Islam is based on the Absolute, Allah, and not on the messenger. Yet the love of the Prophet lies at the heart of Islamic piety, for human beings can love God only if God loves them, and God loves only the person who loves His Prophet. The Quran itself orders human beings to venerate the Prophet. In Muslim eyes, the love and respect for the Prophet are inseparable from the love for the Word of God, for the Quran, and of course ultimately for God Himself.

There is something of the soul of the Prophet present in the Quran, and in a famous saying uttered before his death, the Prophet asserted that he was leaving two precious heritages behind for his community, the Quran and his family, both of which represent his continued presence in the Islamic community In Sufism and many schools of Islamic philosophical thought, the inner reality of the Prophet, the “Muh.ammadan Reality” (al- .H aqīqat al-mu .h ammadiyyah) , is identifi ed with the Logos, God’s fi rst creation, which is the ontological principle
of creation as well as the archetype of all prophecy.
Sufi s assert that the inner reality of the Prophet was the fi rst link in the prophetic chain and that his outward and historical reality came at the end of the prophetic cycle to bring it to a close. It was in reference to this inner reality that the Prophet asserted, “I was a prophet when Adam was between water and clay.”

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