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Prophets and messengers in Islam

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Prophets and messengers in Islam

Prophets in Islam (Arabic: ٱلْأَنْبِيَاء فِي ٱلْإِسْلَام, romanizedal-anbiyāʾ fī al-islām) are individuals in Islam who are believed to spread God's message on Earth and serve as models of ideal human behaviour. Some prophets are categorized as messengers (Arabic: رُسُل, romanizedrusul; sing. رَسُول, rasool), those who transmit divine revelation, most of them through the interaction of an angel. Muslims believe that many prophets existed, including many not mentioned in the Quran. The Quran states: "And for every community there is a messenger." Belief in the Islamic prophets is one of the six articles of the Islamic faith.

Muslims believe that the first prophet was also the first human being Adam, created by God. Many of the revelations delivered by the 48 prophets in Judaism and many prophets of Christianity are mentioned as such in the Quran with the Arabic versions of their names; for example, the Jewish Elisha is called Alyasa', Job is Ayyub, Jesus is 'Isa, etc. The Torah given to Moses (Musa) is called Tawrat, the Psalms given to David (Dawud) is the Zabur, the Gospel given to Jesus is Injil.

The last prophet in Islam is Muhammad ibn ʿAbdullāh, whom Muslims believe to be the "Seal of the Prophets" (Khatam an-Nabiyyin), to whom the Quran was revealed in a series of revelations (and written down by his companions). Muslims believe the Quran is the divine word of God, thus immutable and protected from distortion and corruption, destined to remain in its true form until the Last Day. Although Muhammad is considered the last prophet, some Muslim traditions also recognize and venerate saints (though modern schools, such as Salafism and Wahhabism, reject the theory of sainthood).

In Islam, every prophet preached the same core beliefs: the Oneness of God, worshipping of that one God, avoidance of idolatry and sin, and the belief in the Day of Resurrection or the Day of Judgement and life after death. Prophets and messengers are believed to have been sent by God to different communities during different times in history.

The Syriac form of rasūl Allāh (lit.'messenger of God'), s̲h̲eliḥeh d-allāhā, occurs frequently in the apocryphal Acts of St. Thomas. The corresponding verb for s̲h̲eliḥehs̲h̲alaḥ, occurs in connection with the prophets in the Hebrew Bible.

In Arabic, the term nabī (Arabic plural form: أنبياء, anbiyāʼ) means "prophet". Forms of this noun occur 75 times in the Quran. The term nubuwwah (Arabic: نبوة "prophethood") occurs five times in the Quran. The terms rasūl (Arabic plural: رسل, rusul) and mursal (Arabic: مرسل, mursal, pl: مرسلون, mursalūn) denote "messenger with law given by/received from God" and occur more than 300 times. The term for a prophetic "message" (Arabic: رسالة, risālah, pl: رسالات, risālāt) appears in the Quran in ten instances.

The following table shows these words in different languages:

Exegetes usually distinguish the messenger angels (rasūl), who carry out divine decrees between heaven and earth, from the angels in heaven (karubiyin). In the Quran and tafsir, the term rasūl is also used for messengers from among the angels. The term is used in Quran 81:19, Quran 11:69–11, and Quran 51:26–11, and is also used for the servants of the Angel of Death.

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