Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Prophethood: An Ongoing Phenomenon


Allah chooses His Messengers from among angels and from among men. Surely, Allah is All-Hearing, All-Seeing (22:76)

Simple grammatical deconstruction is sufficient to understand this verse. The key word here is yastafi. The tense it is used in is mudari. Which is applicable to present and future and translates to "he chooses".

The next verse begins in the same tense, “(He) knows what is behind them and what is in front of them ...” Just like Allah “knows” in the present and in the future, so does he “choose” prophets among angels and men, in the present and in the future (as he did in the past).

Arguing that future is somehow excluded in case of Prophethood is banging ones head against a brick wall. Head will always come worse off and the wall will prevail. Verb in the form of mudari includes the future and there is no way around that.

It is another discussion as to what types of prophets have existed in the past and what type of prophets may come after Prophet Muhammadsaw, who is the Khataman-Nabiyeen (Seal of the Prophets). That subject is not touched upon in this verse.

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