Life-of-Muhammad

250Life of Muhammad saseems reasonable. To think that revelation fails toreclaim some recipients is as unreasonable as to thinkthat God has no alternative except to chooseincompetent recipients for some of His revelations. Yetideas of this kind have found their way into differentreligions, possibly because of the distance which nowdivides them from their Founders or because humanintellect, until the advent of Islam, was incapable ofperceiving the error of these ideas. How important andvaluable it is to keep together a book and its Teacherwas realized very early in Islam. One of the Prophet's saholy consorts was the young ‘A’isha ra . She was thirteento fourteen years of age when she was married to theProphet sa . For about eight years she lived in wedlockwith him. When the Prophet sa died she was abouttwenty-two years of age. She was young and illiterate:Yet she knew that a teaching cannot be divorced from itsteacher. Asked to describe the Prophet's sa character, sheanswered at once that his character was the Qur’an(Abu Dawud). What he did was what the Qur’an taught;what the Qur’an taught was nothing else than what hedid. It redounds to the glory of the Prophet sa that anilliterate young woman was able to grasp a truth whichescaped Hindu, Jewish and Christian scholars.‘A’isha ra expressed a great and an important truth ina crisp little sentence: it is impossible for a true andhonest teacher to teach one thing but practise another,or to practise one thing but teach another. The Prophet sawas a true and honest Teacher. This is what ‘A’isha raevidently wanted to say. He practised what he preachedand preached what he practised. To know him is toknow the Qur’an and to know the Qur’an is to knowhim.o