Prophets and Messengers

Now, the next thing that the Muslims are told to believe in. So the first is Allah. The second is the angels — and angels, according to the Qurʾān, are also called messengers, which is the Greek meaning of angelos: messenger. They are messengers of God. And then the books, and those relate primarily to the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel in the singular, and the Qurʾān. And if there were other books — like the Dhammapada, the scripture of the Buddhists, or something — the Muslims would tend to hold out: one just says, God knows. It is better not to negate it, because we do not know.

And then the next is the messengers themselves. There are two qualities here: one is the prophets, and the other is the messengers. As for the prophets, one tradition says there were 124,000; another tradition says 224,000. Muslims tend to say: God knows. We know that there were a lot of them. The Qurʾān says: some of them We told you about, others We did not tell you about. So the idea is that God knows. But the Qurʾān does say that every people was given a prophet, and they were sent with the tongue of the people:

It is the Muslim belief that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the only universal prophet: that all of the other prophets, including Jesus, were tribal, or sent to peoples. They were not sent as a global prophet. The Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was the only global messenger, and that is very strong in the Muslim belief. The prophets are given news from God. It can apply simply to themselves, or they can convey it to others. If they convey it with new addenda to a previous dispensation, then they are called messengers. In other words, if they are given some new things, if they alter the law — like Jesus, who would be seen as a messenger, whereas Isaac would be seen as a prophet. Abraham is a messenger; Muhammad is a messenger. The basic rule is that every messenger is a prophet, but not every prophet is a messenger. So there is a distinction between the two.