What is the divine purpose for sending prophets? - Part 3

Continued from Part 2...

After these introductory points, we shall explain the Divine purposes for sending the Prophets.

God declared in the Qur’an:

I have not created jinn and mankind except to serve me. (al-Zariyat, 51.56)

We have not been created to eat, drink and reproduce; these are natural facts of our life, and natural needs. The main purpose for our creation is to recognize God and serve Him. For this reason, all the Prophets were sent to show us the way to the service of God. Again, God declares in the Qur’an:

We never sent a Messenger before you except that We revealed to him, saying, ‘there is no god but I, so serve Me!’ (al-Anbiya’, 21.25)

Indeed, We sent forth among every nation a Messenger, saying, ‘serve you God, and eschew ‘taghut’ [idols, tyrants, Satan and the party of Satan]’. Then some of them God guided and some were justly disposed to misguidance. (al-Nahl, 16.36)

God sent the Prophets so that they might guide us to His service. All the Prophets were sent for the same purpose, with the exception that while the mission of all the previous Prophets was ‘limited’ to only one nation and a fixed period, the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, was sent as a mercy to all the ‘worlds’, including mankind and jinn.

The jinn are beings that we cannot see. According to an authentic narration, Ibn Mas‘ud reports the following incident concerning the Prophet’s preaching his Message to the jinn:

Once God’s Messenger and I went somewhere. He drew a circle around me and said, Do not leave this circle until I return. He went, and after a while, some tumults broke out on the other side. I wondered whether something had happened to God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, but he had commanded me not to leave the circle until his return. Some time later, God’s Messenger returned and I asked him about the uproar. He replied: The jinn have believed in, and taken the oath of allegiance to, me. When some among them insisted on unbelief, fighting broke out between them. The uproar you heard was the fighting. This implies that my life is about to terminate.1

By this last sentence, God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, meant that the purpose for his being sent was to open the way to the guidance of mankind and jinn, and once this way was opened, it would be of no use for him to live longer because there was nothing more left to him to do in life. This also implies that a believer should never be neglectful of his essential duty in this world and pray to God, as instructed by God’s Messenger, saying, ‘O God, make me die if death is good for me; or else, make me live long as long as living is good for me!’2

1. Tabari, Jami‘ al-Bayan, 24.33; I. Hanbal, 1.499.

2. Bukhari, Marda, 19; Muslim, Dhikr, 10.

What is the divine purpose for sending prophets? - Part 2

Prophets were chosen men through whom God manifested Himself

Before further elaboration on the Divine purpose for sending the Prophets, I would like to emphasize three points.

Firstly, the Prophets were far from being as some lacking in manners and sound reflection have described them. They were not, as some think, ordinary men like us. They were chosen men through whom God manifested Himself. God chose them from among people and paid great attention to their upbringing, so that during their life they would always seek to gain His approval. Like his predecessors, the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, always pursued God’s good pleasure and his last words were: ‘To Rafiq al-A’la (the Highest Abode)’. ‘A’isha, Mother of Believers, gives the following account of his last moments:

I was with him during his last moments. Whenever he became ill, he used to ask me to pray for him and, expecting my prayer to be accepted through the blessing of his auspicious hand, I held his hand and prayed. During his last illness, I wanted to do the same and pray, when he suddenly withdrew his hand and said, ‘to Rafiq al-A’la!’1

Secondly, the world has never been devoid of the successors to the mission of Prophethood, who devote their lives to the dissemination of truths. They should seek what the Prophets sought, they should preach what the Prophets preached, and they should strictly follow the Prophets in performing their duties – in enjoining good and forbidding evil. By explaining the Divine purpose for sending the Prophets, I hope I will be able to shed some light on the way of those who try to lead the people along the path of the Prophets.

Thirdly, death is not total annihilation. It is only a changing of the worlds, but without completely breaking away from this one. In addition, the death of the Prophets is different from that of ordinary people. God declares about martyrs, whose spiritual degrees are lower than that of the Prophets, Say not of those slain in God’s way, ‘They are dead’, but they are alive but you understand not’ (al-Baqara, 2.154). So we should not say of the Prophets, ‘they are dead’. For this reason, the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, did not taste death in the manner we know; he only changed places and passed on into another dimension or degree of life. Those who can penetrate with their inner faculties into the dimensions other than the ones in which we live, can experience different dimensions of time and space. They can see different creatures and look into things and events from different viewpoints. We consider things and events according to the stream in which we are, but if we can rise high enough to see this stream with all its dimensions, and the scope of our sight is enlarged as we rise, then we will be able to obtain a more comprehensive capacity and standard in our judgment of everything. Thus, those who have been able to gain this capacity, while sitting among us, might also be sitting in the presence of God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, and God’s Messenger himself may now be stroking the heads of some among us. While performing prayer here with us, he may also be leading the same prayer in the Hereafter before the angels. There is a particular class of saints called abdal – substitutes – for when one of them dies, he is immediately substituted with a new one, who can see the Prophet whenever they wish. Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, a sixteenth-century scholar, once said: ‘I have seen God’s Messenger twenty-eight times while awake.’

1. Bukhari, Maghazi, 78; Muslim, Salam, 50,51; Abu Dawud, Tib, 19.

Continued in Part 3...

What is the divine purpose for sending prophets? - Part 1

The Prophets were sent to illuminate the way of mankind

Today, the greatest problem of mankind is that they do not recognize the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, and that they neglect and, in some parts of the world, even refuse, to follow his way. God sent Muhammad, as He had sent all the previous Prophets, to illuminate the way of mankind. He said:

God was gracious to the believers when He raised up among them a Messenger from themselves who recites to them the verses (of His Book) and shows them His signs [in their selves and in the universe], purifies them [of their sins and their deviations of thought and belief], and instructs them in the Book and the Wisdom. They were evidently in manifest misguidance before. (Al ‘Imran, 3:164)

God sent Messengers to mankind throughout the ages so that mankind might be guided to the truth and be purified of sins. Those who were enlightened by the Messengers of God, found the way to the Divine Presence and attained the highest rank of humanity. In the words of Ibrahim Haqqi, ‘God declared that He could not be contained by heavens and earth; He can be known and reached through hearts only.’ It is for this reason that the Messengers led mankind to the knowledge of God. Through them, He was deeply felt by the ‘innermost senses‘ of people. The ‘innermost sense‘ of man, whether we call it heart or soul, or ‘conscience‘, is so great that through it man can ‘grasp‘ God with all His greatness and other attributes. God cannot be contained by the heavens and earth. Minds cannot comprehend Him. Philosophical thoughts are by no means sufficient to reach Him. It is only through his soul or heart that a man can rise to the holy Presence of God. Therefore, it was the Prophets who purified the souls so that they could be the mirrors in which God might manifest Himself.

The Prophet Muhammad is the last and greatest of these Prophets, and he left us the Qur’an and Sunna so that we can, by following them, live in accordance with the purpose for which all the Prophets were sent.

Why was No Prophet Raised from Among Women?

God sent to every nation Messengers from among their own people. Without exception, these prophets were raised from among the men, never from among the women. The overwhelming consensus of scholars of the Law and Tradition among the Sunnis is that no woman has been sent as prophet. Except a questionable, even unreliable tradition that Mary and the wife of the Pharaoh, who, although married to one of the most cruel tyrants and obstinate unbelievers in human history, believed in God in utmost sincerity, there is no Qur’anic authority, nor any in Hadith, that a woman was sent to her people in the rank or role of a prophet. And certainly this is no argument that God’s revelation of religion for His human creatures has for that reason been lacking in some way or defective.

God the All-Mighty created all entities in pairs. Even things, the inanimate part of creation, function according to principles and forces in pairs—like positive and negative, for example. This is true of every creation, viewed as microcosm or macrocosm. If the minute particles which constitute atoms were not held apart by a subtle balance of paired, opposite charges, the nucleus would explode or implode. The human being, also constituted of atoms, is the balancing term between the micro and macrocosms. Man was created to be as the steward of this creation and is fitted to it: what is true of the universe is true of man, as well. In other words, human beings are also created in pairs, male and female, and there is complex relation between them of attraction and repulsion. While in one of them balance is to-wards softness, weakness and compassion; in the other the balance is towards strength, force and competitive toughness. It is so that they may come together and establish the harmony of the family unit—just as, in the micro and macro universe, there is a harmony between atoms and celestial bodies.

Today the issue of gender has been inflamed to such an extent that some people have gone be-yond all bounds of sense and experience and refuse to acknowledge the very real differences between male and female; some even attempt to make out that men and women are in all respects alike and equal. The issue has therefore become vulnerable to ridicule, and when over-presented and over-stated, has become a source of much misery in individual lives. Where in the most ‘modern’ lifestyle, the woman has forsaken her real identity in order to imitate the characteristics and functions of the man, family life has completely eroded: children are sent out to nursing centers or boarding schools, the parents being now too preoccupied as ‘individuals’ in their own, separate self-indulgence to be parents. This violence against nature and culture has destroyed the home as a place of balance between authority and love, as a focus of security and peace.

God the Wise ordained some principles and law in the universe, and created human beings therein with an excellent and lofty nature. With regard to physical existence, the man is considerably stronger and more capable than the woman, and plainly constituted to strive and compete, without needing to, for physical reasons, withdraw from the struggle. The woman is plainly not so constituted. Because of the menstrual period (which can be difficult, even painful, and sometimes last up to 15 days), and the necessary confinement before and after childbirth, the woman cannot always pray and fast. Nor can she be continually available for public duties with the same degree of presence and commitment as can the man. How, if the woman is also a mother, can she, with a baby in her lap lead and administrate armies, make life and death decisions, sustain and prosecute a difficult strategy against an enemy? The role of a prophet is to give the lead to mankind in every aspect of social and religious life and to do so without pause or hesitation for as long as God wills. That is why prophethood is impossible for woman. If the man were the child-bearer prophethood would have been impossible for him too. The Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace, points to this fact when he describes women as those who cannot fulfil the religious obligations totally and cannot realize some of them (Sahih al-Bukhari, ‘Hayd,’ 6).

A prophet is an exemplar, a model for conduct, therefore a human being in every respect—so that people do not have the excuse that they are required to follow a way which is beyond the powers of human beings. As for the matters that relate exclusively to women, they are guided through the teaching of the women in the household of the prophets.

Source: Islam Answers .Net

How Many Prophets Have Been Sent to Mankind?

Prophets were raised and sent to the whole of mankind in different lands and at different times. One version of a hadith puts the number of prophets sent to mankind as 124,000 (Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 5, 169); another puts the number at 224,000. Both of these versions, however, should be critically evaluated according to the science of Hadith. Besides, whether the number was 124 or 224 thousand is not important. What is essential is that no land, people or period was neglected; prophets were sent to all.

The Qur’an says:

There never was a people without a Warner having lived among them’ (35:24)

We would never visit our wrath (chastise any community) until We had sent a Messenger to give warning’ (17:15)

To punish people for any wrong they may do without their being warned beforehand by a prophet from God is contrary to His Glory and Grace. The warning precedes responsibility which may be followed by reward or punishment: So anyone who has done an atom’s weight of good, shall see it. And anyone who has done an atom’s weight of evil, shall see it (99:7–8). If a people have not been sent any Warner, they will not know what is good and evil, and so will not be chastised for it. However, since every individual will be called to account for good and evil deeds, we may infer that to every people has been sent an Messenger: For We assuredly sent amongst every people a messenger with (the command), ‘Serve God and eschew evil’ (16:36).

The prophets were not, as some people mistakenly suppose, raised only in the Arabian Peninsula. Such a claim is contrary to the teachings of the Qur’an and is not based upon any evidence. In fact, we do not even know all of the prophets who were raised in the Arabian Peninsular, let alone in other places of the world. Whether they were 124 or 224 thousand, we know for certain only 28, and the prophethood of three out of these 28 is not wholly certain. The Qur’an gives us the names of all 28, from Adam, the first, to Muhammad, the last, upon them be peace. Nor can we say with confidence where these 28 emerged. It is supposed that the tomb of Adam and the place of his reunion with Eve is Jiddah, but this information is not certain and sound. We do not know by any means where the very first prophet carried out his mission. By contrast, we do know a little about the location of Abraham: We know that, at some time, he was in some part of Anatolia, Syria and Babylon. Lot was associated with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, around the Dead Sea; Shu‘ayb with Madyan, and Moses with Egypt. Yahya (John the Baptist) and Zakariyya (Zechariah) with Mediterranean countries—probably they may have crossed to Anatolia, since Christians link Mary and Jesus with Ephesus. But these associations are not certain and not based upon any strong evidence.

We also know the names of some of the other prophets sent to the Israelite peoples, but we do not know the names of any others, nor where they appeared. Moreover, because their teachings have been distorted and lost over time, it is quite impossible for us to say anything about who those prophets were and where they were sent.

There may be many religions once of Divine origin which have become distorted and lost their truth. That is why we cannot definitely say that such and such persons were sent as prophets to such and such places. We may speculate that Confucius, Buddha (or perhaps even Socrates?) were prophets, but it can be only speculation. Let us be clear on this: we are not saying that they were prophets. What the history of religions tells us about those men is not satisfactory, and based upon information gathered from different sources. However, it is known that at the time Confucius and Buddha lived, their teachings influenced great numbers of people. Today, what is practiced by their followers—no doubt because of distortions in the original teachings—does not appeal to sense and nature; rather it is extremely unnatural: who can be attracted to the sanctification of animals, or the extremes of asceticism and sense deprivation, or to such customs as the cremation of wives with their deceased husbands?

Of Socrates, some have said that he was a philosopher under the influence of Judaism, but there is no documentary evidence to support such a claim. Words attributed to Socrates by Plato imply that he (Socrates) was ‘inspired’ from a very early age to ‘instruct’ people in true understanding and true belief. But it is not clear that such words are correctly attributed, nor is it clear what exactly these words were understood to mean. Only this much is reliable—that Socrates taught in an environment and in a manner which supports the use of reason.

Let us again stress that we are not saying that these ancient teachers were indeed prophets. To say that someone is a prophet when he is not is kufr, an unbelief as grave as refusing to believe in a true prophet. We say only that it may perhaps have been so, given the hadith that mentions either 124 or 224 thousand prophets as having appeared in all parts of the world. In the light of this hadith, the findings of recent studies of religious beliefs and practices in different lands are more easily understood.

In particular, the observations of Professor Mahmud Mustafa on two tribes of primitive Africans confirm what has been said above. He remarks that the Maw-Maws believe in God and call him Mucay. This God is one and only, and acts alone in His deeds. He does not beget nor is begotten. He has no associate and no partner. He is not seen or sensed, but only known through His works. He dwells high up in the heavens, and ordains everything from there. That is why the Maw-Maws raise their hands when praying. Another tribe, the Neyam-Neyam, expresses similar themes. There is one God who decrees and ordains everything. What He says is absolute. It is He who makes everything in the forest move according to His will, He who sends thunderbolts against those He is angry with.

As is obvious, the general concept of God ascribed to by these tribes is similar, certainly comparable, to what we find in the Qur’an. Certainly the creed of the Maw-Maws comes very close to the con-tent of the sura al-Ikhlas in the Qur’an.

How could these primitive tribes, worlds apart and removed from civilization and from the influence of the prophets known to us, come to so pure and sound a concept of God? This reminds us of the Qur’anic verse which refers explicitly to every people, none being excluded: ‘For every people there is a messenger. When their messenger comes, the matter is judged between them with justice, and they are not wronged’ (10:47).

Professor Adil, from Kirkuk in Iraq, a mathematician of Riyadh University, when I met him in 1968, spoke of the many native American Indians he had met whilst studying for his Ph.D. in the U.S.A. He had been struck by how many of them believe in One God who never eats and drinks nor is con-strained by time; He rules and governs all things in the universe, everything without exception being under His sovereignty and dependent on His will. They also referred to some of God’s attributes that He has no partner, and if He did, there would surely be conflicts between the partners. How does one reconcile the alleged ‘primitiveness’ of such peoples with such loftiness in their concept of God? It certainly seems that true Messengers conveyed these truths to them, truths still present in what remains of soundness in their actual, present beliefs. As the original Message was passed down the generations it may have suffered slight, gradual alterations until it became confused and obscured.

In sum, the Qur’an, and history and present reality confirm that God has chosen and sent prophets to every people in different parts of the world, though we only know for certain the exact places of four of them, and though we do not know for certain their exact number.

Source: Islam Answers .Net

Is There a People to Whom a Prophet was not Sent?

Recent studies in comparative religion, philosophy and anthropology, have shown how many communities, living at very great distances from each other, share certain concepts and practices. For example, turning from plural to a singular conception of God; in their supplications in times of exceptional stress seeking refuge only in the One Supreme Being and raising their hands and asking some-thing from Him. There are very many such phenomena which indicate a singular source, a single teaching. (We shall not dwell on this point here; the subject is discussed also in answer to the question (p.68, below), ‘How many prophets have been sent to mankind?’)

If primitive tribes cut off from civilization and the influence of the known prophets, have a sure understanding of the Oneness of God, though they may have little understanding of how to live according to that belief, it must be that, as the Qur’an tells us, every people and nation has had its own Message and Messenger:

For every people is a Messenger. When their Messenger comes, the matter is judged between them with justice, and they are not wronged. (10:47)

No people and no land are excluded from that commandment.

This brings us to the question of whether those who claim they have not been sent prophet will be held responsible for their beliefs and actions. As we have just explained, there is no reason to believe that any peoples in the world have been deprived altogether of the prophets’ light. There may have been periods in which darkness seemed to prevail. But such were temporary darkness, after which the Grace and Blessing of God again enlightened the people through revelation to His chosen servants. Thus, whether it be less or more, every people, at some point in their history, saw or heard or experienced to the full, the mercy of revelation. Nevertheless, we must allow that, in some instances, the destruction of the beliefs which the prophets established was so absolute and people introduced so many distortions into the religion and bizarre rites of worship that the true teachings were generally, if not al-together, lost by the people. In such cases, a long interregnum of darkness may have replaced enlightenment. Though darkness is ever followed by an enlightenment, and an enlightenment by darkness, there may be some peoples who remained in darkness as it were unknowingly and against their own will. For such people there are glad tidings in the Qur’an. These are not punished or blamed for the wrong they may do, until and unless due warning has been conveyed to them: We would never visit our wrath on any community until We had sent a Messenger to give warning (17:15). That is, the warning precedes responsibility and then reward or punishment.

As for the details of this matter, the imams of the Islamic schools of thought think differently. For instance, Imam Maturidi and his school argue that no people can be excused given that there is plenty of evidence pointing to the One Creator which leads to belief in Him. By contrast, the Ashari school, referring to the Qur’anic verse quoted above, argue that warning and guidance must precede judgment and people can only be held responsible if they have been sent a prophet. There is a third body of scholars who have combined these two positions. They hold that those who have not been sent any prophet and thus have not wilfully strayed into unbelief or worshipped idols are ahl-i najat (the people who will be excused and so escape the punishment and who, as God wills, may be saved). For, in fact, some people cannot analyze the things and events around them, cannot penetrate to their meaning, nor deduce therefrom the right course of belief and action. Such people are first taught the right way, given explanations and directions on how to act and then, in line with their actions thereafter, are answerable and accordingly rewarded or punished. But as for those who wilfully take to unbelief or adopt an hostile, negative attitude to belief and religion, or knowingly defy God and His commandments, they will certainly be questioned and punished for their deviation and corruption, even though they live in the farthest, most desolate and deserted region of the world.

To summarize : no region or people has been altogether deprived of Divine enlightenment through God’s chosen servants, His prophets. Directly or indirectly, all people of all periods have, at some time in their history, known or been aware of a prophet and of his teaching. A period during which the names of the prophets have been forgotten and their teachings completely eroded, until another prophet is sent, is described as an interregnum. It is accepted that people who live in those periods would not be punished but rather excused, on the condition that they have not knowingly and wilfully deviated into polytheism or atheism.

And God, the All-Knowing and All-Encompassing, knows best.

Source: Islam Answers .Net

What is the meaning of Prophethood and its function?

God has created no community of beings in the world without a purpose and left them without a guide or leader. It is inconceivable that God Almighty, Who has not left bees without a queen, ants without a leader, and birds and fish without a guide, has left humanity without Prophets to guide them to both spiritual and intellectual and material perfection.

Although man is capable of finding God by reflecting upon natural phenomena, without a Prophet, he is unable to discover the purpose of his creation, from where he comes and what his final destination is in life, and how he should worship his Creator. The Prophets also taught people the meaning of creation and the truth of things and unveiled the mysteries behind both historical and natural events. Again, they instructed people in the relations between man and the universe and between the Divine Scriptures and the universe. But for the Prophets, mankind would not have been able to achieve any scientific development. For, although those who adopt evolutionary approaches in explaining historical events tend to attribute everything to chance and fully deterministic evolution, it was again the Prophets who guided men in intellectual and therefore scientific illumination. For this reason, tradition-ally, farmers have accepted the Prophet Adam as their first master, tailors, the Prophet Enoch, ship-makers and sailors, the Prophet Noah, watch or clock-makers, the Prophet Joseph, and so on. Also, through the miracles they worked, the Prophets marked the final points in scientific and technological advances and urged people to them.

Both through their personal conduct and through the heavenly religions and Scriptures they conveyed to people, the Prophets have also guided people to develop their inborn capacities and directed them towards the purpose of their creation. Had it not been for the Prophets, man—this fruit of the tree of creation—would be left to decay.

Man needs justice in social life as much as he needs inner peace in his private life. It was again the Prophets who taught people the laws of life and established the rules of a perfect social life on the basis of justice.

Prophethood is the highest rank, the highest honor, possible. It proves the superiority of a man’s inner being to that of others. A prophet is like a branch which arches out from the Divine to the human realm. He is the very heart and tongue of creation. He does not only possess what we call a supreme intellect, which penetrates into the reality of things and events, as is the case with geniuses, but also he is an ideal being, all of whose faculties are harmoniously excellent and active, and who strives and progresses steadily towards heaven, who awaits Divine inspiration for the solutions to the problems he meets, and who is considered to be the connecting point between the things and beings here and the Beyond. His body is subject to and follows his heart—figuratively, the seat of spiritual intellect; his mind likewise is subject to and follows his heart. His perceptions and reflections are always directed to the Names and Attributes of God. He goes to what he perceives; he arrives at the destination he aims for.

A prophet’s perception, developed to the full—seeing, hearing and thus knowing—surpasses that of ordinary people. Nor can his power of perception or understanding be expressed or explained in terms of different wavelengths of light or sound, or in some other such way. It is not within an ordinary man’s power and means to acquire a prophet’s knowledge, which goes beyond the limits of ordinary human nature. However intently deployed, our human powers of analysis and synthesis, can never at-tain to a prophet’s knowledge.

Through the prophets, man has been able to gain an insight into creation, and thus to find out and to know the meaning of it. But for the prophets and their teachings, man would neither have seen nor understood the true nature and meaning of things and events, nor therefore could he have entered into and coped with what is in and around him.

In addition to conveying the Divine message and guidance, the prophets have also taught man something of God and His Names and Attributes. Their first mission was to teach the reality of this life, its true purpose and meaning. Since God is beyond man’s perception and comprehension, it fell to the prophets to be the most obedient, careful, conscious, self-disciplined of people whilst they were per-forming their tasks. If there had not been any clear utterances by the prophets about the Creator, the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing, who governs and sustains and cherishes the whole creation, from the smallest atom to the largest nebula, it would never have been possible for man to think or know or say anything right and proper about God.

Everything in the universe tries to, as it were, exhibit the Names and Attributes of the All-Mighty, All-Encompassing Creator. In the same way, the prophets have taken note of, affirmed and been faithful to, the subtle, mysterious relation between God and His Names and Attributes. Their duty was to know and speak about God. Therefore, they entered into the true meaning of things and events, and conveyed it directly and sincerely to their fellow human beings.

Just as, even in the smallest exhibitions, public fairs and the like events, we benefit from a guide or usher, who directs our steps and prepares our attention, so also with the magnificent exhibition of this creation, we are in need of guides who draw attention to the reality of it, direct us towards its purpose and meaning, and show us our way in it.

Is it possible that the One who, in order to make Himself known, ordered this creation, opened to us His works, for our wonder and awe—is it possible that He would not, through some distinguished servants, reveal His names and Attributes to those who long to know Him? If this were so, would it not make His creation a vain work? The Supreme Being who made everything like a tongue and a letter and who revealed His Wisdom and Blessings through such things is absolutely free from vanity and absurdity. Thus, it seems to us, most unlikely that a people in one or other part of the world have been deprived of God’s revelation through His prophets. The Qur’an, indeed, is explicit on this point:

For We assuredly sent amongst every people an Messenger (with the command), ‘Serve God and eschew evil.’ (16:36)

However, mankind forgot the teachings brought by those appointed servants, and over time went astray, sometimes deifying the very men who preached against it, and sank into idolatry.

Throughout the earth there are examples of what man’s imagination has idolized—like the mountain of the gods in ancient Greece or, to this day, the River Ganges in India. Even accepting that there must be a tremendous difference between their first appearance and the actual position now, it is quite impossible to understand the conditions that raised Confucius in China and Brahman and Buddha in India. It is equally difficult to guess what they originally taught, or to know how far time and human de-generation have corrupted the first message.

If the Qur’an, which eradicates doubts, had not introduced Jesus Christ to us, it would not now be possible to have a true picture of his life and his teaching. For priests have confounded the truth about Jesus Christ with the philosophies and idolatries of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, attributing divinity to man, and anthropomorphizing God.

Perhaps it was one of the conditions of the Roman Empire accepting Christianity as the official, state religion, that some of the festivals, holy days, rites and rituals of the church were derived from or imitate directly, the practices of the ancient Romans, Greeks and certain Asian religions like Manihaism.

Considering what the followers of the earlier religions did to their prophets and to their Books, we may well wonder how many prophets have been treated in the same way by their followers over time? From a reliable Islamic source, there is a hadith which says: ‘a prophet’s disciples will carry out his mis-sion after his death but some of his followers will later upset everything he established’ (Sahih al-Muslim, ‘Fada’il al-Sahaba,’ 210–12; Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 417) This is a most important point. Many of the religions which we now consider false turned to falsehoods, superstitions and legends over time through the deliberate malice of their enemies—despite the fact that, originally, they may have come from the purest, Divine source.

To say that someone is a prophet when he is not is tantamount to kufr (unbelief), just as to refuse to believe in a true prophet is also kufr. On the other hand, if the case of these false religions is similar to that of Christianity, that is, if they were distorted by their followers over time, we should look at those religions with some caution and reserve judgment in some measure. We should consider what Buddhism may have been in its true original; similarly, Brahmanism; or the doctrines attributed to Confucius; or shamanism and other such: it may be that we may find in them some remnant of what they were in their origins.

What they were—whether true or false (we do not know)─is not what they are. Supposing the impossible that their founders returned and saw the religion they originally established, they would not now recognize them.

There have been many religions which have been distorted and altered in the world, and consequently it is essential to accept that the purity of their original foundation. The Qur’an says:

There never was a people without a Warner having lived among them. (35:24)

And We assuredly sent among every people a Messenger. (16:36)

These revelations universally declare that God sent Messengers to every people throughout the world. The names of some of these are known to us through the Qur’an, but there is also a large number whose names have not been made known to us. The names we know are 28 out of 124,000 (or perhaps 224,000); even then we do not know exactly where and when many of them lived.

Essentially we are not bound to know all the past prophets. The Qur’an says:

We did in times past send Messengers before you; of them there are some whose stories We have related to you, and some whose story We have not related to you. (40:78)

In this way, the Qur’an warns us not to deal with some of those whom it does not mention to us.

Article Partial taken from Islam Answers .Net