The Living Prophet

Muslims are left without a life raft and must contend with the Prophet as a distant and inaccessible reality, when in fact, that living connection should never have waned.

Almost every Muslim alive knows the story: when the Prophet Muhammad passed away on a ominous, scorching June day in Madina in 632, the shock and grief of his cherished community was palpable. Witnessing scores of people wailing and crying, his first successor and most ardent bossom friend Abu Bakr made a rousing declaration to the people of Madina: “Whoever among you worships Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, then Muhammad has died. Whoever worships God, then God is alive and cannot die. God Almighty said: Muhammad is not but a Messenger. Messengers have passed before him. If he dies or is killed, will you turn back on your heels?” (Qur’an, 3:144).”

Ever since the words were uttered, it is as if the Muslim community has been frozen in the shock of the Prophet’s (physical) passing. Abu Bakr’s words were thunderous, and necessary, in that moment in time. Islam’s emphasis on Tawhid (the Oneness of God) is an absolute and irreomovable edict, and he said those words to prevent a major fitna (strife) in the community. However, the words “Muhammad is dead”, though unintentionally, seemed to thrust into motion a harsh modern monotheism based on the false premise that the Prophet Muhammad has permanently died, just like other, regular people who die.¹ Contemporary Muslims’ ignorance about the implications of the Prophet’s death are catastrophic, because this ignorance infects every aspect of a healthy spiritual life and a viable connection between creation and Creator: one’s faith, creed and spiritual practice risk lifelessness. Without a living spiritual core, Islam risks becoming susceptible to a simple identity marker, or worse, mere myth-making and fodder for ideologues. But it is basic knowledge for any Muslim to know that Messengers, the awliya (friends of God) and martyrs, are not dead, as clearly laid out in this Qur’anic verse:

Do not think of those slain for the cause of God as dead. They are alive with their Lord and receive sustenance from Him. (Qur’an 3:169)

There are abundant Prophetic narrations (hadith) that corroborate this. For example, the Prophet Muhammad said: “Send salutations in abundance on me on Friday, as your sending salutations are presented to me. The Companions inquired: “How is it possible that you receive our salutations when your body will have been decayed? He replied: “Indeed God has made forbidden on the earth that it eats the bodies of the Prophets.”²

The false permanence of the Prophet’s death, and thus access to him—at least for modern Muslims—seems to have died along with him, turning Muslims into Mortalists. Butchering the second part of the shahada, Muslims are left without a life raft and must contend with God and the Prophet as a distant and inaccessible reality, when in fact, that living connection should never have waned. Without it, what is even the point of claiming adherence to a religion? (When religion, in the orignal sense of word, is re-liagre, to re-connect, to remember what has been dis-remembered?)

In an essay on Neo-Sufism in the New Cambridge History of Islam, Bruce Lawrence suggests that the single most important question that demarcates Sufi from non-Sufi Muslims is whether the Prophet Muhammad is alive or dead. Lawrence asserts that Muslims of all generations have held this view that the Prophet is living, yet what distinguishes the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries is that they witnessed a more explicit, and more openly public, awareness of the Prophet as the crucial, “living” link between God and humankind.  Intercession with the Prophet was certainly not a new idea; origins of which could be traced in the works of past mystics such as Ibn ‘Arabī, al-Sutūyī and others. In later centuries (18th onwards) instead of it being a central Islamic edict, it became a secret reserved for the spiritual elite. Therein lies the tragedy of mainstream, contemporary Islam: it is rendered lifeless because their relationship with the Walking Qur’an (the Prophet Muhammad) is bereft of a living connection, much like his companions had when they surrounded him: their hearts would transform by merely being in his presence.

Scholars have argued that the emphasis on Muhammad as a living link in later forms of Sufism is a response to the multiple challenges of an emergent new political orders. In Bruce Lawrence’s view, it is the advent of colonialism, not Wahhabism, that is the impetus for the spread of politically and socially reinvigorated Sufi movements like the spread of the tariqa Muhammadiyya from South Asia to West Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries. Lawrence’s theory holds to some extent, but it does not take into account the colonial strategic interest towards severing politically active, spiritually invigorated Muslims, as they were seen as a threat, and were at the forefront of militaristic resistance to European encroachment (read about Emir Abdul Qadir al-Jaza’eri, for example). In the 20th century, the colonial establishment worked towards casting Sufis as “a sect”: as pacifist, docile, dervishes who have no real use to society, which in turn, propelled Muslim modernist reformers to drink the kool-aid and attack Sufism as a deviant aberration to Islam.

Symbolically, the Prophet Muhammad’s death is still celebrated by racist Islamophobic activists today. Ask any Palestinian in Jerusalem or Hebron, the most common graffiti slur found in Arab-majority neighborhoods such as Shaykh Jarrah is מהמד מאת, which reads “Muhammad maat (is dead)” in Arabic. It is frequently chanted by Zionist mobs who heckle and terrorize native Palestinians.

Anti-Muslims know that the irremovable center for Muslims is Muhammad: this is why they attack him so often and relish in their wicked morally, ethically and spiritually lifeless ideology. Joke’s on them though, poking fun at the Sacred is a sign of their own demise. In return, what of Muslims? This perpetual feeling of being outcasts in this world, this out-of-placeness in this rampant material world is pointing Muslims (and any others sincere about transcendence) to dig deeper. Do they truly know their Prophet as a Living Link? Or has victimhood and mortalism become their religion? Do they feign Muhammadan love as a fig leaf for their weakness, shock and grief over “losing” the Beloved of God, the Best of Creation and the Most Praised One, when he was never lost? Do they forget the Divine command to “know that God’s Messenger is still in your midst?” (Qur’an 49:7)

1. The hadith tradition is rife with such proofs as well. Anas ibn Malik narrates that the Prophet Muhammad said: “The Prophets are alive in their graves performing Salat” (Recorded by al-Bayhaqi in his ‘Hayat al-Anbiya’ and Abu Ya’la in his Musnad, and authenticated by many Hadith scholars, such as: Ibn Hajar, al-Haythami, Ali al-Qari, al-Munawi, al-Shawkani and others)

2. Recorded by Abu Dawud, Nasa’i, Ibn Majah, Darami and others, and authenticated by many, such as Ibn al-Qayyim.