Muhammad the messenger of God answers some important questions...........

Imagine Muhammad, the messenger of God being interviewed, on various issues confronting the so-called "Ummah"; what would he say?

Q = Interviewer

M = Prophet Muhammad

While the Isra did happen (17:1, 53:1-18), fairytales associated with it do not make any sense when scrutinized under Quran's light. First I will sum up this story, and then I will take a look at it Quranicly.

The hadith followers in their earnest attempt to advocate the legality of following the hadith and sunna of the prophet, play on a corrupted interpretation of the Quranic command to "obey God and obey the Messenger".

Many people site the Quraanic Verses that command us to Obey Allah and Obey the Messenger, and say that Obeying Allah and obeying the Messenger are two different things - Obeying Allah is to obey the Quraan and obeying the Messenger is to obey the books of Hadith. They point that if obeying the Messenger was the same thing as obeying Allah's Quraan, then Allah would have only said Obey Allah. These people say that Allahs inclusion of obey the Messenger implies that the Messenger is saying EXTRA things outside of the Quraan that we must obey.

The thing that many proponents of Hadith forget is that Allah does not leave it to speculation as to what the people are to obey. The Ayaat do not end at Obey Allah and obey the Messenger, but they continue to include what the duty of the Messenger is:

And obey Allah and obey the messenger and be cautious; but if you turn back, then know that only a clear deliverance of the message is (incumbent) on Our messenger <wa ma_ alar rasu_li il lal balaghul mubin (5:92)

This very common phrase (AL-SALAT ALA AL-NABI and AL-TASLEEM) derives from the following verse:

"God and His angels ‘Yossalloon ala al Nabi’, O you believers you shall ‘Salloo alayhee’ and ‘Sallemoo tasleema’." (33/56)

Since this is a clear command from God, we must surely obey it. However, and before obeying this command we must first understand the meaning of it. We notice that the verse contained two commands, the ‘Salla ala al Nabi’ and the ‘Tasleem’.

First we should inspect the present interpretation of these words among Muslims today, then we must find out whether this interpretation is in line with the one contained in the Quran. To do this, the easiest method is to ask any Muslim as to what is the meaning of the simple and widely spoken words ‘Salli ala al Nabi’.

Muslim scholars and the entire Muslim world will tell us that prophet Mohammed was an illiterate man who could not read or write. They tell you this information to make the miracle of the Quran sound even more miraculous disregarding that such statements create some obvious questions:

• According to historians, the prophet Mohammed encouraged his followers to learn to read and write and teach others the same so as to spread knowledge throughout the world. How is it that a man who led by example never learnt to read and write himself?
• The Quran was transmitted to us through the prophet Mohammed’s own lips over a period of 23 years. Is it conceivable that the man who was in contact with God’s words and who was careful to have them written down and copied never bothered to learn to read what he was having written?