Sublime

Islam preaches the continual self-revelation of God from Adam down to all the prophets who have ever existed in all religions. These prophets are called nabis in Arabic, and they have been chosen to relay God’s divine message to all humanity. But sometimes a nabi is given the extra burden of handing down sacred texts: Moses, who revealed the Torah;

what made Muhammad unique was his claim to be “the Messenger of God.” He even went so far as to identify himself repeatedly with the Jewish and Christian prophets and messengers who had come before him, particularly with Abraham, whom all Meccans—pagan or otherwise—regarded as a divinely inspired prophet. Put simply, the difference between Muhammad

In this verse is a prefiguring, to Moses, of the Arabian Messenger, the last and greatest of the Messengers of Allah. Prophecies about him will be found in the Torah and the Injīl. In the reflex of the Torah as now accepted by the Jews, Moses says, “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee, of thy brethren, like unto me” (Deut.xviii.15): the only

Yet, like his great prophetic predecessors—Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus—Muhammad would be something more.

For fifteen years he struggled with the incongruity between his lifestyle and his beliefs; by his fortieth year, he was an intensely troubled man. Then, one night in 610 C.E., as he was meditating on Mt. Hira during one of his religious retreats, Muhammad had an encounter that would change the world. He sat alone in a cave, deep in meditation.

According to the Shi‘ah, this relationship between prophet and Imam can be observed throughout the history of prophecy. Abraham may have been given the covenant by God, but it was Isaac and Ismail who, as his Imams, fulfilled it; Moses may have revealed the divine law, but it was Aaron who carried it into the Promised Land; Jesus may have preached