Website: www.aaiil.uk

The Holy Prophet Muhammad — the mortal who connected humans to God

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 26 September 2025

“Say: If you love Allah, follow me: Allah will love you, and grant you protection from your sins. And Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”  — ch. 3, Āl-i ‘Imrān, v. 31

قُلۡ اِنۡ کُنۡتُمۡ تُحِبُّوۡنَ اللّٰہَ فَاتَّبِعُوۡنِیۡ یُحۡبِبۡکُمُ اللّٰہُ وَ یَغۡفِرۡ لَکُمۡ ذُنُوۡبَکُمۡ ؕ وَ اللّٰہُ غَفُوۡرٌ رَّحِیۡمٌ ﴿۳۱﴾

“Certainly a Messenger has come to you from among yourselves; very painful for him is your falling into distress, most concerned (he is) for you, to the believers (he is) compassionate, merciful.” — ch. 9, Al-Barā’at, v. 128

لَقَدۡ جَآءَکُمۡ رَسُوۡلٌ مِّنۡ اَنۡفُسِکُمۡ عَزِیۡزٌ عَلَیۡہِ مَا عَنِتُّمۡ حَرِیۡصٌ عَلَیۡکُمۡ بِالۡمُؤۡمِنِیۡنَ رَءُوۡفٌ رَّحِیۡمٌ ﴿۱۲۸﴾

“And We have not sent you but as a mercy to the nations.” — ch. 21, Al-Anbiyā’, v. 107

وَ مَاۤ اَرۡسَلۡنٰکَ اِلَّا رَحۡمَۃً لِّلۡعٰلَمِیۡنَ ﴿۱۰۷﴾

The Holy Prophet Muhammad was undoubtedly a mortal like other humans, but his achievements and qualities are so numerous that you would need a book to record all of them. The first verse I recited informs us that the way to attain the love of Allah for yourself and receive His forgiveness for your shortcomings is to follow the Holy Prophet. It is commonly claimed that the Christian religion emphasises that God loves humanity and people should love Him, but it is alleged that in comparison with this there is no mention of such a concept of love in Islam. It is alleged that Allah is a ferocious Being and you have to submit to Him out of fear of His punishment. This verse shows that the concept of Allah as loving, and of humans needing to love Allah, is certainly mentioned in the Quran. However, to achieve Allah’s love a human has to do something practical, and that is to follow the path taught by the Holy Prophet.

The second verse I recited says that the Holy Prophet has been raised from the people themselves, he is one of them. Then it says that he feels great pain, and it weighs heavily on him, when he sees people suffering distress. The meaning of suffering distress here is the suffering that comes upon people by their own misdeeds and wrong-doings. When the opponents of the Holy Prophet rejected his message, he told them that various kinds of punishments would come upon them as a result. Here it is stated that he is far from happy to see these punishments afflicting his rejectors; in fact, it makes him feel that a great weight is upon him. Their condition makes him feel so sad that the Quran says to him in two different places:

“Then perhaps you will kill yourself with grief, sorrowing after them, if they do not believe in this message” (18:6; and 26:3).

Knowing that they would be punished in this world for their opposition to him, he feels so much dismay at their fate that he grieves and feels sorrow for them. The next words of that second verse I recited are “most concerned (he is) for you”. The Arabic word translated as “most concerned” is ḥarīṣ, which means very eager. This word is also in Urdu and it is applied to someone who is greedy for something worldly such as wealth, so greedy that it is his deepest, overwhelming and uncontrollable desire to obtain it. But the Holy Prophet was this much eager and desirous for their welfare, as a greedy person hankers after wealth.

The ending of this verse is: “to the believers (he is) compassionate, merciful.” The previous words were about the Holy Prophet’s feelings for his rejectors, or for humanity in general. These are about how he feels towards his followers. The words for “compassionate, merciful” are well-known, ra’ūf-ur raḥīm-un. But in several other places in the Quran exactly these words are applied to Allah, and in two places it is stated:

“Surely Allah is Compassionate, Merciful to the people” (2:143 and 22:65).

So the compassion and mercy which Allah shows to the whole of humanity, His creation, the Holy Prophet Muhammad reflects the same qualities towards his own followers.

The third verse I recited is very well-known, that Allah sent the Holy Prophet Muhammad as “a mercy to the nations”, not only to his own followers, but to all humanity, particularly to all its deprived sections, such as women, children, orphans, the poor, slaves, etc. Going beyond that, he is a mercy to all other worlds, such as the animal world, because he strongly emphasised good treatment of animals, and there are specific examples in which he mentioned cats, dogs, camels, birds, hens and ants.

A prophet comes as a human being to act as a link between God and other humans. The Quran says:

“It is not befitting for a mortal that Allah should give him the Book and the judgment and the prophethood, then he should tell people: Be my servants besides Allah’s; but (he would say): Be worshippers of the Lord” (3:79).

The Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, has explained at length how a prophet acts as a link between God and people, and how the greatest example of this was the Holy Prophet Muhammad. He writes that the only sure way of learning of the existence of God, and that He is One, is through prophets. Of course, by looking at the physical world around us and how wonderfully it works according to the laws of nature, we can conclude that this wisely-designed machinery must have a Maker, and only One Maker. But this is not definite and it doesn’t tell us what God is. That work, of bringing people the certainty that God exists and what His attributes are, he writes, was done by the prophets. God does not need to be worshipped, as He says in the Quran: “Allah is above need of His creatures” (3:97, 29:6, 39:7). But He wants to show His mercy to the world. So He selects a certain kind of person to whom He reveals Himself. And that kind of person is one who, on the one hand, loves God and wants to be close to Him, and on the other hand that person has the greatest sympathy for his fellow-humans.

When God tells that person about Himself, that person wants other people to find God as well. So he makes great efforts to proclaim his knowledge to other people, but also he prays for them deeply. He makes sacrifices of all his resources, his ambitions and desires and his time to deliver his message. Hazrat Mirza sahib writes:

“Thus the prophets are the leaders in sacrificing themselves in the way of God. Everyone strives for himself but the prophets strive for others. While people sleep, the prophets stay awake for them; while people laugh the prophets shed tears for them, and, for the salvation of the world, willingly accept for themselves all trials and tribulations.”

He writes about the verse which I quoted earlier, in which Allah said to the Holy Prophet: “Then perhaps you will kill yourself with grief, sorrowing after them, if they do not believe in this message”. It means that the Holy Prophet is exerting himself so much, because of his grief at his people rejecting his message, and he has given up so many comforts of his own life, and taken great risks putting his life in danger, that it is as if he is killing himself. Then Hazrat Mirza sahib writes as follows about the Holy Prophet Muhammad, which I translate from his Urdu writing.

“There is, thus, no doubt that God and His uniqueness are made known to the world only through a prophet; certainly not otherwise. In this respect, the best example was that shown by our Holy Prophet Muhammad, may peace and the blessings of God be upon him. He took a people who were lying in filth and lifted them up from there to a beautiful rose garden. He put before those who were dying of spiritual starvation and thirst the most nutritious foods and the most deli­cious drinks. From savages he made them into humans, then from ordinary humans into civilised humans, and then from civilised humans into spiritually perfect humans. He showed them so many signs that they saw God, and he produced in them such a moral trans­for­mation that they walked with the angels. No other prophet demonstrated such power for reforming his people, so their disciples remained spiritually deficient.

“So I have always looked with wonder that this Arabian Prophet called Muhammad, on whom be thousands of blessings — what a supreme rank does this Prophet have! The full extent of his exalted status cannot be gauged, nor is it humanly possible to appraise his spiritually purifying power. Regrettably, his status has not been recognised as it justly ought to have been. He is the one champion who restored to the world true belief in the oneness of God which had perished from the earth. He loved God most passionately, and his soul melted in its deep sympathy for humanity. Therefore God, Who knew this secret of his heart, made him superior to all other prophets, and to all the righteous of early or later times, and granted him all his pious hopes within his lifetime. He is the fountainhead of every grace, … for the key to every virtue and the treasure of every bit of spiritual knowledge has been granted to the Holy Prophet. …

“What are we, and what is our value and worth? I would be ungrateful if I do not admit that it is through this Prophet that I attained true belief in the oneness of God, and through him and his light did I find the living God. The privilege of comm­uni­cation from God, by which we see God, I also obtained through this venerable Prophet. The rays of this Sun of Guidance bathe us like sunlight, and we can remain illuminated only as long as we stand under it.” (Haqiqat-ul-Wahy; Ruhani Khaza’in, v. 22, p. 114–119.)

Here Hazrat Mirza sahib writes that he did not, repeat not,  attain “true belief in the oneness of God” in the way that a prophet does from God and then passes it on to his followers. Hazrat Mirza sahib attained it through the Holy Prophet Muhammad, as all followers of the Holy Prophet can do by following him truly. He goes on to say later in the same discussion that belief in the oneness of God (tauḥīd):

“cannot be attained except through belief in the prophet of the time (waqt kay nabi), namely, the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and obedience to him” (pp. 127–128).

Therefore, it is the Holy Prophet Muhammad who is the prophet of any time and age ever since he appeared, as Hazrat Mirza sahib himself has clearly written. In another book, almost his last book, he writes that:

“the period of prophethood of the Holy Prophet Muhammad lasts till the Day of Judgment and he is the Khatam al-anbiya”

and he calls the whole period from the time of the Holy Prophet to the last days of the world as the Era of Muhammad. (Chashma Ma‘rifat; in Ruhani Khaza’in, v. 23, p. 90–91.)

May Allah grant us success in presenting the character and qualities of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in their true form in the whole world — Ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk