The Final Prophet by Mohammad Elshinawy

No disaster strikes upon the earth or among yourselves except that it is in a register before We bring it into being. Indeed that, for Allah, is easy—in order that you not despair over what has eluded you and not exult [in pride] over what He has given you. And Allah does not like every self-deluded and boastful person.174

When asked to define the fundamental belief of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم said, Faith is to believe in Allah, His angels, His scriptures, His messengers, the Last Day, and to believe in destiny, the good of it and the evil of it [all being from Allah].175

Belief that everything is and will always be in God’s hands, and that God has constructed this life with ups and downs for a wisdom only He fully knows and our finite minds cannot, are two powerful resources that make life endurable and enjoyable.

The Prophet Muhammad’s صلى الله عليه وسلم teachings on destiny do not just stand in contrast to the atheistic worldview that misperceives reality as random and undirected, existing solely in the grip of a merciless, relentless set of physical laws which serve no purpose and offer no reassurances. They also negate the deistic notion that God does not intervene in the world, a notion that many theists have internalized. This notion deprives people of the armor of confidence in God overseeing every atom of this universe. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم taught that donning this armor was a requirement of valid faith, by saying in one of numerous traditions about this essential truth, Were you to donate for God’s cause an amount of gold that was equivalent to Mount Uḥud, God would not accept it from you until you believed in the Divine decree— whereby you are certain that whatever reached you would never have missed you, and that whatever missed you was never going to reach you. And were you to die believing otherwise, you would enter the Hellfire.176

Herbert Benson, MD, a cofounder of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, concludes near the end of his medical exploration of belief and healing, “The data I have presented is that affirmative beliefs and hopes are very therapeutic, and that faith in God, in particular, has many positive effects on health.”177 Similarly, Bryan Walsh, in The Science of Happiness, writes that “Study after study has found that religious people tend to be less depressed and less anxious than nonbelievers, better able to handle the vicissitudes of life than nonbelievers… It’s as if a sense of spirituality and an active, social religious practice were an effective vaccine against the virus of unhappiness.”178 Another large, global study by Pew Research Center found that people actively involved in religious life tend to be happier.179 It may be claimed that these teachings of Islam on faith and deference to God are shared by other faith traditions as well. While true, this commonality can be argued as a proof for Muhammad’s prophethood صلى الله عليه وسلم, not against it, since he brought a message that agrees in some respects with other scriptures that he had no knowledge of (see Chapter 7).

Furthermore, the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم placed distinctive emphasis on this particular topic in a way that sets it apart from the remnants of prior scriptures, in an environment replete with superstitious dogmas about fate and bad omens.

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم also taught his followers that faith in destiny coexists with human agency as an ontological reality, though not a reality that denies God’s omnipotence. God granting humanity real agency is a manifestation of His perfect equity, in that it is necessary for human accountability: we are only accountable for what we freely choose to do. In teaching this doctrine, he صلى الله عليه وسلم carved a unique and powerful place in the classic free-will versus determinism debate, a place called Islam (submission). By submitting to God’s creative will, one can relinquish the demoralizing burden of carrying what one cannot control in God’s created universe, and by submitting to His prescriptive will, one can finally set down the burden of trying to live up to the constantly changing standards of a godless society. As Charles Taylor recognizes in his seminal work, A Secular Age, it is “the call to submit to God in Islam which empowers humans in a way unavailable in any other fashion.”180

Without the belief that God is ultimately in control, inner peace will remain out of reach. A person would be forever haunted by the prospect of dueling cosmic forces. This would in turn destroy the integrity of a person’s spirituality, because even if they worshipped God, they would still worry about other adversarial forces in the universe. But with conviction that it is ultimately God who brings events into existence, even if I may have just enough of a will to be accountable for what I can influence, contentment with life and the sweetness of faith become attainable. As the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said in an authentic tradition, “He has tasted faith—the one who is pleased with Allah as their Lord, submission as their religion, and Muhammad as their messenger.”181

Some may wonder how the therapeutic value of Muhammad’s صلى الله عليه وسلم teachings can constitute a logical proof for his prophethood, when healing and happiness are merely aesthetic factors, philosophically speaking. But we cannot restrict proofs to those that can be rationalized and fail to recognize the importance of the lived experiences shared by those who imbibe these teachings.

These beliefs taught by the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم afforded his followers wonderful resilience in the face of poverty, fear, and other challenges that humans everywhere encounter. This resilience and peace of mind therefore constitute yet another aspect of Islam’s beauty that demonstrates its harmony with human nature.