The Holy Qur’an has mentioned a retort to all questions of this nature and that is the main principle to which one must take. The Holy Qur’an deals in one sweep of the hand with all the questions belonging to this category. It says Ahum yakhsimuna rahmatarabbik. People from various places, various walks of life, from various schools of thought, they come and make different demands.
Some say that he should be the descendant, the new prophet should be the descendant of so-and-so. And some say that he should hail from that and that city. And some say he should be from that and that people and nation or religion. So the demands from all over the world vary and they are different. Then the issue is only this. Who is going to decide whom Allah should give his blessings? Is it Allah or somebody else? If Allah is free to choose, let him choose. Because it is not just their point of view. The fact is the Holy Qur’an enlarges this question in the context of many other demands. There were Arabs who said he should have a hail from that city, that big city and that big city.
The twin big cities. Like the Muslims today demand that the Mahdi should have come from the two big cities, Mecca and Medina. At that time when Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa sallallahu alaihi wasallam appeared, the two big cities were not Mecca and Medina. They were two different cities. So the demands, if you further go out of the Middle East and go to India, the demand there would be that the Prophet or the final Prophet or the final, let’s say, manifestation of God was to appear from among the Brahmins. And the Buddhists would say the final blessings of Allah was to be shown to the descendants of Buddha and so the descendants of Confucius and so the descendants of Zoroaster. It goes on and on. So how can you handle each one of them without there being a central weapon of defense available to you which could hit them all together and with the same severity? That central weapon has been mentioned in the Holy Quran that the question of who is going to be chosen by Allah rests with Allah and he will not be dictated to by human beings.
So that solves the attack upon Islam from all sides. Secondly, from the biblical point of view, too, you should be well-versed and you should be capable of defending the position of Islam. The fact is that Hazrat Ismail is mentioned in Bible as the blessed son, as revealed to Hazrat Ibrahim before his birth and he is promised of unlimited bounties by Allah. And when you remember it is said that when Abraham prayed for a son and he was given the glad tidings of Isaac, you know what he said? He said in Urdu it says in your presence it suffices me that Ismail be given a long life. That particular verse of the Bible decides the issue not only in this respect, in the respect of the question you have asked, but in other respects as well.
They claim that Isaac was the first son and if Isaac was the first son, how could Abraham reply after receiving the glad tidings about Isaac that let Ismail, the long life of Ismail suffice to me, if you provide him with long life. That means Ismail was the firstborn and as a firstborn he was recognized as the first official representative of Abraham. If Hazrat Abraham had not looked at him as the true descendant and inheritor of the blessings, he couldn’t have said that. He should have shown great pleasure at the fact that although I was given a son before, but he having been born out of a lady, let’s say a slave, not concubine, concubine is haram, that’s right. I was thinking of that, yes. Because they claim that because he was born out of a bondwoman, so he could not inherit the blessings of a prophet.
That is the first step they take in that direction. Now we can counter that through this saying of Hazrat Ismail. If Hazrat Abraham was of this opinion as the Christians would have us believe he was, then when the glad tiding of Isaac was given to him, he shouldn’t have said that, that Ismail was quite enough for me, that is an additional blessing. Because Ismail having been born of a bondwoman could not have been enough for Abraham if he had not believed that he would inherit his blessings all right. There was a discontinuation from Ismail to Hazrat Mohammad Mustafa, but in the line of Isaac, there was a lot of prophets in the line of Isaac, so he was building on actually the discontinuation from Ismail to Mohammad, whereas in the other line of Isaac… That’s fine by me, that doesn’t make any difference at all.
The fact is that there is a continuity observable, of course, in the line of Isaac, but then at the time of Jesus Christ, he’s abundant, and it was prophesied by other prophets as well, like Moses, that from among your brethren, Allah would raise a great prophet. So that shows there was one prophet who offset the weight of an entire line of prophets, he was to be so great, and he was to be born from among the brothers, not the direct line of Isaac. And then also the parable of the vineyard, which has been mentioned in the New Testament, you know that parable? That is also very clear, that someone else is going to come, and this time it is not going to be the son, but the father himself. That shows that relationship of Hazrat Mohammad, peace be upon him, to the rest of the prophets was like this. His coming was the coming of God himself.
The coming of Jesus Christ was by the maximum extension of imagination, like the coming of the son. And this is what has been described in the parable very clearly. So, it doesn’t make any difference whether there is a long lineage of prophets before him or not. The question is, the weight which he carries is so great, that compared to that, the rest of the prophets all put together don’t carry that much weight. This is, in essence, which has been disclosed by Bible itself in so many places, in so many forms. So, I hope you follow the Quran.
