محسن انسانیت صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم

Abū Hurairah (RA) narrated that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "My example is like that of a man who kindled a fire; when it lit up his surroundings, the moths and these insects that keep falling into fire began to plunge into it while he tried to hold them back — yet they overpowered him and threw themselves into it. So understand my example and yours in the same way: I catch you by your waists to hold you back from the Fire (of Hell), yet you plunge into it."

In this blessed hadith, the picture drawn of the heedlessness of foolish men and of the utter love and goodwill of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ could not be drawn more truthfully or more powerfully. The moth has no awareness of its end, and today's disbeliever has no thought of the terror of the Day of Judgement. The one most merciful toward those who, in their ignorance and carelessness of the outcome, throw themselves to their destruction is crying out: "You are heading into the Fire!" — happy is the fortunate one who heeds his voice.

The Benefactor of Humanity ﷺ appeared at a time when all humanity was drowned in darkness. In places savagery held sway, and in others the curse of polytheism and idol-worship held people fast. Even the nearest environment of Arabia — the first field of his ﷺ mission — was shrouded in the darkness of barbarity. Everywhere there was chaos; there was conflict between man and man; war, strife and plunder were rampant; a culture of wine, adultery, gambling and pillage was in full swing. The strong held the weak in their grip like herds of sheep and goats, and the weak lay prostrate at the feet of the powerful — much like the picture of our own age. In such conditions the Benefactor of Humanity ﷺ arose, alone and unaided, bearing the message of the greatest transformation. In such hopeless conditions another might well have fled from life. There have been many righteous and sensitive people who hated evil yet could not bring themselves to confront it, and to preserve their own lives withdrew from the world, taking refuge in caves and hollows and becoming ascetics and hermits. But the Prophet ﷺ did not abandon the ship of humanity — tossed on stormy waves — in order to save his own life; rather he battled the destructive whirlpools of evil and opened for all the children of Adam the way to salvation. His true achievement is that his call transformed man at both the individual and the collective level, and the single hue of ṣibghatullāh (the colouring of Allah) spread from the mosque to the marketplace, from the school to the court, and from homes to the battlefield. The current of thought changed; the angle of vision changed; habits and manners changed; customs and usages changed; the distribution of rights and duties changed; the standards of good and evil and the measures of the lawful and unlawful changed; moral values changed; the constitution and law changed; the ways of war and peace changed; and the modes of economy and society changed. In this transformation, whose scope embraced everything, there is no division between religion and the world: the one who adorns his brow with prostration in solitude and the one who earns lawful bread amid the din of the marketplace are both engaged in worship; the judge who decides by divine law and the one who sits on the pulpit teaching the rulings of prayer are both scholars, both callers to the religion of Allah; the one who leads the prayer is also the commander of the army. In truth, at the hands of the Benefactor of Humanity ﷺ human life gained a new life, and he ﷺ introduced human civilization to a new order, a new outlook and a new way of thinking, and gave mankind — divided into tribes — the lesson and the practical example of unity and brotherhood, in which one person's superiority over another rests not on race or lineage but on righteousness and goodness. With this began a truly international history that continues to this day — so great an achievement that its like is found nowhere else.

In this blessed hadith the true and living picture of the folly of heedless men and of the compassion and goodwill of the Prophet ﷺ comes before us. The moths do not know that the fire will burn their soft, delicate bodies to ash, yet they fall upon it. Such is the state of those who, fearless of Allah's punishment, trample the limits set by Allah and become deserving of His wrath, the taste of which they get in this world; yet the Messenger of Allah does his utmost to save them from that punishment, and then, if anyone still will not take heed, he is himself responsible for his own ruin.