Masood N. Khan M.D.

Muslims like to proudly claim that Islam is the final message of divine guidance delivered to mankind. Being generally bereft of critical thinking, they have blindly convinced themselves of the truth of this proclamation.

If humanity has been receiving messages of divine guidance throughout history, delivered by Prophets, only to go astray with time and become ready for a renewed message, why this process should suddenly come to a stop?. How could one logically explain it.? Bold claim such as this, made on behalf of God, puts Muslims under pressing obligation to defend it with a damn legit explanation.

Islamic religious scholars have come up with theories to uphold this claim and, regardless of what sect or school of thought they belong to, Muslims have generally accepted them as true. Some of their explanations as given below are only sustained by a thinly stretched logic while others simply are more of an avouchment of the divine order than any substantiated logic.

• The humanity at the time the ‘Final Message’ was delivered, had attained the zenith of its intellectual and social evolution and of its accompanying challenges. Accordingly the divine message that came to address those challenges had to be final and any message to come afterwards, would only be superfluous. An amusing example has been given to explain it geometrically, whereby the final message was compared to the diameter of a circle making all other lines across the circle, each representing a divine message, less than complete. It is a charlatanic explanation that so called religious scholars have unabashedly extended to equally charlatanic recipients. To say that humanity had attained its zenith of evolution at the time of the Prophet is simply nonsense.

• Since the Prophet has been declared in Quran as the last Prophet or ‘the seal of the Prophets’ as some have understood it, the message delivered through him had to be not only final, but also universal in that it was addressed to all mankind for all time. In order to corroborate this, it is pointed out that the Prophet’s personality as attested by the people around him, was a complete personification of the divine message. This would make him an example for all humanity and for generations to come, obviating any need for another prophet with another message.

• By an authentic saying of the Prophet, recorded in Bukhari, supposedly the most reliable and authentic collection of his sayings, he was reported to have said that in relation to earlier Prophets, his example was like the last missing brick in the structure of a building that was interposed at its needed place to make the building complete. Therefore by default, the divine message he delivered was also final and the guidance it contained complete.

• God has declared in the Quran that He was going to preserve it until the end of the world. This would clearly attest to a divine plan to provide guidance through it to people for all time, implicitly making the message permanent and final.

• Since no other Prophet with an authentic divine message has come after the Prophet of Islam, by an inverse logic, he would remain the Final Prophet with the Final Message..

One can ignore these explanations and their faint logic. It is perhaps more logical to examine the message itself for its substance and value so as to validate such a claim, than sorting out the reasons to justify it.

The final message would obviously mean the belief that: A. Prophet of Islam is the final prophet. B. The divine scripture (Al Quran) is the Final Scripture and C. The guidance enshrined in Quran is complete and final.

For these components of the claim, to be valid, Muslims have to realize that Quran should be an everlasting source of divine guidance for mankind and the Prophet’s example should be its everlasting practical demonstration. This would mean that both, the Quran and the Prophet’s model have to remain permanently adept at addressing the moral challenges one could confront trying to live a divinely guided life. In other words, regardless of any explanation, theological or otherwise, The Final Message should be able to provide the divine guidance that can transcend time, place and generations. It should possess an innate faculty of being eternally effective and relevant, just as it was when first presented .to mankind fourteen hundred years ago with revolutionary success. Quran and the model of the Prophet’s life should prove germane and felicitous for all time, which is only possible if they have an inherently built ability to dynamically upgrade with time. This assertion is easier made than proved for it creates a big challenge that needs to be wisely understood and resolved. How can a message, delivered 1400 years ago, to people with a primitive social structure, be applied to the life today and at the same time be projected to the future with the same effect that it had originally.

Unfortunately, Muslims have failed to even realize that this is a challenge, much less facing it and trying to resolve it. They have very indolently tried to ‘copy and paste’ the interpretations of Quranic verses and Prophet’s words as understood in his time, to the life today. This is akin to escaping the challenge, not resolving it. It is bound to create unsurmountable contradictions and incompatibilities making the whole message ineffectual and impractical. Muslims feeling comfortable with the copy and paste approach in understanding the message underscoring an idiotic reverence for traditionalism, is a disparate mismatch to its desired value. It only deprives the message of its expected potential to produce results.

At its origin, The Final Message, besides being relevant to its time and to the culture it addressed, needed a strong structure with a great deal of regimental discipline in order to indoctrinate its recipients into a new lifestyle with a new understanding of the infrangible human rights and high moral values. To make it relevant to the present time, it needs an upgraded understanding that includes contextual flexibility and meaningful applicability, more than outward structure of overemphasized dos and don’ts. Lack of realization of this change, has become a significant factor in Muslims’ failure to bring about in themselves a consistent and dynamic moral transformation – the very purpose the divine message was supposed to fulfill in order to be the Final Message.

As things exist today, Muslims’ inability to rehabilitate their understanding of Deen has reduced Islam to a mere religion like any other, with no extraordinary merit that would qualify it to be the Final Message. This is manifested by mindless rigidity, shallow ritualism, regressed mindset and a defensive understanding of their faith emerging out of their insecurity. It gives them an urge to keep the message unevolved. In this regard, unfortunately the religious scholars, for lack of appreciation of the demands of an evolved and changed world, are in the forefront. They have been quite ineffective despite their long and redundantly emotional lectures delivered to herdlike crowds applauding them unthinkingly. Since faith traditionally has played a great role in exerting a profound influence in shaping the social and cultural characteristics of Muslims, such a situation has certainly become an impediment to their moral and temporal growth. Unfortunately. even the modern scholars born and brought up in the West, are unable to critically assess with intellectual courage and incisiveness, the dangerous effects of the ill-advised traditionalism in interpreting Islam today.

This is Islam’s self-imposed and tragic dissociation with reality, a kind of religious schizophrenia that probably has been the most impeding factor in the moral and spiritual progress of its adherents, not to mention their utter dependence on other people for their material development.

If this degenerate relationship with the message is not stopped it will fail the demands and challenges of today’s world, and devoid of solutions and unable to produce desired results, the final message will very likely be reduced to a numinous document of the past wrapped in a shroud of holiness.

Correction could start in the first place, with a deep conviction that the message does not become final just by a verbal claim, but rather by its ability to prove its transcendental value. Any message deemed to be the ultimate one, should be able to unfold into new meanings commensurate with changing time. It should be able to effectively address the changes brought by the natural evolution of humanity. It should be able to prove to the world that the Quran continually upgrades itself into new modes of guidance and Prophet’s life continually bears them out.

• The new solutions that Quran presents and the messages of moral poise that Prophet’s example would relay to today’s human being, need to be actively sought with insight and incisiveness, discarding this fear that if Quran and Prophet’s life are not interpreted exactly as they were fourteen hundred years ago, they will deface the faith and will result in some kind of blasphemy. This endeavor of finding new solutions should most emphatically include a vigorous scrutiny of today’s religious scholars, and dismissal of their undeserved importance. By their regressive approach, these scholars have kept up a vicious cycle of glorifying the past and causing an inflexible mindset maladjusted to the present and the future.

Quran is addressed to the common man with a sincere and seeking heart, not to the scholars tasking them to give their own interpretation to the people. All educated Muslims with some basic proficiency in Arabic and with the help of available translations of Quran, should be able to seek the guidance contained in it independent of the scholars.

• Muslims will have to realize that underlying all the acts and sayings of the Prophet there are messages of guidance with immense moral value even though they could be time-bound, situation-bound or driven by the cultural norms of his time, and might not be relevant and applicable today. They may still contain a moral lesson in spite of such limitations. For example, his mode of dress represented the style of his time and need not be copied, yet it has an underlying moral message that modesty and decency in one’s dress needs to be guarded. The categorical injunctions in Quran to obey the Prophet, in essence, should mean to follow him with insight and sagacity, not copying him under the illusion of piety. In trying to understand him as a moral guide, it is important to put oneself in his shoes and think as to how he would have reacted to a similar situation today in order to convey the same moral message.

“The Excellent Model” as Quran describes him demands such a deep understanding of his words and actions. A very constricted and literalist understanding of his personality only makes a mockery of his words and renders a great disservice to him.

• Muslims should also realize that only 10% of Quranic content is about clearly defined dos and don’ts what is called as Fiqh or Law. That means 90% of Quran is about moral principles dealing with beliefs, relation with God, kindness compassion and honesty in human relations and honoring of human rights. The small portion of Quran that actually constitutes Fiqh (the law) is in the divine wisdom, enough to shape one’s life righteously. But unfortunately it has been converted into a huge edifice of hair-splitting dos and don’ts based almost exclusively on a literalist understanding of the reported sayings of the Prophet, and not on their contextual interpretations. Even though a meticulous process to determine the authenticity of his sayings was put in place in the early period of Islamic history, it was not before two hundred years that their compilations in the so-called authentic books of Hadiths came into existence. Before they were compiled, the fabrication and misreporting entering into their oral transmission is simply impossible to rule out. It has further enhanced the interplay of a strong human element in the manufacturing of overexpanded dos and don’ts. This has raised the question about their relevance and applicability today. There is great need to reinterpret the authenticity of the sayings of the Prophet on the basis of their relevance to the present time and their potential to morally elevate today’s human society rather than on the basis of their strength of transmission. The Fiqh therefore should be always amendable with time and with evolutionary changes in human life unless its rulings are categorically dictated by the divine injunctions in Quran.

To sum up, in order to claim that Islam is ‘the Final Message’ , Muslims have to have a new understanding of faith that is based upon evolved interpretation of Quran and Hadith. It should have the capacity to dynamically guide humanity today and for generations to come. The message of Islam is final because the Quran can unfold into new solutions for new problems as and when they emerge and Prophet’s personality is a dynamic model for people of all generations. Such an understanding of his life will entail the notion that he needs to be followed not copied. The claim of the finality of the message will be validated only by its ability to consistently transform human character and behavior. One cannot say that a machine is its ultimate version unless it is capable of bringing forth quality products that are permanently useful.