Islam is based on the Absolute, Allah, and not on the
messenger. Yet the love of the Prophet lies at the heart of
Islamic piety, for human beings can love God only if God
loves them, and God loves only the person who loves His
Prophet. The Quran itself orders human beings to venerate
the Prophet. In Muslim eyes, the love and respect for the Prophet
are inseparable from the love for the Word of God, for the
Quran, and of course ultimately for God Himself. There is
something of the soul of the Prophet present in the Quran,
and in a famous saying uttered before his death, the Prophet
asserted that he was leaving two precious heritages behind
for his community, the Quran and his family, both of which
represent his continued presence in the Islamic community
In Sufism and many schools of Islamic philosophical
thought, the inner reality of the Prophet, the “Muh.ammadan
Reality” (al- .H aqīqat al-mu .h ammadiyyah) , is identifi ed with
the Logos, God’s fi rst creation, which is the ontological principle
of creation as well as the archetype of all prophecy.
Sufi s assert that the inner reality of the Prophet was the fi rst
link in the prophetic chain and that his outward and historical reality
came at the end of the prophetic cycle to bring it to a
close. It was in reference to this inner reality that the Prophet
asserted, “I was a prophet when Adam was between water
and clay.”
