The Final Prophet: Proof of the Prophethood of Muhammad

By Mohammad Elshinawy

FOURTEEN CENTURIES AGO, the final revelation descended upon Muhammad (PBUH). This message, Islam, spread rapidly across Arabia to nearby lands, and across the world. Today, over a billion people believe in and follow his message. But who was Muhammad (PBUH) and how can we develop certainty that he was the true messenger of God?

In this book, Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy shares the multitude of proof surrounding Muhammad’s  prophethood. There are abundant comprehensive rational pathways that lead to this one certain conclusion: Muhammad (PBUH) was indeed the final messenger of God to this world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kube Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Oct 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781847742087

Mohammad Elshinawy

Mohammad Elshinawy graduated in English Literature from Brooklyn College and Islamic Studies from Mishkah University. He is the Religious Director of Jesus Son of Mary Mosque (Pennsylvania), Research Fellow at Yaqeen Institute and Instructor at Mishkah University.

Book preview

The Final Prophet: Proof of the Prophethood of Muhammad g

First published in England by

Kube Publishing Ltd.

Markfield Conference Centre

Ratby Lane Markfield

Leicestershire, LE67 9SY

United Kingdom

Tel: [phone]

Website: www.kubepublishing.com

Email: [e-mail]

© Mohammad Elshinawy 2022 All Rights Reserved

The right of Mohammad Elshinawy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988.

Cataloguing in-Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-84774-207-0

ISBN Ebook: 978-1-84774-208-7

Cover Design: Rola El Ayoubi

Creative Direction: Nida Khan

Illustrations: Rola El Ayoubi & Hafiizh Hamid

Editor: Justin Parrott

Reviewed by: Sh. Ismail Kamdar, et al.

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Quenching a Parched World

The Proof Within Us

The Multiple Forms of Proof

1Humanity’s Need for Prophethood

1. The Spiritual Necessity of Prophethood

2. The Moral Necessity of Prophethood

3. The Historical Necessity of Prophethood

4. The Biblical Necessity of Prophethood

i. A Gentile Prophet Like Moses

ii. John the Baptist and the Awaited Prophet

iii. God’s Servant Where Kedar Lives

iv. Jesus and the Comforter

v. Zamzam and the Flourishing City

2The Prophet’s Character

1. His Honesty and Integrity

2. His Simplicity and Humility

3. His Mercy and Compassion

4. His Clemency and Forgiveness

5. His Bravery and Valour

6. His Generosity

7. His Perseverance and Trust in God

3The Prophet’s Accomplishments

1. A Love Larger than Life

2. History’s Greatest Success Story

3. Restoring the Unity of God

4. Revolutionizing Human Rights

5. Molding a Model Generation

4The Prophet’s Message

1. Pure Monotheism

2. Faith in Destiny

3. The Ritual Prayer ( Ṣalāh )

4. Devotional Fasting ( Ṣiyām )

5. Prohibiting Extramarital Relations

6. Prohibiting Interest-Based Lending

7. Prohibiting Alcohol Consumption

8. Healthy Eating and Personal Hygiene

9. Science and Medicine

5The Prophet’s Prophecies

1. The Byzantines will Rebound

2. The Abode of Abū Lahab

3. The Globalization of Islam

4. Undeterred by Time or Distance

5. Six in Sequence

6. Counting the Conquests

7. Security will Prevail

8. The Last Emperors

9. A Whisper in His Daughter’s Ear

10. The Longest Arm

11. The Martyrdom of ʿ Umar and ʿ Uthmān

12. Inevitable Infighting

13. Tensions Among the Prophet’s Household

14. The Fate of ʿ Ammār

15. ʿ Alī Suppressing the Kha ̄ rijites

16. Repairing the Rift

17. Cycling Back to Virtue is Promised

18. Asmā’ Sends a Tyrant Home

19. Umm Ḥarām’s Date with Destiny

20. Preempting the Questioner

21. An Unforgettable Sermon

22. The Emergence of Selective Textualism

23. A Horrific Wildfire

24. Prosperity and Hedonism Before the End Times

25. Competing in Materialism

26. The Unavoidability of Interest ( Riba ̄ )

27. An Increase in Brutality and Killing

28. The Plunge into Immorality

29. Muslims Becoming Easy Prey

30. The Immortality of His Nation

31. Never Thought You Would Speak

6The Prophet’s Physical Miracles

1. The Possibility of Miracles

2. The Demonstrability of Miracles

3. Specific Miracles Performed by the Prophet

i. Splitting the Moon

ii. The Night Journey

iii. The Weeping Tree

iv. The Talking Stones

v. Increasing the Water Supply

vi. Increasing the Food Supply

vii. Answered Prayers

7The Inimitable Qur’an

1. A Literary Masterpiece

i. Muhammad or Shakespeare?

2. Knowledge of the Inaccessible Past

i. Pharaoh’s Body Will Survive

ii. The Heavens Did Not Grieve for Pharaoh

iii. Joseph’s King Wasn’t a Pharaoh

iv. Was Muhammad Spoon-Fed Biblical History?

3. Preserved as Promised

4. An Extraordinary Potency

5. Echoes of a Prophet

A Parting Word on the Journey of Faith

Bibliography

English Sources

Arabic Sources

Index

Foreword

All praise be to Allah. Noticing firsthand the passion that Shaykh Mohammad Elshinawy had for the subject of this book, I knew its intellectual vigour would be mixed with the author’s passion to produce a masterpiece.

There is no subject I can think of that needs our attention and dedication more than the proof of prophethood. In an age of uncertainty, scepticism and cynicism, there is nothing more important than helping people build certainty in a most salient truth: the prophethood of Muhammad g. It is that certainty that will open wide for them the gates to inner peace and happiness in this life and the one to come.

The book covers a wide array of proof from the historical necessity of the Prophet’s dispatchment to the greatest of his miracles—the inimitable Qur’an—without neglecting his character, accomplishments, message, prophecies, and physical miracles. It has the necessary academic integrity without its emotional austerity. It is detailed, yet not superfluous.

Whether you place more importance on the evidentialist or naturalist approach to faith in God, the proof of prophethood should be an integral part of faith in Islam. A probabilistic approach using inductive reasoning does not preclude the attainment of certainty through it. If the arguments are strong and plentiful, then certainty can still be achieved. It can then be further grounded by spiritual experience and enlightenment.

In addition to the importance of the subject, I also find great pleasure in writing a foreword for this book because of its author, of whom I have great expectations, and I hope that Allah will use him in serving the cause of Islam in this land and around the globe.

May God’s blessings and peace be on the one He sent as a mercy for all creatures, the seal of prophets and greatest of messengers, Muhammad g.

Hatem al-Haj1, MD, PhD

Dean of Mishkah University

Resident Fatwa Committee, AMJA

1It was originally a presentation delivered by Dr Hatem al-Haj in Edison, New Jersey, USA, that inspired this book. Four years of gathering and writing later, this journey culminated with the meticulous, perfectionist critique of a world class historiographer who insisted upon anonymity and improved it beyond measure. My debt to these two scholars can never be repaid, while also acknowledging the gracious contributions of my other colleagues from the Yaqeen Institute and elsewhere.

Preface

Quenching a Parched World

It was too beautiful a day to go inside our building just yet, so my mother and I sat together on the brick ledge surrounding our neighbour’s blooming garden. We lived in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in New York City, where over 90 per cent of the neighborhood is comprised of Hasidic Jews, who seemed as committed to their Judaism as we were to our Islam. That must have contributed to the concerns that crowded my thoughts back then, along with the popular sentiment I encountered everywhere that offered another take on religion: that it is irrelevant. It has been over twenty years since that moment, but I have yet to forget my sense of anxiousness as I sat there, gathering the courage to confront my mother with the audacious question. But my thirst for an answer, and my confidence in the ocean of affection that sat beside me, catapulted the words from my mouth: ‘Mama, how do we know Islam is right?’

She smiled and locked eyes with me. I proceeded to say: ‘Think about it. Every parent tells their child, This is the true religion, so what makes us so sure that we are the ones who are actually right?’ What she said next was something along the lines of ‘just have faith’. It was the very thing I was afraid to hear, especially as an inquisitive thirteen-year-old in the postmodern world, let alone a Muslim in New York City who would soon experience Islamophobic sentiments being ramped up by the 9/11 attacks that would occur only a few miles away. But in hindsight, it was exactly what I needed to embark on my own faith journey and endure that coming wave of animosity towards Islam and Muslims. Ultimately, it generated this very book you hold, a resource I wish was available when I first explored the world’s major religions, assuming that they were all, without exception, taken on blind faith, irreconcilable with a critically thinking mind, and subsequently unworthy of being held on to when socially inconvenient.

I pray this addition to the English library can mitigate the wildfires that are ablaze in many of our hearts and homes today. May it heal some of modernity’s wounds with the coolness of conviction, and quench some of the uncertainty that leaves our lives parched for security, fulfillment and balanced direction. God knows that for a myriad of reasons, authorship is uncomfortable territory for me, but how can a person sit idle when the virtuous hallmarks of humanity are increasingly trampled beneath the feet of nonreligion, and when the cravings of our caged spirits continue to scorch us at every turn? I pray this book offers some assistance to those who struggle with their own faith or that of their loved ones, those of whom I meet almost daily in my community work or online, and the many more I hear about but cannot reach individually. It is in this vein that I felt called to brave the unfamiliar seas of authorship, and I ask Allah to forgive where I may have erred en route.

This book seeks to highlight humanity’s undying need for prophethood, and the many compelling justifications for the prophethood of Muhammad g in particular. By doing so, it subsequently aims to offer a coherent proposition on the true purpose of life that leads to an impregnable inner peace which is only possible through beholding the sunrise of certitude firsthand.

Independent works written on the topic of the proof of prophethood (dalā’il al-nubuwwah) have always been part of the Muslim intellectual tradition, from as early as the eighth or ninth century. That this literature has been a mainstay of Islamic scholarship is a powerful testament to its commitment to rigorously establishing the bases of its truth claims. Abū Manṣūr al-Baghdādī (d. 1037) reports that Imam al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820) was the first to compile a book on the proof establishing the prophethood of Muhammad g, as the Brahmins had rejected the possibility of prophecy or divine revelation.1 There are over ninety works from this canon whose titles are known until today, the most famous of them being Dalā’il al-Nubuwwah by Imam al-Bayhaqī (d. 1066). The aim of these authors was to increase the believers in their conviction, dispel doubts regarding Muhammad’s g authenticity, and consolidate this evidence in a readily accessible location for anyone inquiring about the truth of his prophethood.

The Proof Within Us

The primary proof of prophethood is God Himself, for it is He who guides us to intuitively seek Him out, and subsequently investigate the claimants to prophethood for an opportunity to better connect with Him. All people are instinctually driven to believe in the existence of God and have an innate impulse to discover this higher power which they sense so strongly. While not every human civilization was driven to develop craftsmanship or formal education, each one committed itself to some form of religious practice. People have done this throughout recorded history, and thus anthropologists have yet to find an indigenous society of atheists; some scientists today argue that belief in God or a higher power is hardwired into our genes.2 Even communists who disavowed religion still deified Lenin by putting his statue everywhere and reciting his works as if they were scripture. Similarly, modern atheists exhibit a consistent pattern of quasi-religious behavior and are often found seeking alternate forms of spirituality. For instance, only about one million US adults identify as pagan or Wiccan, yet a staggering 60 per cent of Americans ascribe to at least one ‘New Age’ belief such as belief in astrology and/or psychics, or the belief that objects like crystals contain spiritual energy.3 Ultimately, this metaphysical yearning we all experience is a powerful, universal force, created within us by God, that drives us to seek out the prophets He elected to guide us to Him. Their message regarding God, His greatness, His guidance, and the reality of this life and the next resonates so deeply within us that we find ourselves compelled towards faith.

We are not just ‘driven to God’ by an inner surety about Him and the impetus to connect with Him, but also by a fascinating ‘trust’ in our ability to find Him. People may not appreciate that while reason may argue for God existing, being wise, and being purposeful, it cannot explain why our minds are reliable instruments of reason in the first place. When the rationalist René Descartes embarked on his intellectual journey, he realized that unbridled scepticism would drown him in uncertainty. Descartes then sought a safeguard that would ensure that our existence is real, as are our senses that perceive, as are our minds that process. How can we dismiss the possibility that we are merely a figment of an extraterrestrial creature’s imagination, and what guarantee is there that our thinking is not manipulated by evil demons? Descartes was forced to conclude that ‘trust’ was a fundamental necessity here, without which every mode of thought, investigation, and analysis would be pointless. His ‘I think therefore I am’ proposition was adrift without this anchor, and nothing qualified to ground it but God Himself. In Descartes’s framing, we must accept that God cannot be a deceiver because deception is an imperfection, and since He has equipped us with the faculties to arrive at certain truths, then we should pursue truth. He writes,

[T]hat the sun is of such and such a figure, etc., or which are less clearly and distinctly conceived, such as light, sound, pain and the like, it is certain that although they are very dubious and uncertain, yet on the sole ground that God is not a deceiver, and that consequently, He has not permitted any falsity to exist in my opinion which He has not likewise given me the faculty of correcting, I may assuredly hope to conclude that I have within me the means of arriving at the truth even here.4

While being given the ability to correct ‘any falsity’ is an overestimation of the human intellect, Descartes was correct in realizing that without first conceding that God is responsible for our capacity to think straight, no rational arguments can follow. When skeptics seek an explanation for God, when God is the explanation for us, circular reasoning becomes inescapable. This is why one of God’s Divine names in the Qur’an is al-Ḥaqq: the Ultimate Reality, the One without whom no truth or reality is possible.5 Critical thinkers will recognize this as their indispensable philosophical stronghold, a refuge against dogmatism, and the bedrock upon which all empirical and rational proof must stand. It is their only guarantee that polemical acrobatics and fancy language will never become a Trojan horse that breaches their defenses, corrupts their worldview and renders them powerless prey before the fangs of radical skepticism.6

Hence, it is ultimately God who created within us knowledge of Him, an insatiable appetite to connect with Him, and a confidence in our ability to investigate the proof offered by anyone who claims to speak in His name.

The Multiple Forms of Proof

It is from God’s mercy that He sent with each prophet and messenger signs that were relevant to his context, and He surrounded Muhammad g with a plethora of proof, for he was God’s ‘mercy to the worlds’, and hence had to be relevant not only to all at his time but also for all time to come. The variety of forms of proof are what make them relatable to every era, culture, and mindset. During the Prophet Muhammad’s g lifetime, some accepted his ministry after one glance at his face. ʿAbdullāh ibn Salām  said, ‘I immediately knew that this was not the face of a liar.’7 Another was brought to firm conviction after hearing a few short statements espousing the values of Islam. Ṭufayl ibn ʿAmr  said, ‘I have never heard anything superior or more balanced than this.’8 Others confirmed his prophethood based on his reputation for being truthful. The leadership of Quraysh said, after living forty years with him, ‘We have experienced nothing but honesty from you.’9 Others believed after witnessing miracles, understanding that nothing ordinary could have explained these astonishing occurrences. By this variety, a nomadic shepherd in the Himalayas can follow any number of pathways to certainty, as can the ivory tower philosopher, as can the buzzing hordes under the skyscrapers of New York City, as can the banana workers in Ecuador.

God also made the proof that verifies Muhammad’s g prophethood crystal clear, so that any honest seeker can recognize them. As for those who obsess over the material world, or those who give precedence to their social relationships over their supreme Creator, or those whose self-conceit has blinded them to the flaws of their arguments, they will only find clouded judgment. In many of these cases, their flawed justifications may go unnoticed even by themselves, for people have always been able to lock themselves in echo chambers, surrender to groupthink, and effectively silence their consciences and the guilt of denying the undeniable. As Allah says, ‘And [even] if We opened to them a gate from the heaven and they continued therein to ascend, they would say, "Our eyes have only been dazzled. Rather, we are a people affected by magic.’’’10

In Islam, believing in all the prophets and messengers of God is a fundamental requirement of valid faith, and Muhammad g is certainly no exception to that rule. Allah says, ‘Muhammad is not the father of [any] one of your men, but [he is] the Messenger of Allah and the last of the prophets. And ever is Allah, of all things, Knowing.’11

Given this verse, whoever believes in Allah’s words must accept that Muhammad g was His Final Prophet and messenger, and, conversely, whoever rejects Muhammad g has disbelieved in the One who sent him. But in case a person is still investigating the Qur’an, we will first begin with why prophethood in general is necessary, why Muhammad g in particular was most certainly a prophet of God, and then conclude by establishing the divine origins of the Qur’an.

1Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Manāqib al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī, al-Kitāb al-Musammā Irshād al-Ṭālibīn ilā al-Manhaj al-Qawīm (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al- ʻ Ilmīyah, 2015), 85.

2Dean H. Hamer, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes . (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 6.

3Claire Gecewicz, ‘New Age’ Beliefs Common Among Both Religious and Nonreligious Americans,’ Pew Research Center , October 1, 2018.

4René Descartes, Elizabeth S. Haldane, and G R. T. Ross. Philosophical Works: Rendered into English (Cambridge: University Press, 1911), 191-192.

5( al-Furqān 24: 25)

6See: Nazir Khan, ‘Atheism and Radical Skepticism: Ibn Taymiyyah’s Epistemic Critique,’ Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research , July 7, 2020.

7Muhammad ibn ʿ Īsā al-Tirmidhī, Sunan al-Tirmidhī (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1998), 4:233 #2485; authenticated by al-Tirmidhī in the comments.

8ʿAbdul-Malik ibn Hishām, Al-Sīrah al-Nabawiyyah (Cairo: Maktabat wa Maṭba ʻ at Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1955), 1:323.

9Muhammad ibn Ismā ʻ īl al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Beirut: Dār Ṭawq al-Najāh, 2002), 6:111 #4770.

10 ( al-Ḥijr 15: 14 – 15)

11 ( al-Aḥzāb 33: 40)

1

Humanity’s Need for Prophethood

1. The Spiritual Necessity of Prophethood

Within us all is a restless craving for spiritual fulfillment. When ignored, the spirit experiences intense thirsts which send it chasing one mirage after another, each offering it momentary hope of an oasis before yet another letdown. This is the tragedy of the human condition whenever it seeks inner peace from the outer world, or seeks to self-actualize through carnal pursuits, when it was created to transcend all that for a higher purpose: sincere devotion to God. Allah says in the Qur’an, ‘And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me.’1

Servitude to God, not just the inborn recognition of His existence, is therefore not only a duty but also a fundamental human need. It is necessary to nourish our spirit just as food and oxygen are necessary to nourish our body. It