To Dear Maruf Saifullah:Love for the Prophet

One of my friend named Maruf Saifullah asked me to explain "in order to perfect faith we need to love ALLAH's messenger." To explain this here i write something about love for the last Prophet.Actually this is collected from internet when i search "Love for the prophet" in googel.And i found this explanation in first searching result.Please read it and make your valuable comment .I am waiting for your response.

Love for the Prophet is a Condition of Faith
Love for the Prophet Muhammad is a measure of one's iman (faith and inner conviction) and our iman is completed and perfected only when our love for the Prophet exceeds our love for everything else in this world, including our own lives. The Holy Qur'an says:

"The Prophet is preferable for the believers even to their own selves..." (33:6)

This is a definitional sentence which tells us what it takes to be a believer: preferring the Prophet even to one's own life. In confirmation of this the Prophet is reported in Hadith to have said:

"None of you becomes a believer until I am dearer to him than his children, his parents and all mankind." (as reported by Bukhari and Muslim) Some versions add: "his life, his wealth and his family".

The best of believers, the suhaba (companions of the Prophet), did show such love for the Prophet, especially the noblest of them. Hadhrat Ali, speaking on behalf of all the community of suhaba in Medina, is reported to have said:

"The Holy Prophet is dearer to us than our wealth, our children, our fathers, our forefathers, our mothers and cool water at the time of severe thirst."

The firmly established principle in Islam that our iman is as good as our love for the Prophet is fairly and accurately expressed by an Urdu poet when he says:

"Without love for the Prophet it is difficult to find God;

He who is not of the Prophet's cannot be of God.

Without love for Muhammad faith cannot be complete;

To be a Muslim it is not enough to believe in God.

Daily prayers, charity, fasting and hajj are fine;

But despite these I cannot be among the faithful.

Unless I am ready to be sacrificed for the honour of Muhammad;

God is witness - my faith cannot attain perfection."

Love of the Prophet breathes life into our practice of religion. Without it our religion reduces to an empty adherence to a set of dead rules and rituals. ("Soul of iman, essence of the Qur'an and life of religion - all these are love of Muhammad, the Mercy to All Creation.")

THE MEANING OF THIS LOVE FOR THE PROPHET

At one level it seems clear why the faithful should love the Prophet: he is their teacher, guide and leader and it is impossible for him to teach, guide and lead them if they don't love him. But there is a deeper meaning in the principle that love for the Prophet is essential for iman.

Love of the Prophet is love of all the beauty and nobility of character, truthfulness, justness, humility and inner strength of which man is capable and which the Prophet as al-insan al-kamil (the Perfect man) possessed in the utmost degree. Love for the Prophet means to acknowledge, cherish and glorify all the potential of goodness and greatness that God has created within Man.

It also means love of humanity, not just in regard to its potential for perfection but also despite its general inability to realize that potential and despite all kind of imperfections and weaknesses from which it suffers. For the Prophet is not only the Perfect Man but also the Representative Man who on the day of judgment will represent mankind and plead on their behalf for their imperfections and weaknesses before the throne of God.

Thus love of the Prophet, on the one hand puts us on the road to perfection by making us cherish it dearly and on the other hand it helps us accept our imperfect humanity and in this way to live in peace with ourselves as repentant servants of God hopeful of His mercy. This is why love for the Prophet is a condition of iman, for what is iman if it is not to acknowledge and repent for one's imperfections and weaknesses and to cherish and strive for - even as an unachievable ideal - the perfection of which man is potentially capable?

There are two closely interconnected sides of iman. One is divine and consists of recognizing God and being at peace with Him. The other is recognizing one's own self and being at peace with oneself. The two sides are like two sides of a coin, none of which can exist without the other. This is shown by numerous verses in the Qur'an and ahadith of the Prophet. For example, the Prophet is reported to have said that he who recognized his own self recognized his Lord. Approaching the same principle from the other direction, the Qur'an says:

"that those who forget God are made to forget their own selves" (59:19).

The word Islam means being at peace with God and this is linked in the Qur'an with being a self at peace with itself.

The love of the Prophet represents the human side of faith. as man the Prophet represents a believers own true self. His love for the Prophet means that he has recognized his own true self and is at peace with himself which in turn means that he has recognized his Lord and made peace with Him by surrendering to Him.
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Reality of Love

There once lived in Basrah a prolific and profoundly spiritual worshipper whose fear of the Hereafter caused him to become physically weak, and whose constant crying made him skinny and sick. When he was on his death bed, his family gathered around him and they all began to cry.

'Help me sit up,' he said. He addressed his father first: 'O my father, what is making you cry?'

'My son,' began his father, 'I remembered that I will lose you and I will be alone after you die.'
The worshipper then turned his gaze towards his mother and said, 'O my mother, what is making you cry?'

'I am crying because I will soon have to taste the bitterness of losing you,' she said.

He then turned to his sister and asked, 'What is making you cry?'

'Because I will soon lose out on your kindness and will consequently have to depend on others for help,' she said.

Finally he looked at his children and asked, 'What is making you cry?'

'The prospect of a hard and humiliating life of being orphans after you die,' they said. Now it was his turn to cry. 'And what is making you cry?' everyone asked.

'I am crying because I saw that each one of you cried for his or her own self and not for me,' he said. 'Is there none among you who cried for the long, hard journey I am about to embark upon, and the few supplies (i.e.good deeds) that I have for it? Is there none among you who cries because I will be lying down in dirt? Is there none among you who cries because I will be held accountable (and might have to endure punishment)? Is there none among you who cries because of when I will stand before the Lord of all that exists (for judgment)?'

He then rolled over onto his face; when they tried to move him, they realized he had just died...


Al-Mawaiz Wal Majalis page 111


From the book: Stories of Repentance




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