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Amongst us, one day man will stumble;
But I now worship my Lord Most Merciful;
Therefore observe the fear of the Lord your God;
Thou shalt see the home of the pure in the Gardens;
During this life disgrace,
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And the next, he will be as the branch fed by the rain.
That the Compassionate Lord may pardon my sin.
So long as ye do so, ye shall not perish;
But for the unbelievers, flaming hellfire;
And after death that which shall bitterly cramp their breasts.
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We further learn from Ibn Hisham that Zeid was expelled from Mecca; and being
forbidden to remain there, had to live on Mount Hir, opposite the city. The
Prophet himself in the summer-time used every year to retire, as the Arabs used
to do, into a cave in the Sacred Mount for solitary meditation; and so we
believe that he must often have met his relative Zeid there. For he used still
to go after his call to be a Prophet, as we learn from Ibn Ishac:—
".Gabriel by the mercy of the Lord came to him at Hir in Ramazan... This
he did every year, according to the custom of the Coreish in the days of
ignorance, to be alone and refresh their souls." Now everyone acquainted
with the Qur'an and Tradition cannot but perceive how alike is the teaching of
both, and that they must have had the greatest influence on each other, in their
views about such things for instance as idol-worship, the burying alive of
infant girls, the Unity of God, Paradise and Hell, and calling God "the
Lord most Merciful and Compassionate." Again, Zeid and the Hanefites, like
the Prophet, followed Abraham, calling him by the same name (Hanf) as their
own, — in illustration of which we may quote Surah iv. 126:— Who is of better
religion than he who resigneth himself unto God, and followeth the faith of
Abraham the Orthodox (Hanf).
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..... And again, Surah iii. 89:— Say, The Lord hath said truly, "Follow
the faith of Abraham the Orthodox (Hanf), for he was not one of the
idolaters." And again, Surah vi. 162:— Verily the Lord hath guided me into
the right way, the true faith, the religion of Abraham the Orthodox (Hanf).
And thus we see the Prophet calls himself and his people by the name Hanf. The
word, indeed, originally signified "unclean" or "apostate,"
and was so used by the idolatrous Arabs of Zeid, because he abandoned the
worship of their gods. The name pleased the Prophet and was used by him in a
good sense. We must not forget, however, that all the four Hanefites were
themselves, as already said, nearly related to the Prophet, Obeidallah being
nephew to Muhammad who took his widow Omm Habbah to wife; while Waraca and
Othman were sons of two aunts of Khadja. Hence the views, sayings, and
teaching of these Hanefites cannot but have had a decided influence on the
Prophet. We may also remember that though the Prophet is believed to have said
that he had no right even to pray for the salvation of his own mother, yet he
did so for Zeid and his blessedness hereafter. From all this we see that the
Prophet recognised his principles, and attested them as right.
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But now some of our objectors may say, Suppose we accept as true all that you
have told us of the various Sources from which Islam is derived, then it would
prove that Muhammad himself had personally no influence on the Faith;— a thing
hard to believe. Certainly, we reply, it is impossible to imagine that as Muhammad
himself was the Author of the Faith, his own purpose
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