The Prophet Muhammad A simple Guide to his Life
The Prophetic Mission
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The second principle is that any concept of the
Prophet’s mission should be determined on the
basis of the fundamental teachings of the Prophet,
rather than of later Islamic history. For basic
teachings are eternal in their nature, whereas
history shapes itself around social or human
circumstances.
For instance, there are certain people who hold that
the order of the prophetic action is
– dawah, hijrat,
jihad,
then the establishment of the state. This
amounts to deriving the mission from history. For,
at no point, do the Qur’an and
Hadith
mention that
the eternal order of the Prophetic mission would be
to first perform
dawah,
then undertake migration,
then perform
jihad
in the sense of doing battle, and
then in the fourth stage establish the Islamic state.
This order has been derived from a historical
sequence of
events as they unfolded, rather than
from the fundamental teachings of the Qur’an and
Hadith.
Contrary to this, the Qur’an tells us that the
Prophet’s mission could have been brought to its
completion even if he had passed away or had been
