The Messengers Are Wakeful Beings

Now, interestingly, there are four obligations, according to the Islamic tradition, for the prophets. The first one is truthfulness. They have to be truthful; they do not lie. The next is trustworthiness. They are trustworthy: if he says he is going to be here tomorrow, he is there. The third is conveyance: they convey the message. And the fourth is wakefulness, faṭānah. The messengers are wakeful beings. They are individuals who have woken up to the truth.

And we, in a sense, are like the cave dwellers of Plato's analogy. We are the people looking at the shadow world and believing this is reality. The prophets are those who have gotten out of the cave. They have seen the real world. They come back and they say: it is not those shadows. Do not be fooled. It is not. You are just seeing shadows. That is not the real world; these are images projected by a light. There is something out there that is real. And this is the idea that the messengers come to wake people up, remind them, get them into a state of remembrance — not forgetfulness. Get them into a state of remembrance. So ghaflah is the opposite of dhikr, or remembrance. So in the Qurʾān heedlessness and remembrance are juxtaposed. Heedlessness and remembrance.

Now, when the prophets come, they tell people: lā ilāha illallāh. The belief in the Qurʾān is that no messenger has come except that he has said lā ilāha illallāh:

That is the universal message of all prophets. What will change is the second part of the shahādah. For the Muslim, it is now Muḥammadun rasūlullāh. At one time it was ʿĪsā rasūlullāh. At another time it was Mūsā rasūlullāh. Jesus is the messenger of God. Moses is the messenger of God. Noah is the messenger of God. Possibly Buddha is the messenger of God. The Native American people had prophets — had people who came to them to tell them about the nature of reality and the truth. So the idea, from the Muslim perspective, is that all peoples have been given these people who remind them, who tell them.