PART SIX

WHAT IS PROPHETHOOD
MUHAMMAD ‘alaihis-salâm’ IS THE LAST
PROPHET

Bismi’llâhi ’r-rahmâni ’r-rahîm

FOREWORD

Allâhu ta’âlâ, pitying all the people on the earth, creates and sends useful things to them. In the next world, He will forgive whomever He chooses of those disobedient Believers who are to go to Hell and will bless them with direct access to Paradise. He, alone, is the One who creates every living being, keeps all beings in existence every moment and protects all against fear and horror. Trusting ourselves to the honourable name of Allâhu ta’âlâ, we begin to translate this book.

Infinite gratitude be to Allâhu ta’âlâ! Peace and blessings be upon His most beloved Messenger, Muhammad (‘alaihi ‘s-salâm)! Beneficent prayers be upon the pure Ahl al-Bayt and upon all the just and devoted companions (as-Sahâbat al-kirâm) of this exalted Prophet!

Allâhu ta’âlâ has had great mercy upon His human slaves and wishes them to live in comfort and peace in the world and to attain eternal felicity in the Hereafter. To this end, He has made the most superior and best of mankind into Prophets and, by revealing holy books to them, has shown the way to peace and happiness. He has declared that attaining happiness requires first believing in Him and His Prophets and then obeying the commandments in His holy books. Any peprson who possesses this belief and accepts the commandments is termed a Mu’min (Believer) and Muslim.

To explain the Existence and Oneness of Allâhu ta’âlâ and the way to believe in Prophets, Islamic scholars wrote many books in almost every language. Among the ones that have been written in a compendious, explicit and comprehensible style so as to remove doubts and misgivings, the Arabic book Ithbât an-nubuwwa is very useful. The great Islamic scholar al-Imâm ar-Rabbânî Ahmad al-Fârûqî (quddisa sirruh) wrote this book when he was eighteen years old. It contains selections made by him and their explanations from the last part of the book Sharh-i Mawâqif. It

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was first published together with its Urdu translation in Pakistan. Al-Imâm ar-Rabbânî was born in the city of Sirhind, India, in 971 H. (Hijrî) (1564 A.D.) and passed away there in 1034 H. (1625 A.D.)

We humbly pray so that all people, by avoiding the misleading effects of subversive and deceptive writings, will read this book with concern and common sense, and thereby attain comfort and peace in this world and eternal felicity in the Hereafter.

In the text, the translated âyats of the Qur’ân al-kerîm are given as ma’âl sherîf (meanings concluded by Mufassirs), which may or may not be the same as what Allâhu ta’âlâ means in the âyat.