Lesson video

Hello, my young scholars of religion.

My name is Ms. Marx, and I'm going to be your Religious Education teacher today.

Today, we're going to be doing all about the nature of prophethood, which is a really important belief within Islam.

We're going to get quite philosophical and theological.

So when you're ready, let's go.

So by the end of this lesson, you'll be able to explain the importance and nature of prophethood in Islam.

So let's start with our key terms then.

Prophethood, the term used for the messengers of Allah.

Revelation, showing or telling something about God.

Risalah, the concept of prophethood in Islam in Sunni Islam.

Tawhid, the oneness of Allah.

So look out for those in today's lesson.

So our lesson today will have two sections, prophethood, a key belief in Islam, and prophethood and the oneness of Allah.

So let's start with our first section then, prophethood, a key belief in Islam.

If you had a really important message to give to someone, how could you get it to them? Pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

I wonder if you have any of these ideas.

Write them a letter.

Speak to them directly.

You could speak to someone to pass it on.

You could do a message on a phone.

You could send an email.

Or you could announce it in a newspaper.

These are all different ways of getting an important message from one person to another.

And muslims believe that Allah had important messages to give to humanity and has sent messages to humanity through prophets.

The terms risalah and nubuwwah come from Arabic, and they're both used to refer to the idea of prophethood.

And in the Qur'an, the terms rasul and nabi are used in relation to prophets, so they've linked to these words.

So we've got risalah and nubuwwah.

Can you see where the terms are? Risalah from rasul, nubuwwah from nabi.

So these words are used in relation to the idea of prophethood.

In the six articles of faith, particularly within Sunni Islam but also influencing Shi'a Islam, so in the six articles of faith, prophethood is sometimes known as risalah.

And in the five roots of Usul ad-Din, prophethood is sometimes known as nubuwwah.

So let's think about some beliefs that are connected to prophethood then.

So prophethood, risalah.

Some prophets had holy texts revealed to them.

Not all, but some had holy texts revealed to them.

The prophets were all human, they're not divine beings.

So in Islam, all of the prophets are humans given a divine message or revelation.

They are not divine themselves.

The prophets in Islam didn't commit major sins.

So there might be stories relating to times that they've accidentally done something wrong or something minor, but they haven't done any major sins, so they're a great example to look up to for how to live.

There are 25 prophets that are named in the Qur'an.

Some Muslims believe that there were more, but there are 25 that are named in the Qur'an.

Some Hadith suggest there were more prophets than this.

So some muslims believe there were many more that we don't know the names of, but we do know those 25 'cause they're mentioned in the Qur'an.

And all of those prophets named in the Qur'an are male.

So let's ask Iqbal then why a belief in prophethood is important to him.

Why is prophethood a key belief for you, Iqbal? And he says: I'm a Sunni Muslim, and prophethood is one of the six articles of faith.

I can know about tawhid and the oneness of Allah because of the messages the prophets have been given.

Not only can I read the revelations given to them in the Quran, but I can know the example of the Prophets in my daily life, like following the sunnah of Prophet Muhammad.

So how does prophethood link to the other articles of faith then? Pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, here Iqbal has mentioned a few.

He's mentioned the Qur'an, so holy books, and also tawhid, the idea of one God.

What about Fatima then? Why is prophethood a key belief for you, Fatima? And Fatima says: I'm a Shi'a Muslim, and prophethood is one of the five roots of Usul ad-Din.

Allah sending prophets messages for humans is a sign of the justice of God.

For us to know what the right deeds are to get to heaven, we need to have revelations from Allah to humanity.

Muhammad was the final prophet but not the first, there have been many prophets since the first human, Adam.

So how does prophethood link to the other roots of Usul ad-Din then? Pause the video again, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, here we have the idea of God, so tawhid, but also God's justice, so Adalat, the idea that God is just and therefore has sent messages so humans can know how to please God and get to heaven.

Let's do a quick check.

Which two statements are correct about a belief in prophecy, risalah? Which two statements are correct? The prophets in Islam were all given a holy text for humans.

The prophets in Islam were all divine beings made of light.

There are 25 prophets mentioned by name in the Qur'an.

And the prophets in Islam did not commit major sins.

Pause the video and have a go, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, it was C and D because not every prophet was given a holy text.

And also, angels are beings made of light and not prophets.

Well done.

So prophethood in Islam can be understood in this way.

Allah created the universe and all human life.

God is the creator of the entire universe and all human life.

And humans were created in order to worship God and to lead good lives, and it's a sort of test to see whether humans are going to do that right thing or not.

And in order for humans to know how to do this, Allah has sent clear instructions to them through the messages revealed to prophets.

So if you remember the idea of prophethood comes with the revelations, comes with the message, comes with that sense that God is showing people how to live.

And each tribe or group of humans has had a message.

So there's 25 named in the Qur'an, but many Muslims believe that there have been lots more that aren't mentioned in the Qur'an, but there are Hadiths that say there was many more.

So every single nation and tribe has had a prophet who's come with this message of the oneness of Allah.

So, what source of authority can we look to to understand this more then? Well, the first one we're going to go to is the Qur'an as the ultimate authority within Islam.

And in Surah 2, it says this: We believe in God and what was revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Patriarchs, what was given to Moses and Jesus, what was given to the prophets from their Lord.

We make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we surrender.

What does this quote show us about prophecy? You can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, there's lots in here, and it's a really good key quote that we can use when we're talking about the idea of prophecy in Islam.

The idea that it is to do with revelation, to do with knowing something more about God, that there have been many prophets, not just one, and also this idea of not making a distinction between them.

They've all come with this message of the one God.

So I've got here there've been many prophets in Islam, there were messages that were revealed to them, and they're equal and there's no distinction between them.

And another source of authority we can look to is the Shahadah.

And the Shahadah is the statement of faith in Islam, and it also forms one of the five pillars, which are important practises within Sunni Islam.

And it goes like this, "There's no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God." So this is a statement of faith that a Muslim will hear at many, many different points in their life when they're praying, even when a baby's born, towards the end of their life.

So it's a statement, and if someone wants to become a Muslim, they repeat this with that intention in their heart.

So we know that it's a really important statement that kind of crystallises Muslim beliefs.

What does this show us about prophecy then? How can the Shahadah support a belief in prophecy? Pause the video and have a go, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well done, we've got here this idea there's no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.

So prophets are not God, but prophets have messages from God to humans.

Well done.

So Aisha and Jacob now are discussing how these sources of authority can support a belief in prophecy, or risalah.

And Aisha says, "A Muslim might believe in prophecy, risalah, because in the Qur'an it says there are many prophets who received revelations and we make no distinction between them." And Jacob says, "The Shahadah might support a Muslim's belief in prophecy, risalah, because it says that Allah is one God but that God has revealed to the Prophet Muhammad an important message, and so Muhammad was the messenger of Allah." And what I really like about what both of them have done is they've said where their source is.

Well done, Aisha and Jacob.

Let's do another check.

I said that that passage from the Qur'an was super important to prophecy that we looked at earlier.

So what are two beliefs about prophecy that were shown in that passage, which was Surah 2? Pause the video and have a go, and we'll see what you've got in a moment.

Well, there was lots in there that you could have used, but I've got here that Allah has sent different prophets and there's no distinction made between those prophets.

Well done.

So let's do a practise task to see what we've learned then.

You're going to describe Muslim beliefs about prophethood, risalah, but you're only going to give one paragraph as part of a response to this question.

And the guidance is for you to do two points that are developed.

And for each part of your answer, so for each point in development, you're going to include a range of religious and specialist terms. And for one of them, you're going to use a source of wisdom and authority.

It could be an exact or paraphrased quote or a general teaching or a named source.

And you're going to accurately apply that to the point and the question.

So it's not just about giving the source, it's about applying it to the point that you're making.

So you're going to do two points and develop them.

In one of them, you're going to use a source of wisdom and authority.

Pause the video, off you go, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done.

So I asked you to do one paragraph as part of an answer to this question, describe Muslim beliefs about prophethood, risalah.

And your answer may look something like this: One belief about prophethood, risalah, is that Allah has sent many prophets, including 25 mentioned in the Qur'an.

Muslims believe they were given messages from Allah because it says in the Qur'an what was revealed to Abraham, Ishma'il, Isaac and Jacob, Moses and Jesus, showing there've been many prophets that have had revelations.

Another belief about prophethood, risalah, that Muslims have is that prophets are not God but are humans chosen by God to receive a message or revelation.

For example, the Prophet Muhammad.

And I chose my first point to use the source here, which I've applied to a belief about prophethood shown in that passage.

Well done.

So onto our second section then, prophethood and the oneness of Allah.

So whatever your personal stance, we can use academic disciplines, such as social science, theology, and philosophy, to study religious and non-religious worldviews, which is what we're doing today.

And in this section of the lesson, we're going to be using theology and social science by using theology to study religious concepts and ideas and then making use of social science to consider how these concepts can influence societies and cultures.

So we're going to be using these academic disciplines for this section of the lesson.

So, there are 25 prophets who are named in the Qur'an, and some of them are named more often than others.

I wonder if you can think of which.

Pause the video and have a think.

You can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, here I've got a graph showing the ones that I mentioned quite frequently, how frequently they're mentioned.

And you can see that Musa is the prophet who's mentioned the most by name in the Qur'an, closely followed by Ibrahim and then Adam and Isa.

But what central message links all the messages of these prophets then? If each was sent by Allah to humanity with the message and we make no distinction between them, what is that central message that they were each given about God? Well, William C.

Chittick is a Muslim theologian, and we're gonna be theologians together now.

And he says that tawhid, the oneness of God, is that central message for all the prophets of Islam.

So each of those prophets came with that central message of the oneness of God and calling their nations and tribes to worship only one God.

And we can use a verse like this to support it.

In the Qur'an, it says: He prescribed for you the same religion He enjoined upon Noah, and what We inspired to you, and what We enjoined upon Abraham and Moses and Jesus, "You shall uphold the religion and not be divided therein." So here we've got some important prophets, all being said in the Qur'an to have had the same message, the same revelation.

How can this quote support the view that tawhid is the central message of all the prophets in Islam then? Pause the video and have a think, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

So we can see from this passage that it's the same religion, the religion of the oneness of God, which has been revealed to each of those prophets, calling all those people to worship only one God.

Let's do a quick check.

What did William C.

Chittick say was the central message of all the prophets of Islam? Pause the video and have a go, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Tawhid, the oneness of Allah.

Well done.

So if each prophet has come with one message of the one God, why does there need to be so many different prophets that have come then? It's 25 mentioned in the Quran, but some Muslims believe there've been many more than that.

So why, over time, did there need to be a repeat of the message that was sent to humans then? Well, we can understand it in this way.

Allah sends revelations to humanity through prophets, and then each prophet was given that message of the oneness of Allah and submission to Allah.

But over time, people started to sin, corrupt the message, and no longer worshipping one God and perhaps changing what was said before, and the message starts to be lost.

So then Allah reminds humanity again of the oneness of Allah through a prophet with a message, and so on and so forth.

And then the final messenger was Muhammad.

So even though Allah has sent messages to humanity that there's only one God and only one God should be worshipped , over time, these different societies and nations started to worship more than one god, started to practise idolatry, worshipping idols, practise polytheism, worshipping many gods.

And so then there needed to be a reminder again of the oneness of Allah through a prophet with a message.

And this cycle continued until we had the final messenger with the final revelation, and that was the Prophet Muhammad, who had the Qur'an revealed to him.

So how does this link to ideas in Islam then? Well, it's seen as a great sin to commit shirk.

Okay, well, shirk is an Arabic word which means to worship anything other than Allah or to compare anything to the greatness of Allah, to sort of lose that message of tawhid and the oneness of God.

Shirk is in contrast with tawhid.

Tawhid means to believe and worship in one, unified Allah.

So we have these two sides then.

We've got the idea of shirk, which would be idolatry, worshipping idols, polytheism, worshipping more than one God, in contrast to tawhid, which is monotheism and only worshipping Allah.

So you can see how this links to that cycle of why the prophets were needed to have revelations to remind people to come back to the message of tawhid and monotheism.

Well, let's understand these two terms a bit more that we've just used, polytheism and monotheism.

Well, the terms have these stems. In polytheism, you've got poly, meaning many, and theism, meaning a belief in god or gods.

So polytheism is a belief in many gods.

Then we have monotheism.

And mono means one, theism means belief in god or gods, so monotheism is a belief in and worship of only one god.

So tawhid is a form of monotheism, and polytheism would be an example of shirk.

Let's do a quick check before we move on.

You can complete the sentences below with the missing words.

All of the prophets in Islam had the message of something, which means there is only one God.

These messages were lost over time as people worshipped many gods or idols, and this is known as the sin of something.

What could go in those gaps? Pause the video and have a go, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, so I've got here that all of the prophets of Islam had the message of tawhid, which means there's only one God, and these messages were lost over time as people worshipped many gods or idols.

And this is known as the sin of shirk.

So I said we were gonna be social scientists as well as theologians today.

And as social scientists, we can see the importance of tawhid and prophethood through looking at the Ka'aba as a religious artefact.

So you might have seen an image of this before.

It's in the city of Makkah in Saudi Arabia, and it forms part of the Hajj ritual.

And we can use this site to kind of understand a little bit more as social scientists the significance this belief in tawhid and prophethood has for Muslims. So the Ka'aba is a cube-shaped building in Makkah.

And actually, it comes from the Arabic word cube.

So it's a cube-shaped building in Makkah.

Muslims pray in the direction of the Ka'aba.

So every time a Muslim prays, they pray facing towards this space.

And Muslims circle the Ka'aba during the Hajj pilgrimage, so we know it's got a very significant place in many Muslim practises.

But the Ka'aba has not always been a place of worship of one God.

So it's believed that Adam, the first prophet, worshipped Allah there.

Whether there was a Ka'aba building there or not, different Muslims have different ideas, but the idea is that that is where Adam first worshipped the one God as the first prophet.

But over time, it was destroyed or it was started to be used for polytheism by the time of Ibrahim.

So Ibrahim's an important prophet who we saw is mentioned the twice most often in the Qur'an, who did not practise polytheism, did not worship idols, but by his time, the Ka'aba was being used for the worship of many different gods and idols.

But Ibrahim and his son Ishma'il rebuilt it and worshipped Allah there and then established it as a place for the worship of only one God.

Then by the time of the Prophet Muhammad, it was again filled with idols and people worshipping many gods.

In fact, there's some sources that say there were 300 different idols in there.

And then the Prophet Muhammad destroyed them and reestablished it as a site to worship only Allah.

So we can see that cycle of the revelations to prophets, there's only one God.

And then the sin of shirk and polytheism and idolatry comes in, and then the revelation comes again to a new prophet.

And we can see that cycle through looking at the Ka'aba.

So we said that the Ka'aba forms an important part of the Hajj pilgrimage, and the Hajj pilgrimage is an important Muslim practise.

And during this, Muslims will circle the Ka'aba.

And Iqbal and Jamila have just performed the Hajj pilgrimage, and they're gonna explain how this connects to their beliefs in prophethood and tawhid.

And Iqbal says, "When I circled the Ka'aba, I remembered that Ibrahim and Ishma'il rebuilt this as a place to worship one God as they were messengers of Allah." And Jamila says, "When I circled the Ka'aba, I remembered that Prophet Muhammad destroyed the idols that were inside so that it was a place to worship Allah alone." So that reminder from the Ka'aba that there is only one God and that this is known through the revelations to the prophets.

Let's do a quick check.

The Ka'aba has only ever been used to worship one God.

Is that true or false? Pause the video and have a go, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

That is false, but why? Well, at times, the Ka'aba's been used to worship many gods and idols, but now it's used for the worship of only one God.

Well done.

So let's do another practise task to see what we've learned then.

So here's a full evaluation question.

A belief in prophethood is the most important belief for Muslims. And the full question would be to discuss this showing you considered more than one point of view.

And in this, you must refer to Muslim beliefs in your answer.

But we're going to just write one paragraph agreeing with the statement.

And in this, you're going to use the terms prophethood and tawhid and the two sources we have here that all the prophets have the same religion and we make no distinction between them.

So I'll repeat the question here.

A belief in prophethood is the most important belief for Muslims. One paragraph agreeing with this, using the points below.

Pause the video and have a go, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done.

So you could have said: Some Muslims could argue that a belief in prophethood is the most important belief for Muslims because prophethood is how Allah has communicated with humans.

This is a sign of Allah's justice as humans can know the oneness of God, tawhid, and that they should worship only one God, and this is the correct religion.

This message has been revealed to all the prophets as it says in the Qur'an that Muhammad had been "the same religion" as the prophets before.

All the prophets are important in Islam as the Qur'an states that "we make no distinction between them." Beliefs about God and the afterlife are also important, but they are known through the revelations of Allah to the prophets, and therefore a belief in prophethood is the most important belief for Muslims. Well done.

So let's summarise what we've learned today then, nature of prophethood.

Prophethood is also known as risalah in the six articles of faith and nubuwwah in the five roots of faith.

The Qur'an mentions 25 by name, but some sources suggest there've been more.

All the revelations of the prophets contained the oneness of God, tawhid, and submission to God.

The first prophet was Adam, and the last was Muhammad.

The Ka'aba is an important site in Islam relating to stories of important prophets.

And some may argue that a belief in prophethood is the most important belief in Islam.

So well done for your hard work today, and I hope to see you again soon.

Bye-bye!.