Who is Your Prophet (Man Nabeyyak)


Publisher: Caior: Dar Gawam’ al- Kalem & Nahdet Masr under the title of Know Your Prophet (E’raf Nabeyyak) in 2011.

Dr. Ali dedicated this 270 pages book to narrate and discuss the Prophet Muhammad’s life. He wrote this book honoring the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet. The main goal which motivated Dr. Ali to reintroduce Prophet Muhammad to the world is the felt need to the morals and guidance of the Prophet in our today’s world. He starts out his first chapter with an introduction of what both the Old and New Testaments had to say in terms of the coming of the new prophet. Dr. Ali traces all the indications and the precursors which signaled the coming of the final prophet to be commemorated as the last of a long line of prophets in human history.

In the second section of this chapter, Dr. Ali discusses the opinions of different non Muslim scholars, philosophers and thinkers regarding their perception of Prophet Muhammad and his impact on humanity.
In the second chapter, Dr. Ali discusses the Prophet’s lineage and traces it back to Prophet Abraham. He also spends sometime talking about his different names and talks about his mother and what kind of pregnancy she had when she had the Prophet. Also he mentions other women who took care of him at different stages of his infancy as his mother died when he was only 4 years old. He spends the rest of the chapter talking about the Prophet’s wives, children, grand children, his uncles and aunts, poets, servants, scribers, leaders of conquests, his outfit.

In the third chapter, Dr. Ali talks about the importance of celebrating the Prophet’s birthday as it indicates our joy of his noble birth and his gracious coming to the world to guide our way back to God and deliver the final message from heaven to earth.

Dr. Ali relates the love of the Muslims to Prophet Muhammad to many aspects. The first of which has to do with how God speaks about him in Quran and the amount of praise he enjoys in Heaven. Therefore, loving the Prophet is an inseparable element of loving God. Other aspects which indicate the love to the Prophet is the characteristics he enjoyed and the numerous narrations of his kindness, mercy, generosity and love which leave the readers in total awe of how one person can possess all these qualities. The Prophet’s personality did not only capture the heart of his companions and the Muslims in his life time but also the rest of the Muslims all over the world are in total longing and extreme awe in love for the Prophet.

Non Muslims might wonder how a man, no matter how great he was, died 1400 years ago yet still enjoys such great reverence among Muslims to our present time. Dr. Ali responds to that by saying that this is one of the characteristics of the Prophet’s message as he is the last messenger of God so his memory is consistent in our minds with no fading or erasing. Dr. Ali ends his book by discussing other characteristics of the Prophet which makes his memory immortal in the minds and hearts of Muslims all over the world.