Muhammad in the Bible — Page 16
16 way he did? And, were his enemies, who thirsted for his blood, bound to fail in the way they did? No, neither the Holy Prophet’s success nor the failure of his enemies was an accident. On the other hand, it seems that the Quran had in view the terms of the prophecy in Deuteronomy when it declared before all Arabia and early in the career of the Holy Prophet: And Allah will protect thee from men (5:68). Similarly, addressing the enemies of the Prophet, the Quran declared: He is the Knower of the unseen; and He reveals not His secrets to any one, except him whom He chooses, namely a Messenger of His. And then He causes an escort of guarding angels to go before him and behind him (72:27-28). That is to say, the Prophet, having been charged with an important mission, would not be left unprotected. Enemies would never be able to kill him. These verses proved that the success which the Holy Prophet attained was not an accident of good fortune. He declared early, through revelations received by him from God and recorded to this day in the Quran, that God would protect him from the murderous attacks of his enemies. He warned the world that because he was not a pretender but the Prophet promised in the prophecy in Deuteronomy, he would not be killed. In short, one thousand nine hundred years before the advent of the Prophet of Islam, Moses declared that his own Law was, in the divine scheme, not the last Law; that the world was to have a fuller Law later on; and that, for this, God would send in the Latter Days another Messenger of His. This Messenger was to teach all truths; it was he who was to mark the last stage in the spiritual advance of man. The world had to wait for another book and another Prophet. If, therefore, the Quran and the Holy Prophet have come after the Bible and after the Prophets Moses and Jesus, and if they claim to have come from God as guidance to man, their claim must be treated as just and true. It must be taken as the fulfilment of ancient prophecies. The revelation of the Quran was not a gratuitous revelation, a redundance in the presence of those revelations. Indeed, if the Qur’an had not been revealed, promises made by God through His Messengers would have gone unfulfilled, and the world would have become afflicted with doubt and disbelief.