SPIRIT OF ISLAM JULY 2O18

4 Spirit of Islam Issue 67 July 2018 Oxford dictionary defines wisdom as the quality of being wise, but the principle by adopting which, one can become a wise person, is not made clear in the dictionary. Wisdom is accepted as the greatest quality of any human being. According to the Quran, the Prophet of Islam was the Prophet of ‘ Hikmah ’, that is, the Prophet of wisdom. There are several thousand of the Prophet’s sayings recorded in the books of Hadith , but I failed to find any specific academic definition in the printed Hadith literature. Then I applied a practical method: if the Prophet of Islam was a prophet of wisdom, then we must find wisdom in his planning and activities. The American writer Dr. Michael Hart declared in his book, The 100 , “Out of all the hundred super achievers in history, Muhammad tops the list.” He was a supremely successful person in the whole of human history. It is more than certain that he achieved such success by applying wisdom in his mission, as he was a wise person, as is declared by the Quran itself. Then I studied the activities of the Prophet and, from this angle, he does emerge as the most successful person in human history. I analyzed all the known activities of the Prophet that led him to such heights of success. I discovered that, in all of his planning, he exercised the formula of patience ( sabr ). He always adopted the formula of patience that is given thus in the Quran: Walrujza fahjur (74: 5) . Here, ‘fahjur’ means avoid and ‘rujz’ means an undesirable aspect, in other words: avoid the unwanted aspect of things and plan on the basis of the available opportunities. For example, let us take his planning when he was at Makkah, the site of the sacred Kabah which was built by Prophet Abraham about four thousand years ago. In the first quarter of the 7 th century, when the Prophet started his mission in ancient Makkah, the Kabah was dominated by unbelievers. The Prophet of Islam never reacted to this situation. He studied the situation and found that this assembly was a potential audience for his message. By addressing this gathering he was able to spread his mission all over Arabia. He applied wisdom to the situation and engaged in wise planning. He ignored the presence of religious practices which were opposite to his mission of monotheism and availed of the opportunity to further his mission. From all the known activities of the Prophet that led him to success, we can find that in all of his planning, he exercised the formula of patience (sabr).