Why We Should Avoid Using The Phrase ‘Prophet of Islam’
A long time ago, I visited one of my respected teachers, Ayatollah Haj Seyyed Mohammad Ali Rouzati (1929-2012 CE), and he told me that the late Amiri Firouzkouhi, a famous Iranian poet and scholar, wrote an article about why the phrase “Prophet of Islam” was a wrong term.
At first, I was surprised to hear that this term is wrong, but after reading that article, I agreed with the poet and my respected teacher. He said that we should not use this wrong term anywhere, because it was made by Orientalists (Western Islamic scholars) who have their own agenda.
Sadly, we have been so careless that many of our writers have used this term in their book titles. Also, we have seen over the years that this wrong term is used in most of the texts in the media or published in the press. This comes as the holiness of the word “Messenger of God” (PBUH) is evident and we can see why “Prophet of Islam” is wrong with a little attention and care.
When I studied Islamic works, I saw that Muslims always use the term “Rasul Allah” [Messenger of Allah] as it has been mentioned in the Quran, Hadith, etc., not “Rasul al-Islam” [Prophet of Islam], which has no history. Even today, in Muslim cultures that don't speak Persian, especially Arabic, no one uses the term “Rasul al-Islam”. Maybe this wrong term is used by Arab Marxists or secularists who are against religion, and an Arab reader can tell from the term “Rasul al-Islam” that the writer doesn't believe in the prophethood.
What we need to remember is that when we use the word “Rasul”, we mean a messenger and a representative. The important thing about this messenger is who sent him, not what he brought. The holiness of the messenger is because he had been sent down by God Almighty. God always emphasizes this point in the Quran, and that's why the term “Messenger of God” is used in the holy texts. In the Quran, we have the term “Messenger of God”, and unfortunately, in some writings, we see that this Quranic term has been replaced by a wrong phrase.
If we ignore the divine aspect of the mission by using the term “Prophet of Islam”, we are doing what the Orientalists wanted by making and using this wrong term. They don't believe that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) came from God, but they don't mind that he brought Islam to people, and this doesn't go against their non-religious or anti-religious beliefs. So they easily made the term “Prophet of Islam” and put it instead of “messenger of God”.
Of course, we know that Muslims who use the term “Prophet of Islam”, don't mean to deny the divine aspect of this mission.
I think this carelessness started when translators of foreign books and works by non-Muslim scholars began to translate and quote their books without attention and care and included their writings, words, beliefs and ideas in their translated phrases and sentences.
This article was originally written in Persian by Hojat-ol-Islam Rasul Jafarian published on Persian edition of IQNA on May 22, 2023.
