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Prophet
Muhammad Is The Son-Of-Man
In the previous discourse we perused and
commented upon the marvelous vision of the Prophet Daniel
(Dan. vii.). We saw how the four beasts that represented
the four king- doms succeeding one another were the Powers
of Darkness and how they persecuted the Jews and the early
Church of Jesus, which was constituted of true believers
in the One God. We also remarked that those Powers were
pagan and allegorically described as ferocious brutes.
Further, we saw that the "Eleventh Horn," which
had eyes and mouth, which uttered blasphemies against the
Most High had fought and overcome His Saints had changed
the times and the Law of God, could be no other than the
Emperor Constantine, who in AD. 325, promulgated his
imperial rescript proclaiming the creed and the decisions
of the Nicene General Council.
In this article let us follow our
researches patiently with regard to the glorious BAR
NASHA, or the "Son-of-Man," who was
presented-upon the clouds to the Most High, to whom was
given the Sultaneh (Sholtana in the original text, i.e.
"dominion" or "empire") honor and
kingdom for ever, and who was commissioned to destroy and
annihilate the terrible Horn.
Now let us proceed forthwith to
establish the identity of this "Bar nasha."
Before finding out who this Son-of-Man
is, it is but essential that we should take into
consideration the following points and observations: -
(a) When a Hebrew Prophet predicts that
"all the nations and peoples of the earth shall serve
him" (i.e. the Bar nasha) or "the people of the
Saints of the Most High," we must understand that he
means thereby the nations men- tioned in Genesis xv.
18-21, and not the English, the French, or the Chinese
nations.
(b) By the phrase "the people of
the Saints of the Most High" it is understood to mean
first the Jews and then the Christians who confessed the
absolute Oneness of God, fought and suffered for it until
the appearance of the Bar nasha and the destruction of the
Horn.
(c) After the destruction of the Horn
the people and the nations that will have to serve the
Saints of God are the Chaldeans, Medo-Persians, Greeks,
and the Romans - the four nations represented by the four
beasts that had trod upon and invaded the Holy Land.
From the Adriatic to the Walls of China
all the various nations have either as Muslims received
the homage or as unbelievers served the Muslims, who are
the only true believers in the One God.
(d) It is remarkable to realize the
significant fact that God often allows the enemies of His
true religion to subdue and persecute His people because
of two purposes. First, because he wants to punish His
people for their lethargy, drawbacks and sins. Secondly,
because He wishes to prove the faith, the patience and the
indestructibility of His Law and Religion, and thus to
allow the infidels to continue in their unbelief and crime
until their cup is full. God in due time Himself
intervenes on behalf of the believers when their very
existence is on its beam-ends. It was a terrible and most
critical time for all Muslims when the Allied Forces were
in Constantinople during those awful years of the
Armistice. Great preparations were made by the Greeks and
their friends to take back the Grand Mosque of Aya Sophia;
the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople went to London
carrying with him a precious ancient patriarchal cope set
in gems and pearls for the Archbishop of Canterbury, who
was strenuously advocating the restoration of
Constantinople and the grand edifice of St. Sophia to the
Greeks. On the eve of the celebration of Prophet
Muhammad's night journey to Heaven - called al-mi'raj -
the sacred building was crammed with a great multitude of
the suppliant faithful who till the dawn most earnestly
supplicated the Almighty Allah to deliver Turkey, and
particularly the Sacred House, from those who "would
fill it with ugly idols and images as before!" In
connection with that patriarchal mantle or cope, I wrote
an article in the Turkish paper the Aqsham, showing the
existence of a schism between the Greek Orthodox and the
Protestant Anglican Churches. I pointed out that the cope
was not meant as a pallium of investiture and recognition
of the Anglican orders, and that a reunion between the two
Churches could never be accomplished unless one or the
other of the parties should renounce and abjure certain
articles of faith as heretical and erroneous. I also
pointed out that the cope was a diplomatic bribe on behalf
of Greece and its Church. The letter ended with these
words: "All depends upon the grace and miracle which
this bakhskish of a pontifical cope is expected to
work!"
The result is too well known to be
repeated here. Suffice it to say that the Patriarch died
in England, and the Almighty, who sent the Bar nasha to
crush the Horn and chase out the legions of Rome from the
East, raised Mustapha Kamal, who saved his country and
restored the honor of Islam!
(e) It is to be noted that the Jews were
the chosen people of God until the advent of Jesus Christ.
In the eyes of the Muslims neither the Jews nor the
Christians have a right to claim the title of "the
People of the Saints of the Most High," because the
former reject Jesus altogether, while the latter insult
him by deifying him. Moreover, both are equally unworthy
of that title because of their refusing to recognize the
Last Prophet who has completed the list of the Prophets.
We shall now proceed to prove that the
Bar nasha - the Son-of-Man - who was presented to the
"Ancient of Days" and invested with power to
kill the monster, was no other than Prophet Muhammad,
whose very name literally means "the Praised and
Illustrious." Whatever other person you may try to
invent in order to deprive the august Messenger of Allah
of this unique glory and majesty bestowed on him in the
Divine Court, you will only make yourselves ridiculous;
and this for the following reasons: -
1. We know that neither Judaism nor
Christianity has any particular name for its faith and its
system. That is to say, neither the Jews nor the
Christians have any special name for the doctrines and
forms of their faith and worship. "Judaism" and
"Christianity" are not Scriptural nor authoriz-
ed either by God or the founders of those religions. In
fact, a religion, if true, cannot properly be named after
its second founder, for the real author and founder of a
true religion is God, and not a Prophet. Now the proper
noun for the laws, doctrines, forms and practices of
worship as revealed by Allah to Prophet Muhammad is
"Islam," which means "making peace"
with Him and among men. "Muhammadanism" is not
the proper appellation of Islam. For Prophet Muhammad,
like Prophet Abraham and all other Prophets, was himself a
Muslim, and not a Muhammadan! Judaism means the religion
of Judah, but what was Judah himself? Surely not a
Judaist! And similarly was Christ a Christian or a Jesuit?
Certainly neither of them! What were, then, the names of
these two distinct religions? No names at all!
Then we have the barbarous Latin word
"religion," meaning "the fear of the
gods." It is now used to express "any mode of
faith and worship." Now what is the equivalent word
for "religion" in the Bible? What expression did
Moses or Jesus use to convey the meaning of religion? Of
course, the Bible and its authors make no use of this word
at all.
Now the Scriptural term used in the
vision of Daniel is the same as applied repeatedly by the
Qur'an to Islam, namely, "Din" (and in the
Qur'an, "Din"), which means "recompense on
the Day of Judgement." And the tribune is the
"Dayyana" or the "Judge." Let us read
the description of this celestial Court of Judgement:
"the tribunes are set, the books are opened, and the
'Dina' - recompense of judgment - is established." By
the "Books" is to be understood the
"Preserved Tablets" wherein the decrees of God
are inscribed from which the Qur'an was revealed by the
Angel Gabriel to Prophet Muhammad; and also the books of
accounts of every man's actions. It was according to the
decrees and laws of God contained in that "Preserved
Tablet," and the wicked actions of the Horn, that the
Great "Dayyana" - the Judge con- demned it to
death and appointed Prophet Muhammad to be
"Adon," i.e. "Commander" or
"lord," to destroy the monster. All this
language of Daniel is extremely Qur'anic. The religion of
Islam is called "Dinu 'I-Islam." It was
according to the decrees and laws of this "Dina"
that the "Bar nasha" destroy- ed the Devil's
religion and his lieutenant the Horn. How can it, then, be
at all possible that any man other than Prophet Muhammad
could be meant by the appearance of a "Son-
of-Man" in the presence of the Most High? Islam is,
indeed, a "judgment of peace," because it
possesses an authen- ticated Book of Law, with which
justice is administered and iniquity punished, the truth
discerned and the falsehood con- demned; and above all,
the Oneness of God, the eternal rewards for good deeds,
and eternal damnation for wicked actions are clearly
stated and defined. In English a magistrate is called
"Justice of Peace;" that is to say, a
"judge of peace." Now this is in imitation of a
Muslim Judge, who settles a quarrel, decides a case, by
punishing the guilty and rewarding the innocent, thus
restoring peace. This is Islam and the law of the Qur'an.
It is not Christianity nor the Gospel, for the latter
absolutely forbids a Christian to appeal to a judge,
however innocent and oppressed he may be (Matt. v. 25, 26,
38-48).
2. The Son-of-Man, or Bar nasha, is
certainly Prophet Muhammad. For he came after Constantine,
and not before him as Jesus or any other Prophet did. The
Trinitarian regime in the East represented by the Horn,
which we rightly identify with the Emperior Constantine,
was permitted to fight with the Unitarians and vanquish
them for a period described in the figurative, prophetical
language as "time, times and half a time," which
phrase signifies three centuries and a half, at the end of
which all the power of idolatry on the one hand and the
Trinitarian dominion and tyranny on the other were
eradicated and swept away entirely. There is nothing more
absurd than the assertion that Judah the Maccabaeus
(Maqbhaya) was the Bar nasha on the clouds, and the Horn
Antiochus. It is alleged that (if I remember aright)
Antio- chus, after desecrating the Temple of Jerusalem,
lived only three years and a half - or three days and a
half - at the end of which time he perished. In the first
place, we know that Antiochus was a successor of Alexander
the Great and King of Syria, consequently one of the four
heads of the winged Tiger and not the eleventh Horn of the
fourth Beast as stated in the vision. In the eighth
chapter of the Book of Daniel, the Ram and the He-goat are
explained by a Saint as representing the Persian and the
Greek Empires respec- tively. It is expressly explained
that the Greek Empire immediately succeeded the Persian
and that it was divided into four kingdoms, as stated in
the first vision. Secondly, the Horn with the speech
indicates that the person who blasphemed and changed the
Law and holy days could not be a pagan, but one who knew
God and associated with Him purposely the other two
persons whom he had equally known, and perverted the
faith. Antiochus did not pervert the faith of the Jews by
instituting a trinity or plurality of Gods, nor did he
change the Law of Moses and its festival days. Thirdly, it
is childish to give such a magnitude and importance to
local and insignificant events which took place between a
petty king in Syria and a small Jewish chief, so as to
compare the latter with the glorious man who received the
homage of the millions of angels in the presence of the
Almighty. More- over, the prophetical vision describes and
depicts the Bar nasha as the greatest and the noblest of
all men, for no other human being is reported in the Old
Testament to have been the object of such honor and
grandeur as Prophet Muhammad.
3. It is equally futile to claim for
Jesus Christ this celestial honor given to the Son-of-Man.
There are two main reasons to exclude Jesus from this
honor; (a) If he is purely a man and prophet, and if we
consider his work a success or failure, then he is
certainly far behind Muham- mad. But if he is believed to
be the third of the three in the Trinity, then he is not
to be enlisted among men at all. You fall into a dilemma,
and you cannot get out of it; for in either case the Bar
nasha could not be Jesus. (b) If Jesus was commissioned to
destroy the fourth Beast, then instead of paying poll-tax
or tribute to Caesar and submitting himself to be
bastinadoed or whipped by the Roman governor Pilate, he
would have chased away the Roman legions from Palestine
and saved his country and people.
4. There has never lived upon this earth
a Prince - Prophet like Muhammad, who belonged to a
dynasty that reigned for a long period of about 2,500
years, was absolutely independent and never bent its neck
under a foreign yoke. And certainly there has never been
seen on earth another man like Prophet Muhammad, who has
rendered more material and moral service to his own nation
in particular and to the world in general. It is
impossible to imagine another human being so dignified and
so worthy as Prophet Muhammad for such a magnificent glory
and honor as depicted in the prophetical vision. Let us
just compare the great Prophet Daniel with the Bar nasha
he was beholding with awe and wonder. Daniel was a slave
or captive, though raised to the dignity of a vizier in
the courts of Babylon and Susa. What would, in the
presence of the Almighty, be his position when compared
with Prophet Muhammad, who would be crowned as the Sultan
of the Prophets, the Leader of mankind, and the object of
the angels' homage and admiration? Small wonder that the
Prophet David calls Prophet Muhammad "My Lord"
(Psa, c. 10).
5. It is no wonder to find that on his
night journey to Heaven Prophet Muhammad was received with
the highest honors by the Almighty and invested with power
to extirpate idolatry and the blasphemous Horn from
countries given by God to him and to his people as an
everlasting heritage.
6. Another most amazing feature in this
prophetical vision is, according to my humble belief, that
the sight of a Barnasha upon the clouds and his
presentation to the Almighty corresponds with and is
simultaneous with the Mi'raj - or night journey of the
Prophet Muhammad; in other rds, this second part of the
vision of Daniel is to be identified with the Mi'raj!
There are, indeed, several indications both in the
language of Daniel and in the "Hadith" - the
quotations of the Prophet of Allah - which lead me to this
belief. The Qur'an declares that during that night-
journey God transported His worshiper from the Sacred
Mosque at Mecca to the Father Temple of Jerusalem. He
blessed the precincts of that Temple, then in ruins, and
showed him His signs (chap. xvii).
It is related by the Holy Prophet that
at the Temple of Jerusalem he officiated in his capacity
of the Imam, and con- ducted the prayers with all the
company of the Prophets following him. It is further
related that it was from Jerusalem that he was carried up
unto the Seventh Heaven, being ac- companied by the
spirits of the Prophets and Angels until he was taken to
the presence of the Eternal. The modesty of the Prophet
which forbade him to reveal all that he saw, heard and
received from the Lord of Hosts is made good by Daniel,
who narrates the decision of Gods Judgement. It appears
that the Spirit which interpreted the vision to Daniel was
not an Angel, as thoughtlessly remarked by me else- where,
but the Spirit or the Soul of a Prophet, for he calls
"Qaddish" (in the masculine gender) and
"Qaddush" (iv. 10; viii. 13 ), which means a
Saint or a Holy Man - a very usual name of the Prophets
and Saints. How glad must have been the holy souls of the
Prophets and the Martyrs who had been persecuted by those
four beasts especially more so when they saw the decree of
death being pronounced by the Almighty against the
Trinitarian regime of Constantine and the Seal of the
Prophets being commissioned to kill and annihilate the
uttering Horn! It will also be remembered that this vision
was seen as well during the same night in which took place
the journey of the Son of Man nasha from Mecca to the
heavens!
From the testimony of Daniel we, as
Muslims, must admit that Prophet Muhammad's journey was
corporeally performed - a thing of no impossibility to the
Omnipotent.
There must exist a law in physics
according to which a body is not controlled by the main
body to which it belongs, or by the law of gravitation,
but by the law of velocity. A human body belonging to the
earth cannot escape from it unless a superior force of
velocity should detach it from the force of gravitation.
Then there must also exist another law in physics
according to which a light body can penetrate into a thick
one and a thick body into an even still thicker or harder
one through the means of a superior force, or simply
through the force of velocity. Without entering into the
details of this subtle ques- tion, suffice it to say that
before the force of velocity the weight of a solid body,
whether moved or touched, is of no concern. We know the
rate of the velocity of the light from the sun or a star.
If we discharge a bullet at the rate, say, of 2,500 meters
a second, we know it penetrates and pierces a body of iron
plate which is several inches thick. Similarly, an angel,
who can move with an infinitely greater velocity than that
of the light of the sun and even the thought in the mind,
could, of course, transport the bodies of Prophet Jesus,
to save him from the crucifixion, and Prophet Muhammad in
his miraculous challenge of the Ascent Journey (Miraj)
with an astounding facility and rapidity, and set at
nought the law of gravitation of the globe to which they
belonged.
Paul also mentions a vision he had seen
fourteen years before of a man who had been taken up into
the third heaven and then unto Paradise, where he heard
and saw words and objects that could not be described. The
Churches and their commentators have believed this man to
be Paul himself. Although the language is such as to
convey to us the idea that he himself is the man, yet out
of modesty it is that he keeps it a secret lest he should
be considered a proud man! (2 Cor. xii. 1-4). Although the
Qur'an teaches us that the Apostles of Jesus Christ were
good people, their writings cannot be relied upon, because
the wrangling and disputant Churches have subjected them
to interpolations. The Gospel of St. Barnabas states that
Paul afterwards fell into an error and misled many of the
believers.
That Paul does not reveal the identity
of the person seen by him in the vision, and that the
words which he heard in Paradise "cannot be spoken
and no man is permitted to speak them," shows that
Paul was not himself the person who was taken up to
Heaven. To say that Paul, for reason of humility and out
of modesty, does not praise himself is simply to mis-
represent Paul. He boasts of having rebuked St. Peter to
his face, and his epistles are full of expressions about
himself which do rather confirm the idea that Paul was
neither humble nor modest.
Besides, we know from his writings to
the Galatians and the Romans what a prejudiced Jew he was
against Hagar and her son Ishmael. The glorious person he
saw in his vision could be no other than the person seen
by Daniel! It was Prophet Muhammad that he saw, and dare
not report the words which were spoken to him because on
the one hand he was afraid of the Jews, and because on the
other he would have contradicted himself for having
glorified himself so much with the Cross and the
crucified. I am half convinced that Paul was allowed to
see the Barnasha whom Daniel had seen some six centuries
before, but "the angel of satan who was continually
pouring blows upon his head" (2 Cor. xii 7) forbade
him to reveal the truth! It this an admission by Paul that
"the angel of Satan," as he calls him,
prohibited him from revealing the secret of Prophet
Muhammad, whom he had seen in his vision. If Paul was a
true righteous worshiper of God, why was he delivered into
the hands of the "angel of the Devil" who was
continually beating him on the head? The more one reflects
on the teachings of Paul, the less one doubts that he was
the prototype of Constantine the Great!
In conclusion, I may be permitted to
draw a moral for the non-Muslims from this wonderful
vision of Daniel. They should take to heart a lesson from
the fate which befell the four beasts, and particularly
the Horn, and to reflect that Allah alone is the One True
God; that the Muslims alone faithfully profess His
absolute Oneness; that He is Aware of their oppressions,
and that they have their Caliph of the Pro- phets near to
the Throne of the Most High.
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