Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets — Page 1
1 Intro d uction The study of a prophet’s life is necessarily concerned not only with the physical but also with the moral and the spiritual; indeed, primarily with the moral and the spiritual as illustrated in the physical and the material. Muhammad was a human being like the rest of us. He was commanded in the Holy Quran (18:111): Tell them: I am but a man like unto you; it is revealed to me that your God is One God. So let him who hopes to meet his Lord work righteousness and let him associate no one in the worship of his Lord. An exemplar must be a man in all respects like his fellow men. A superhuman being cannot be an exemplar for human beings. His faculties, capacities, sentiments, reactions, reflexes, and all his values would be different from those of men. Even if he could understand men in every respect, men would not be able to understand, appraise and assess him completely. Thus, being a man like unto other men, Muhammad fulfilled the first and most essential condition of being an exemplar for other men. He was no differe nt from them; he had similar faculties and capacities