A feature of the modern approach to Islam is to historicize rulings and limit their applications to the imagined context in which they arose. This goes beyond recognition of the particularities surrounding a ruling to the degree that allows one to extract the principles upon which it stands in order to properly apply it today through analogical reasoning. Rather, it is to dismiss the application of the ruling altogether because it is assumed to fail the “relevance” test. Modern calls to reform Islam are based on the idea that as the world has “progressed” the religion has remained stagnant, which has resulted in the malaise that Muslims experience in the modern world. No source of Islamic law has received the onslaught of modernist attacks as the Sunnah of the Beloved ﷺ. This is sometimes done by rejecting reports as fabricated and sewing doubt into the reliability of the whole corpus of Hadith literature, or by attributing statements and behaviour of the Beloved ﷺ to Arab culture or to the primitive nature of scientific knowledge at his time when the authenticity of reports is undeniable. At the heart of this is the assumption that the Beloved ﷺ was acting out of his own whims when it comes to what he commanded, subject to societal standards and limits of material knowledge of his time, and should be viewed as a passive vehicle to deliver the Quran to humanity.
The Quran clarifies the nature of the Beloved ﷺ’s behaviour in Surah an-Najm: “Your companion does not err, nor does he go astray, nor does he speak out of desire – it is naught but Revelation that is revealed.” [53:2-4] Furthermore, when Lady Aisha RA was asked about the character of the Beloved ﷺ she said, “His character was the Quran.” [al-Mustadrak] In other words, if one wants to see the Quran manifesting in a human life and live in accordance with its teachings, the Beloved ﷺ is the literal embodiment that we must look to. As God declares in Surah al-Ahzab, “Certainly you have in the Messenger of God an excellent example for the one who hopes in God and the latter day and remembers God much.” [33:21]
In his book Islam and the Destiny of Man, Charles le Gai Eaton expounds on the nature of the Beloved ﷺ and the role he plays in the world as a means to connecting with God and attaining the necessary insight to understand the essential reality of existence:
Adam was taught the names of all things by God, and Adam was – according to the Islamic perspective – a Prophet; Muhammad received the Qurān from the same source, the only source from which true knowledge may be derived, and he was the last of the Prophets to follow in Adam’s footsteps. If the Muslim is to tap that same source and become ‘one who understands’, he has no choice but to model himself upon this ‘perfect examplar’, imitating Muhammad so far as he is able, both in his character and his mode of action. Since the Prophet is ‘closer to the believers than their [own] selves’ (Q.33.6), it can be said that he is the believer’s alter ego or – to take this a step further – more truly ‘oneself’ than the collection of fragments and contrary impulses which we commonly identify as the ‘self’. [P 200]
The purpose of our presence in this world is to know God, which can only be attained through aligning ourselves with God’s will through worship of Him. On the verse from Surah ath-Thariyat, “I have not created the hidden creatures and mankind except that they worship Me” [51:56], Ibn Abbas RA stated that it means to know God. In Surah al-Isra’ God describes the Beloved ﷺ as His worshipper: “Glory be to Him Who made His worshipper to go on a night from the Sacred Mosque to the al-Aqsa Mosque of which We have blessed the precincts.” [17:1] The indication from describing the Beloved ﷺ in this verse as God’s worshipper, a title that was not given in the Quran linguistically in this way to any other Messenger or Prophet, is that the ultimate purpose of existence was realized to its fullest potential in his being. To put it in the words of the Andalusian scholar Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240 AD), the Beloved ﷺ is the Complete Human Being (al-Insān al-Kāmil), and the Muhammadan Reality (al-Haqīqa al-Muhammadiyya) is where God’s Divine Names manifest in perfect harmony in creation. To emulate the Beloved ﷺ and seek his footsteps to walk on his path in this world is to align oneself with God’s will and properly assume the role of vicegerency we were created for. Gai Eaton further elaborates on this point:
Al-Ghazzalī (d. AD 1111), who is one of the most widely accepted authorities, wrote of the true Muslim as one who ‘imitates the Messenger of Allah in his goings out and his comings in, his movements and his times of rest, the manner of his eating, his deportment, his sleep and his speech. So a man should sit while putting on his trousers and stand while putting on his turban, start with the right foot when putting on his shoes and, when cutting his nails, begin with the forefinger of the right hand; and al-Ghazzalī mentions the case of a pious man who never dared eat a melon, much as he wished to do so, because he could not discover the precise manner in which God’s Messenger ate melons. Did he cut them into segments? Did he perhaps scoop the flesh out with a spoon? We shall never know. But this outward observance is, of course, meaningless unless it both reflects and engenders a profound inward conformity to the perfect exemplar, given us by God as ‘a mercy to mankind’, a conformity of the believer’s soul to the soul of Muhammad. [P 201]
The Muhammadan Reality serves as the support structure and direction to help us realize our real purpose in this life. We were not created to covet material things or attain ephemeral accolades to facilitate our basal desires for self-aggrandizement. Everything we attain in this world, whether it is in material wealth or in social status, will eventually perish and it will not benefit us in the grave if it was not employed towards the transcendent source of it all. The world is filled with signs directing us to the Divine. However, as Gai Eaton observes, it is overwhelming without guidance to navigate through it:
There are certain plants and shrubs which need to grow on a trellis or support of some kind if they are to grow to perfection; otherwise they sprawl on the ground, without direction, their leaves consumed by snails and slugs, their purpose unfulfilled. Man is a ‘climber’ too, and we do not need to seek far afield for examples of the human incapacity to grow – or even to function in a truly human way – without a support, a framework, a model.
The Sunnah of the Prophet provides not only a framework but also, as it were, a network of channels into which the believer’s will enters and through which it flows smoothly, both guided and guarded. It is not his way, the Muslim’s way, to cut new channels for his volatile life through the recalcitrant materials of the world, against the grain of things. [P 201]
In our modern times of “forge your own way” and “just be yourself” one might find this off-putting, believing it to be cultish and a way that kills creativity and promotes homogeneity. We only need to take a quick survey of the Muslim landscape across the world to see how unfounded this fear is. No civilization has had the diversity and nurtured multiculturalism as the one seen across the Muslim world, where despite all their differences we still find Muslims sharing the same orientation towards God and reverence for the Beloved ﷺ. Contrasting the secular and profane with the potential of the Sacred and adherence to the Sunnah, Gai Eaton writes:
At first sight one might expect this to produce a tedious uniformity. All the evidence indicates that it does nothing of the kind; and anyone who has had close contact with good and pious Muslims will know that, although they live within a shared pattern of belief and behaviour, they are often more sharply differentiated one from another than are profane people, their characters stronger and their individualities more clearly delineated. They have modelled themselves upon a transcendent norm of inexhaustible richness, whereas profane people have taken as their model the fashions of the time. To put it another way; the great virtues – and it is the Prophet’s virtues that the believer strives to imitate – can, it seems, be expressed through human nature in countless ways, whereas worldly fashion induces uniformity. In media advertisements one ‘fashion model’ looks very much like another.
None the less, occidentals see in all this an absence of ‘spontaneity’ and a process of ‘depersonalization’. The word ‘spontaneity’, which by its derivation, refers to action springing from the deepest source of our being, has been much misused in recent times. It has come to mean thoughtless and unconsidered reaction in response to outward stimuli, although the dictionary still defines it as action ‘occurring without external cause’, which is the very opposite to this. The Muslim way of life certainly discourages automatic reactions to the events which impinge upon us – as does the Muslim code of manners – but it is this, precisely, that makes possible the exercise of true spontaneity. This recalls a ḥadīth quoted earlier concerning the virtue of ‘slowness’ and the satanic nature of ‘haste’. Spontaneous action comes, not from the surface personality but form the deepest source of our being, and it is at that level that the Prophet is ‘closer to the believers than their own selves’. [P 201]
The Sunnah is the application of the Quranic blueprint to align oneself with Divine Order. It is the practical confirmation of proclamations of loving God. “Say: If you love God, then follow me, God will love you and forgive your sins, and God is Forgiving, Merciful.” [3:31] Rejecting it is a rejection of God. “Say: Obey God and the Messenger, but if they turn back, then surely God does not love the unbelievers.” [3:32] Indeed, it is in acceptance and obedience of the Beloved ﷺ that one can hope to find salvation “And obey God and the Messenger, that you may be shown mercy.” [3:132] Although some of the calls to reexamine medieval scholarly works and return to the original sources to derive rulings that can more appropriately be applicable in our own time are warranted, what we desperately need is not a reformation of Islam but a reorientation of ourselves to the Divine.
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