A Free Human Being, a Male From the Children of Ādam

The word prophet: wa nabiyyuhu al-mujtabā. The word nabī could come from the root nabaʾ, which means to give information. A nabī, in that sense, will be the active participle: he is the one giving information from Allah (swt), conveying the message. It could also be taken the other way around, as a passive participle: the one given information, because Allah reveals to him. So nabī could actually be either an active or a passive participle of nabaʾ.

Scholars have actually defined it, in terms of a definition of a nabī. It is very important to know this, so that the term can be allocated properly. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī gives the definition of a prophet as insānun ḥurr: a free human being, not a slave. Dhakarun min Banī Ādam: from the human beings, a male from the human beings. So not from the jinn, which basically means that according to him, and according to the majority of scholars, there were no prophets from among the jinn. There were prophets of the human beings sent to the jinn, but not prophets from among the jinn.

It has to be a male as well, and that is the agreement of the majority of scholars too. There are some who claim prophethood for certain women, like the mother of ʿĪsā, the wife of Pharaoh, and so on. But the majority opinion is that prophethood, nubuwwah, prophecy, was a designation given only to the male human.

So he said: insānun ḥurrun dhakarun min Banī Ādam, ūḥiya ilayhi bi-sharʿin wa in lam yuʾmar bi-tablīghih. A free human being, a male from among the Banī Ādam, from among the human beings, to whom Allah reveals a Sharīʿah, but who is not necessarily given the command to propagate it. That is the distinguishing factor with a rasūl. A rasūl has to propagate it; and sometimes the rasūl is also given a book, or a scripture.

Wa rasūluhu: this is the rasūl. Insānun ḥurrun dhakarun min Banī Ādam ūḥiya ilayhi bi-sharʿin wa umira bi-tablīghih, aw lam yakun lahu dhālika bi-an umira bi-tablīghi al-waḥyi min ghayri kitāb, fa-huwa akhaṣṣu min al-nabī. A free human being; Allah inspires him with the Sharīʿah, and he has been commanded to propagate it, whether or not he has a book revealed on him to propagate. So a book is not necessary.

We know of about 104 books: the four main ones, the Torah, the Zabūr, the Injīl and the Qur'an; and there were a number of scriptures given to Ibrāhīm (peace be upon him), Ādam (peace be upon him), Shīth (peace be upon him), and others. So we know of about 104; but there are 313 messengers mentioned. Allah knows best exactly; but according to this definition, they do not have to have a book. The difference is that they are told to propagate.

In some cases, they are also abrogating the previous Sharīʿah. For instance, the Prophet Muhammad's (peace be upon him) Sharīʿah, the Sharīʿah Muḥammadiyyah, is an abrogator of all the previous Sharīʿahs. So anything that was a remnant from the previous ways of the prophets would no longer be applicable, especially where it contradicted.

The adab that we have when dealing with people of other faiths is that if they say something, and it conforms to what we have, we agree with it and we confirm it. If it contradicts, then we reject it. And if one is unsure whether it confirms or contradicts, then we remain silent, because we don't want to venture into a place we don't know about. That would be the case with some of the wording in the Bible, for instance, in the book form they have today: that is how to deal with some of the wording in there. If there is a contradiction, it is rejected; if it is a confirmation of certain core elements, then that is confirmed; otherwise, we stay silent.

Al-murtaḍā: the reason he is murtaḍā is that Allah (swt) showered him with His blessings, and especially selected him, and chose him.