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A STRIKING EVENT
WHICH DEMONSTRATES WHAT KIND OF ONE
A PROPHET IS
One of Ibn Sina (Avicenna)’s
students said to him one day that if,
with his extraordinary understanding and
intelligence, he were to make a claim to
prophethood, people would gather round
him. Avicenna said nothing; then when
they were on a journey together in
wintertime, Avicenna awoke from his
sleep one morning at dawn, woke up his
student, and told him he was thirsty,
and asked him to fetch some water. The
student procrastinated and made excuses.
However much Avicenna persisted, the
student was not prepared to leave his
warm bed in the cold winter. At that
moment the cry of the muezzin
(caller to prayer) called out from the
minaret: “God is the greatest. I bear
witness that Muhammad is the Messenger
of God.” Avicenna saw that this was a
good opportunity to give the answer to
his student, so he said:
You, who
averred that if I made claim to be
a prophet, people would believe in
me, look now and see how the
command I just gave you, who have
been my student for years and have
benefited from my lessons, has not
even had the effect of making you
leave your warm bed to fetch me
some water. But this muezzin
strictly obeys the
four-hundred-year (now
fourteen-hundred-year)-old command
of the Prophet. He got up from his
warm bed, as he always does every
morning together with hundreds of
thousands of others, climbed up to
this great height and borne
witness to the unity of God and to
His Prophet. Look and see how
great the difference is!
His name has been
pronounced five times a day together
with that of God for fourteen centuries
all over the world, whilst he is loved
heart and soul by so many people whose
number is increasing day by day. The
present-day conditions of the world
gives the good tiding that he will be
greeted by the whole world in a near
future as the “Ruler of the world”,
as was foretold by Jesus Christ.
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