Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
9. The Prophetic Method
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Imam Ahmad has related, on the authority of Anas
ibn Malik, that the Prophet used to grant any
request that people made before they accepted
Islam. One person who came to the Prophet was
given a herd of goats so large that they stretched
from one mountain to another. He then returned to
his people and urged them to accept Islam, “for
Muhammad gives in such abundance that one need
never go wanting again.” But, as Ibn Kathir has
pointed out, even if a person came to the Prophet
seeking only the world, before a day had passed he
would undergo a transformation: the Prophet’s
Faith would become dearer to him than all the
world has to offer.
Once the matter of the Thaqif and the Hawazin had
been settled, another even more serious problem
reared its head. The Muslims had accumulated a
massive stock of booty in the victory over the
Hawazin. With great generosity, the Prophet
distributed these spoils among the new Makkan
converts. Some of the Ansar—the people who had
helped the Prophet when he emigrated to their
town—found this hard to bear. It seemed to them
that, now that the Prophet was re-established in his
