Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
3. Exemplary Conduct
~ 51 ~
Arrows rained down on the Prophet from the
enemy ranks, but his followers formed a ring
around him, letting the arrows strike their own
bodies. It was as though they were made of wood,
not flesh and blood; indeed the arrows hung from
the bodies of some of them like the thorns of a
cactus tree.
Devotion and veneration of this nature can produce
vanity in a man and engender a feeling of
superiority, but this was not the case with the
Prophet. He lived among others as an equal. No
bitter criticism or provocation would make him lose
his composure. Once a desert-dweller came up to
him and pulled so hard at the sheet he was wearing
that it left a mark on his neck. “Muhammad!” he
said. “Give me two camel-loads of goods, for the
money in your possession is not yours, nor was it
your father’s.” “Everything belongs to God,” the
Prophet said, “and I am His servant.” He then
asked the desert-dweller, “hasn’t it made you
afraid, the way you treated me?” He said not. The
Prophet asked him why. “Because I know that you
do not requite evil with evil,” the man answered.
The Prophet smiled on hearing this, and had one
