Questioner: Why is it that most of the Prophets were from the Arabic and Jewish race?
Huzoor (rh): Not really.
Questioner: Well, that’s what, like Mohammed (saw) and so on and Jesus (as).
Huzoor (rh): How many Prophets are mentioned having been born in that area which you have just referred to?
Questioner: Well, from Jewish race
Huzoor (rh): How many? Just a rough estimate.
Questioner: I don’t really know.
Huzoor (rh): Say, a score or two scores or three scores?
Questioner: Well, I thought a lot of them were born in…
Huzoor (rh): Read all the names mentioned in the Bible as Prophets and in the Holy Quran and you can count them on your fingertips. Twice thrice, you know, on the hands. Hardly there would be… At maximum I think there shouldn’t be more than 35 or so. Anybody who can correct me on that?
Questioner: So why don’t we…
Huzoor (rh): You can in this moment. But we know from a traditional Holy Prophet of Islam that there were 124,000 Prophets born on earth. So where were they born then? Somewhere else?
Questioner: But why don’t we know about all ones from Europe and…
Huzoor (rh): That is a good, valid question which I have repeatedly answered before. The fact is that the history of only those Prophets was to be preserved on whose line the final Prophet and the perfect Prophet was to appear. That was the most important history for mankind. Why should the Holy Quran record it and preserve the history of all the Prophets on earth ranging between 100,000 and some… How big that would become, that book would become. While if you stick to just one line on which the final manifestation of Prophethood is to appear in the most consummate form then it serves a full purpose, completely. And also a representative specimen of Prophethood is given from referring to that line. So you don’t have to look elsewhere for any phenomenon belonging to Prophethood which might have been missed here in this line. So it’s a completely representative line of Prophets in which every possible incident that could have occurred to Prophets or any possible attitude of the people who opposed them has been mentioned completely and clear. So it’s useless to increase the list unnecessarily. The Holy Quran categorically mentions repeatedly that these are not all the Prophets they are just specimens. Nowhere on earth can you pinpoint any area where Prophets did not appear. There is no race where Prophets did not appear. No time when Prophets did not appear after the first revelation was made to man. So the whole earth abounded in Prophets at various times in different races, in different geographical distances.
Questioner: : Does that mean that there will be Prophets now?
Huzoor (rh):There is a Prophet now in whom you believe, don’t you?
Questioner: No, I mean alive at the moment.
Huzoor (rh): I said final law-bringing Prophet has come, didn’t I tell you? So no law can be brought again after the law of the Holy Quran. No independent Prophet can ever be born anywhere because the Prophet of the whole world has come. While previously there were Prophets only against some smaller areas or some smaller cultures, some tribes and so on. So nowhere in the earth will you find any Prophet prior to Allah, who claimed to have been the Prophet of the whole world, of the whole mankind. When this phenomenon has developed to maturity and it has been completed, then obviously there can’t be any other Prophet of that scale and that magnitude bringing a law, because the law which has been brought by Allah is perfect. You can’t add to perfection, you can’t subtract from perfection. If the law is preserved and the book is preserved, that must continue. That is the logic behind this thinking. We believe that as far as the final Prophet, law-bringing Prophet is concerned, the final Prophet with authority. That was Prophet Muhammad (saw), and after that no such Prophet can ever come. As far as the subordinate Prophets are concerned, there are many types of subordinate Prophets. Those who are like Prophets, like the earlier Prophets, and who have the status of those Prophets, but who cannot be declared Prophets by the new definition. That is, a Prophet like Muhammad (saw), who addresses the whole mankind. So although they have the status of the earlier Prophets, yet they are not called Prophets, because now the Prophethood has risen to a very high standard. So only He would be called a Prophet who subordinates the Holy Prophet of Islam in every respect and addresses the entire mankind. Such a Prophet has come. As far as the future is concerned, Allah knows best. But whoever comes, if anybody is to come again, he will have to refer his case to the founder of Islam and find his authority from him. If he is opposed, he will have to produce some evidence, some argument in his favour, and he will have to quote the Holy Qur’an and the tradition once again. So the Promised Messiah (as) did the same, and to our satisfaction, so we believe in him. So why should we bother about the Prophet of the future? Let’s first finish with this process.
