How can you increase the Love and honour and you have for the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him)? And why should you have this type of reverence for Him. It’s a cornerstone of Islamic creed and very important that one understands the importance of this relationship Muslims have with The Messenger of Allah (Peace and Blessings be upon him).

So Why do we have a relationship with The Messenger of Allah? There are multiple reasons, but the main one is that He (pbuh) is the Messenger of God. The One that Allah sent to humanity with the final message. This message (the Quran) is the divine guidance that will lead you to eternal paradise. So, to reject the Messenger is to reject the message He is conveying. And to accept the Message of the Quran and to hold it in the highest regard means that you would hold the Messenger with the highest regard.

Allah swt said about his Messenger (pbuh):

“And We have not sent you (oh Muhammad) accept as a Mercy to all Humans, Jin and all Creatures”

Quran, Surat Al Anbiyaa 21,107

So, it’s essential to acknowledge that The Messenger of Allah (pbuh) came as a Mercy from your Lord. Then, we must figure out how to benefit from that mercy.

There is no better way love the Prophet (pbuh) that to know who he was, know everything about Him, His ways, His exemplary life style, His teachings and His prohibitions.  Loving the Messenger means knowing Him and following him.

If you look at it logically , no one loves another person unless they know them, and appreciate them and more importantly they feel the benefit of that relationship. Just look at how people adore famous sports stars and actors nowadays. People follow every detail about their lives, the way they dress, behave, their hair styles and even interests. People become obsessed with knowing every detail about their chosen stars and role models.

The sad thing is that they don’t actually benefit from this love that they have for their famous role models.

With the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) it’s totally different. The more you know about Him, the more you study his Sunnah, the more you will understand your creator, and the more you benefit from divine guidance in your life.

This love you have for the Prophet of Allah (pbuh) will actually transform your life both in this world and the hereafter. So we have good reason to become obsessed with our love of the Messenger (pbuh).

With the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) when you study His life and teachings, through the Sunnah (narrations, traditions authentically attributed to Him), you will feel the benefits of that Mercy that Allah mentioned. That’s when you feel a strong bond or relationship forming.

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is the messenger from Allah and anything that he brings to us in his Sunnah is from Allah, in order to help us to improve our lives.

What Happens When People Don’t Love the Messenger

Allah subhanahu wa’tala demonstrates to us in the following story very clearly what Rejection of the Prophet actually looks like. He says:

“And when Musa said to his people, “Indeed, Allah commands you to slaughter a cow.” They said, “Do you take us in ridicule?” He said, “I seek refuge in Allah from being among the ignorant.”

Quran, 2,67

Allah, the Most High informs us about the story of the miraculous cow. This is the story where Banu Israel and Musa (AS).  There was a man who was killed, and the tribes began to dispute with each other, and no one knew who had killed this man. It is narrated that he was a rich man and it was his relative that had killed him, and yet no one knew. Animosity was starting to rise and they were starting to fight each other.

In order to settle the dispute, they people went to Musa (AS), as he was their Messenger from Allah, and he is impartial.

So, they requested for his help saying, “Oh Musa (AS) ask Allah to let us know, who it is that has killed this man. Ask Allah to show us.”

So, Musa (AS), after asking Allah subhanahu wa’tala, he came back to the people and he said to them:

“Inallaha ya’murukum an tathbahu-Baqarah”

“Indeed Allah is commanding you to sacrifice a cow.”

Quran, 2,67

Their response was a rejection of the command of Allah, they replied: “are you taking us for fools, are you mocking us”,

That was the way that they were responding to their Messenger. The messenger of Allah that had come to them with the message of guidance and clarity and absolute truth. Instead of accepting they were responded in a negative way, are you mocking us, are you messing with us, are you ridiculing us. In other words they meant is Allah ridiculing us.

By questioning The Messenger of Allah, they were questioning Allah, they were putting doubt in to whether or not the statement of their Messenger was actually true. And what did Musa (AS) say in response. He said:

“I seek refuge in Allah from being of the ignorant”

Because these are the actions of ignorant that he was being accused of. It is the actions of the ignorant to lie and mislead people, to mock them and ridicule people. Prophets and Messenger are above such low characteristics. The character of a Prophet or Messenger has to be unquestionably honest, upright and the best of examples.

Lessons Allah teaches us in this story:

What can we learn from this verse that helps us to perfect our character?

1) The number one take away, is that you have to have etiquette.  The correct etiquette with The Messenger of Allah.  Because having the correct etiquette with The Messenger of God means having the correct etiquette with Allah Himself.

2) Sunnah is Revelation.The Messenger of Allah is not here physically in your life right now. So, how do you have the correct etiquette with The Messenger of Allah? By having the correct etiquette with the Sunnah of The Messenger of Allah, because Allah said about His Prophet (pbuh):

“And He doesn’t speak of his own desires, he speaks revelation.”

Quran, 53,3-4

This means that the Messenger’s (pbuh) Sunnah is actually revelation from Allah. So when you question the authentic Sunnah, or you question the Sunnah in a negative, disrespectful way, You are doing what the people of Musa (AS) did.

3) Don’t react to the Sunnah in a Negative way like the people of Musa (AS). Usually people do this because they don’t understand a hadith of The Messenger of Allah, or maybe they’ve never come it before.

When you are shocked by what you see and you don’t understand it, like Banu Israel were, don’t respond like they did to their prophet. Remain silent and seek to understand it by going to the people of knowledge.

The people of Musa (AS) responded in the most heinous way, they responded in a way that we wouldn’t respond to one another. When we want to be nice to each other, we don’t talk to each other in that way. We are respectful.

When you have a person in your life that you have a lot of respect for, would you go to that figure of respect, even if you didn’t agree with what they said, would you talk to them in a manner that is disrespectful? Of course not.

When we take the Sunnah of The Messenger of Allah or we take that Ayat of Allah and we are disrespectful with it because we don’t understand it, we reject it because we don’t understand it because some people, that’s what they do. They reject it because they don’t understand it.

The question is, are you going to understand every single thing in the Quran? Allah subhanahu wa’tala has created us all different. We all have different levels of intellect.

Everyone has a different level of understanding according to how much they’ve actually studied, which brings us back to the importance of studying the Quran and Sunnah. Studying it to understand it.

If you don’t understand something don’t react. That’s the solution. If you don’t understand something you cannot reject it. If it is from the Quran or the Sunnah, it is revelation. We don’t reject revelation because we know that this is guidance that Allah subhanahu wa’tala has sent to guide us.

So Loving The Prophet Muhammad means:

1) Be Humble and Obedient –  Love is manifested in your obedience of the Messenger of Allah(pbuh) as Allah is guiding you through the sunnah of His Messenger. By rejecting it, we are the ones who lose out. By accepting it, we are the ones that gain.

So, whether you understand it or you don’t, you accept it. Of course, you look into it to understand it further, seek knowledge to understand that subject and to understand the wisdom behind it. If you don’t understand the wisdom behind a ruling that Allah has given or his Messenger (pbuh) has given, then you are not in a position to reject it because you are the one being guided, you are not the guider.

The intellect is there to lead us to the truth, but once you have established to yourself the truth of Islam, then you accept whatever comes from it.

2) Study the Quran & Sunnah – Allah commanded us to Read as the very first word of the Quran to be revealed, ‘Iqra’, read.  Read because you need to understand.

The number one take away here is that when we don’t understand something in the Sunnah, we have to have etiquette, we have to have etiquette with the Sunnah of The Messenger of Allah and the Sunnah of Allah, which is the revelation itself, all of it.

3) Perfect Your Manners with Allah and His Messenger – Perfecting your character is not just about how you behave with the people. More importantly it’s about how you behave with Allah and his messenger. That is the ultimate perfection of character.

If you can have the best character with Allah and his messenger, then you are the closest that you have come to in terms of perfecting your character. Insha’Allah that’s what we hope to do, it’s to actualize our potential by perfecting our character.

May Allah bless us with the most love for His Prophet (pbuh).

Jazak’Allah khair

Abdul Shahid