IB World Religions 5.1.2. Risalah: Prophethood and Revelation Notes

5.1.2. Risalah: Prophethood and Revelation

Risalah and the prophets

1. Risalah is Allah's message revealed to humankind, and the word covers both the sending and the thing sent. Muslims hold that Allah has never left a people without guidance, so prophecy is treated as a regular feature of history rather than a rare interruption.
2. The Qur'an names twenty five prophets, beginning with Adam and ending with the Prophet Muhammad, while a widely reported hadith puts the number sent to all nations at one hundred and twenty four thousand.
3. Belief in the rusul (messengers) is one of the six Sunni articles of iman. Muslims are instructed to make no distinction between them, honouring Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa and Dawud alongside Muhammad.
4. Every prophet is held to have carried the same core message: worship Allah alone and prepare for the akhirah. What altered from one to the next was the law and the circumstances, not the claim about Allah's oneness.
5. Prophets are also held to be human beings. The Qur'an insists that they ate food and walked in the markets, which rules out treating any of them as divine or as an object of worship.
6. Muslims count 'Isa (Jesus) among the messengers, born of the virgin Maryam and, on their reading, raised to Allah rather than crucified. Naming him as a prophet is itself a statement of tawhid.

Nabi and rasul

1. Muslim scholars distinguish a nabi (prophet) from a rasul (messenger). Both receive revelation, and the messenger is additionally given a scripture or a new law to deliver to a community.
2. On the usual account every rasul is a nabi, while not every nabi is a rasul. Some prophets are described as confirming and applying a law already given rather than bringing one of their own.
3. Five messengers are grouped as ulu al-'azm (those of firm resolve): Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa, 'Isa and Muhammad. Each is associated with a decisive covenant or a scripture.
4. The distinction is a scholarly refinement rather than a fixed Qur'anic definition, and theologians have drawn it in slightly different ways. Shi'ah writers commonly add that the imams inherit the prophets' guidance without receiving revelation of their own.
5. Prophets are usually described as sent to particular peoples, with Hud sent to 'Ad and Salih sent to Thamud. Muslims hold that Muhammad was sent to humanity as a whole, which is why they present Islam as a universal message.

Wahy and the revealed books

1. Wahy (revelation) is the term for Allah's communication to a prophet. Muslims describe it as arriving in several modes, including direct inspiration, speech from behind a veil, and an angel sent with words.
2. The angel Jibril is named as the carrier of revelation to the Prophet Muhammad, and the tradition reports that the first word he brought was iqra', recite.
3. Muslims hold that the Prophet received what he recited rather than composing it. The claim of the tradition is that he is the messenger of the Qur'an and not its author.
4. Four earlier books are named in the Qur'an: the suhuf (scrolls) of Ibrahim, the Tawrat given to Musa, the Zabur given to Dawud and the Injil given to 'Isa. Muslims hold that each carried genuine revelation in its own time.
5. Muslims also hold that later communities did not preserve those scriptures intact, a claim known as tahrif (alteration). The Qur'an is held to confirm what remained true in them and to correct what had shifted.
6. Revelation is therefore understood as one continuous line rather than a set of competing religions. On that account Islam is the original message restated, which is a further reason Muslims speak of reversion rather than conversion.

'Ismah and the prophetic example

1. 'Ismah is the protection Muslims hold Allah gives to prophets so that the message reaches people uncorrupted. On this teaching a messenger cannot misreport revelation or lead a community into sin.
2. Sunni and Shi'ah scholars set its limits differently. Most Sunni theologians confine 'ismah to the delivery of the message and to grave sin, while Twelver Shi'ah teaching extends full infallibility to the Prophet, to Fatima and to the twelve imams.
3. That difference reaches well beyond theology. It underwrites the Shi'ah view that the teaching of the imams carries binding authority alongside the Prophet's own.
4. The Qur'an calls the Prophet an uswah hasanah (a beautiful example), so his recorded conduct becomes a pattern for ordinary life as well as for worship.
5. That conduct is the Sunnah, the Prophet's words, actions and approvals, which Muslims treat as the second source of guidance after the Qur'an.
6. Muslims do not depict the Prophet in art. Reverence is carried instead by calligraphy, by the honorific sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam (peace and blessings be upon him) after his name, and by na't poetry sung in his praise.

Khatam al-nabiyyin

1. The Qur'an calls the Prophet Muhammad khatam al-nabiyyin (the seal of the prophets), and Muslims across the branches read the title as closing prophecy rather than pausing it.
2. Finality carries practical weight. Since no further prophet is expected, guidance after the Prophet's death had to be found in the Qur'an, in the Sunnah and in disciplined human interpretation of both.
3. Sunni Muslims located that work in the ulama (scholars) and in the consensus of the community, with jurists deriving rulings inside the madhhabs (schools of law).
4. Shi'ah Muslims held instead that the Prophet designated 'Ali and his descendants, so imamah continues authoritative guidance without any new revelation being given.
5. Sufi teaching adds walayah (closeness to Allah), holding that saints inherit prophetic character and light while claiming nothing of prophecy itself.
6. All three positions guard the same boundary. The message is complete, and later figures transmit or interpret it rather than adding to it.

Risalah in Muslim life

1. Risalah is affirmed daily in the second half of the shahadah, which names Muhammad as the messenger of Allah. Twelver Shi'ah Muslims commonly add a third clause naming 'Ali as the friend of Allah.
2. Muslims say salawat, a short blessing on the Prophet, whenever his name is spoken or heard. The habit turns a doctrine into a reflex of ordinary speech.
3. The Sunnah shapes small matters as well as large ones, from how a meal is begun to how a debt is written down, because imitating the messenger is treated as a way of obeying the one who sent him.
4. Mawlid ul-Nabi, the Prophet's birthday, is marked with processions, poetry and charity across much of the Sunni and Shi'ah world, while Salafi Muslims object to it as an innovation without precedent.
5. Shi'ah devotion extends to the ahl al-bayt (the household of the Prophet), so risalah and imamah are honoured together in commemorations such as Ashura.
6. Pilgrims commonly visit the Prophet's mosque in Madinah and greet him there, describing the visit as the emotional centre of their journey. Muslims present all of this as love for a messenger rather than worship of him.