Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets — Page 478
MUHAMMAD : SEAL OF THE PROPHETS 478 Muhammad is absolutely justified in so designating himself. He is the first representative of a new and independent religious type. Even today, after a period of development of thirteen centuries, one may clearly discern in genuine Islamic piety the unique ness, which is ultimately derived from its founder’s personal experience of God. W. Montgomery Watt, the well - known Orientalist, has said ( Muhammad at Medina, pp. 334 - 5): We may distinguish three great gifts Muhammad had, each of which was indispensable to his total achievement. First, there is what may be called his gift as a seer. Through him – or on the orthodox Muslim view, through the revelations made through him – the Arab world was given an ideological framework within which the resolution of its social tensions became poss ible. The provision of such a framework involved both insight into the fundamental causes of the social malaise of the time, and the genius to express this insight in a form which would stir the hearer to the depths of his being. The European reader may be put off by the Quran, but it was admirably suited to the needs and conditions of the day. Secondly, there is Muhammad’s wisdom as a statesman. The conceptual structure found in the Quran was merely a framework. The framework had to support a building of concrete policies and concrete institutions. In the