore played an indispensable role in the later codification of the Sharīʿah by various legal schools. Muslims believe that Muhammad brought not only the word of God in the form of the Qurʾān to the world but also a divine law specific to Islam, a law whose roots are contained completely in the Qurʾān but whose crystallization was not possible without the words and deeds of the Prophet.
Theology, sometimes called kalām, as a discipline does not play the same central role in Islam as it does in Christianity. Nevertheless, this discipline, usually translated in Western sources as scholastic theology—popularly held to have been founded by ʿAlī—has its roots through ʿAlī in some of Muhammad’s teachings. At the same time, all schools of kalām address the question of revelation and the relation of the words of the Prophet to religious truth on the one hand and rational discourse on those truths on the other. Moreover, if theology is understood to be general religious thought, then Muhammad’s teachings are even more central. There has never been a Muslim religious thinker who has not been deeply influenced by the words of the Prophet, whose presence is felt in all forms of religious teachings throughout the Islamic world. Islamic religious thought, therefore, is inconceivable without the Prophet, just as Christian theology is inconceivable without Jesus.
Muhammad and Sufism
The Sufis have always believed that the reality that constitutes Sufism issued from the inner meaning of the Qurʾān and the inner nature of the Prophet. According to Sufism, Muhammad is at the origin of the silsilah, or the chain of spiritual descent of every Sufi order, and Sufis believe that he was both the perfect prophet and the perfect saint (walī). Upon his death, the prophetic function came to an end, but the saintly power (walāyah/wilāyah) continued and was transmitted through ʿAlī and others to later generations so that the journey along the spiritual path could be made. Sufis, as well as Shīʿites, believe that there is a prophetic light called the Muhammadan Light (al-nūr al-muḥammadī), which, originating from the Prophet, will continue to shine through the later saints and, for the Shīʿites, the imams until the end of the world. Sufis also identify the inner reality of the Prophet, or the Muhammadan Reality (al-ḥaqīqat al-muḥammadiyyah), with God’s first creation, which became finally manifested on earth in his last prophet, who once said, “I was a prophet when Adam was between water and clay.” The love of the Prophet plays an especially central role in Sufism, and litanies consisting of his names and qualities form an integral part of Sufi practice. Indeed, the Muhammadan grace (al-barakāt al-muḥammadiyyah) is said to be nowhere stronger than in the spiritual practices of the Sufis when they celebrate the divine names and seek to remember God with the help of the Prophet. Sufis take great pride in calling themselves “the poor” (al-fuqarāʾ) because Muhammad said, “Poverty is my pride.” The Miʿrāj, or Nocturnal Ascent, of the Prophet is the prototype of all spiritual wayfaring in Islam, and no group in Islamic society has been as conscientious as the Sufis in emulating the Prophet as the perfect saint and what later Sufis were to call the Perfect or Universal Man (al-insān al-kāmil).