Our Creator and Sustainer has provided the means to
satisfy all human needs and urges, including the human desire for guidance.
Almighty Allah (SWT) established the institution of prophethood in order to
guide humanity towards the Right Ideal. This is because the need to know the
highest ideal of Beauty and Perfection, and the urge to love and worship that
ideal, is the most irresistible desire of the human soul. A prophet or nabi is
a person who is endowed
with the knowledge, through Divine revelation or Wahee, that the only
true Ideal worthy of our love and worship is none other than Almighty Allah
(SWT) Himself. The system of life based on this Ideal is characterized by an
unconditional surrender to the will of the Creator, and this is what every
prophet has preached to his people.
According to some traditions, there have been 124
thousand prophets in all, 313 of which were also messengers. Although the
Qur’an does not clarify in an explicit manner the distinction between a
prophet and a
messenger, and hence
there are a number of opinions on this point, the most
logical explanation in our opinion is as follows. We believe that a prophet, or
nabi, who was specifically appointed by Almighty Allah (SWT) to guide a
particular nation or community, got promoted to the rank of His envoy, in a
manner of speaking, and therefore he would become a messenger, or rasool. This
means that all messengers were
chosen by Almighty
Allah (SWT) from
among the prophets; that all
messengers were prophets, but not all prophets were messengers.
The Holy Qur’an
tells us that
after the advent
of a messenger or rasool to a
given nation, the rise and fall of that nation became linked
solely to its collective
response to the Divine messenger. If the people surrendered to the
commands of their Creator and obeyed His messenger, they enjoyed peace and
prosperity and material comforts. But if they showed ingratitude, and refused
to follow the Divine message, then they became liable for the most severe
punishment from Almighty Allah (SWT).
A community or a group of people who thus rejected the
Divine messenger sent towards them became, in the sight of Allah (SWT),
an impediment to the overall
evolution of humanity towards the
ultimate realization of the Right Ideal. Therefore, the Divine plan for the
human race demanded that such a useless and spiritually barren people be removed
from the face of the earth, once and for all. This can be described as the law
of “annihilation of the worst.”
In this context, nearly identical stories of six
different nations appear in the Qur’an, each of which was guilty of rejecting
their Divinely appointed messengers. All of these nations were destroyed and
eliminated as a punishment for their sins and transgressions. These condemned
nations included, in chronological
sequence, the people
of Prophet Nuh
(AS), a nation called Aad to which
Prophet Hud (AS) was sent, a nation known as Thamud to which Prophet Saleh (AS)
was appointed, the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which were assigned to
Prophet Lut (AS),
the people of
Prophet Sho‘aib (AS),
and finally the Egyptian Pharaoh and his followers who rejected Prophet
Musa (AS). Of course, there may be numerous other nations who met this fate;
although only six of these are mentioned in the Holy Qur’an.
It should be kept in mind that such clear and open
manifestations of the wrath of Almighty Allah (SWT) used to appear in
the past only
after one of
His messengers had explicitly and unambiguously communicated
the Divine message to a particular group of people, and they remained
persistent in refusing to surrender before the will of their Lord. The Qur’an
is very emphatic on this point:
We never punish till We have sent
a messenger. (Al- Isra 17:15)
But your Lord does not destroy
habitations without having sent a messenger to their metropolis to read out Our
commandments to them. (Al-Qasas 28:59)
The converse of the above mentioned Divine Law is also
true: A nation that unconditionally accepts the Sovereignty of Almighty Allah
(SWT), and acts accordingly, is blessed with all that is good and desirable in this
world. This has been described by the Qur’an in several ways. Here are two
examples:
And if they had followed the
teachings of the Torah and the Gospel, and what has been sent down to them by
their Lord, they would surely have enjoyed (blessings) from the heavens above
and the earth below their feet. Some among them are moderate, but evil is what
most of them do. (Al-Ma’ida 5:66)
But if the people of these
regions had believed and feared God, We would surely have showered on them
blessings of the heavens and the earth; but they only denied, and We punished
them for their deeds. (Al- A‘raf 7:96)
The Qur’an maintains that the real and everlasting
rewards for believing in and obeying the commands of Allah (SWT) will manifest
themselves in the next world, the Hereafter, or Al- Aakhira. However, there is
a great deal to gain in this life as well, in
the form of
social harmony, peace,
and general prosperity.
For those who do good there is
good in the world, but certainly the abode of the next is better. (Al-Nahl 16:30)
