Guidance

At the time of the Fall, God promised to send guidance to humankind,

everyday and all the time

in the form of Signs to point them towards God

and on certain occasions in human history

communicating through special human beings known as Prophets,

Newsbringers

reminding humanity of God's presence,

passing on knowledge of the afterlife,

spreading the good news and the warning,

and showing the Children of Adam how to live their lives on earth.

We know that there have been many prophets around the world

who are not mentioned in the Qur'an,

because we are told that there is no people to whom a prophet has not been sent (10.47)

but Qur'an does give us knowledge of that line of special beings

that traces from Adam through Noah to Abraham

and from there the two lines that spring from him,

that of Ishmael and the Arabs,

and that of Isaac and the Jews.

So most of the names mentioned in the Qur'an

are familiar to Christians and Jews as biblical prophets,

some of whose names are imprinted on our language and culture.

Along with Noah and the Ark,

and Jonah and the Whale,

we speak of the patience of Job,

make movies about Moses and the Ten Commandments,

and that's just a few of the Newsbringers of the line of Abraham

before we reach the one at the foundation of so much of Scottish culture,

Jesus son of Mary.

In all it is usually considered that there are

up to 25 prophets mentioned in the Qur'an,

with just four of them being sent specifically to the Arabs

Salih Hud Shuayb

and of course Muhammad.

The reason the number is not precise

is because there will always be discussion as to who should be included

whether we simply mean people who receive communication from God

or if there is something else involved in prophethood.

We have to work out exactly what we mean by the term

Especially if we are going to consider issues such as the nature of Maryam

who received God's Word within her.

The Anbiyya,

the prophets,

are Newsbringers

spreading the news of the One God,

and a life after death

in which our behaviour in this life receives justice,

its appropriate reward or punishment

The nabi is bashir and nadhir

the bringer of good news and dreadful warning

some leaning more towards one than to the other,

though both must inevitably always be intertwined

the Mercy and Rigour of God's Justice

being complementary

There is no need for us to know all the world's prophets

because in their inner nature they are one

but there is a class of Newsbringer

that has the added quality of being a Rasul

a Messenger

who voices a new Message and embodies a new way of life

The Qur'an calls them the Mursaloon,

'those sent'

and makes clear that we should make no division between them (2.136)

The context of the message may have been different

but the essential message was the same.

And the stories of these Messengers are spread across different suras throughout the Qur'an

each version of a story giving a slightly different perspective

or different information.

At the time of the Revelation

the Qur'an would not have existed as a text in the way that we know it today,

but would have been learned piecemeal

with different people learning different suras

and able to share the parts they knew

to build up a greater story.

But just as the Qur'an always seems to come up with ways of refusing to be predictable

Joseph's story appears only once

but has quite a lengthy sura devoted entirely to telling it

letting us know that the dispersed stories are that way by design.

Some of the prophets have suras named after them

but not necessarily because they are of some kind of higher rank

Much of what we know of Solomon and his interaction with Sheba

comes from the surah named after the ant

that warned its siblings of the danger approaching

with the trampling feet of Solomon's army.

And many of these stories seem to stretch the imagination

They seem like fairy tales

yet we are told they are true

The Prophets could do things that seemed quite crazy

Abraham travelled with Hagar and their infant child

from Canaan to the waterless desert of the Bakaa valley

and just left them there

Then later on he was prepared to cut his own son's throat

on the basis of a dream

and Hagar and Ismail accepted that also.

The prophets clearly made less distinction between

the dream world and their waking state

seeing a connection between the two

that with God's help could be interpreted

as with Joseph

and knowing that if God wished, life could be altered

in seemingly impossible ways

as easily as such things can happen in dreams.

Some prophets have even brought Clear Signs

which display that impossibly miraculous dream quality

as with the fire being made cool for Abraham

and with numerous miracles being focussed around Moses and Jesus.

The Qur'an stories may be true but they can be short on context and detail

so in the popular telling these stories tend to be filled in from a variety of sources

biblical traditions and others

which may not have the Qur'anic imprimatur of truth

but do make the Prophetic events easier to imagine and understand.

But they are not fairy tales

They are times when humans were given guidance with a divine seal

such as the parting of the Red Sea

or the raising of the dead.

The miraculous is not difficult for God.

[Hu] can do things that are beyond our comprehension

[Hu] can easily change the nature of this dream world in which we live

Whenever God wills a thing [Hu] simply says

“Be”

and it is.