Sollu ‘alan Nabi!

بسْم الله الرّحْمن الرّحيم، اللّهمّ صلِّ على سيّدنا محمّدٍ وآله

 وصحْبه وسلِّم

 

“Indeed, Allah confers blessing upon the Prophet, and His angels [ask Him to do so]. O you who have believed, ask [ Allah to confer] blessing upon him and ask [ Allah to grant him] peace.” al-Ahzab : 56

In this verse, the believer (mu’minuun) is commanded to ask Allah to bless the Prophet. The command was not to the muslimuun. Thus, it is part of iman/faith to seek blessing for the Prophet upon whom be peace as the mu’min is the possessor of iman.

It is related that a person’s iman/faith is not perfected until The Prophet and Allah is more beloved to him than anything else including himself. Indeed the sign of love is the frequent remembrance of the beloved and sending blessings to him(the Prophet pbuh).  

Ibn Mas’ud reported that the Messenger of Allah said, “The dearest of the people to me on the Resurrection Day will be the foremeost of them in sending blessings to me.” Abu Sa’labh reported that the Messenger of Allah said, “The dearest to me among you and the nearest to me among you on the Resurrection Day will be one who is best of you in character (akhlak).” Thus we can see here that good character is related to how often a person send blessings to the Messenger of Allah. The more someone remembers (and blesses) him in his/her daily activities, the person’s character will be gentler, loving and closer to the character traits of the Prophet. The more a person follows in the footsteps of the Prophet, the closer he gets to Allah and the more Allah loves him/her. 

“A man is with whom he loves (in the hereafter)” -hadith

Abu Hurayra reported that the Messenger of Allah said, “Whoso sends blessing on me, Allah sends on him ten blessings, and ten sins are put off from him and ten ranks are raised up for him.” It is related that one blessing from Allah on a person outweighs  on the scale, all the Devotional acts (excluding solawat on the Prophet) of the whole population of man and jinns.  It is interesting to note that ‘good character will be the heaviest thing which will be placed on the balance/scale of a believer on the Resurrection Day’ in a hadith related by Abu Darda’a. Again the connection between good character and sending blessings and greetings to the Prophet pbuh.

‘Ayesha reported that the Messenger of Allah said, “The believer reaches by his good character, the position/rank of one who stands up (praying in) the night and fasts (in) the day.” And good character comes when someone follows the Prophet pbuh in every movement and stillness, and one will put in the commitment to follow the Prophet pbuh when there is love for him and the desire to get closer to Allah.

Ibn Wahb related that the Prophet said, “Whoever asks for peace on me ten times, it is as if he had freed a slave.” Abu Hurayra reported that the Messenger of Allah said, “I will hear whoever blesses me at my grave. If someone is far away and blesses me, that is also conveyed to me.”

It is related that a certain pious man saw in a dream the Messenger of Allah in the company of the Saints of Allah whom took his hand and kissed his blessed hand while he sat. Later a man came and the Messenger of Allah stood up for him, kissed him on his forehead and made him sit by his side. The dreamer asked the Messenger of Allah about the man’s deed which gain him such an honour and the Messenger said that the man always encouraged people with all his effort to send abundant blessings to the Prophet pbuh.

It is also said that if one were to ask the Saints of Allah, those of the past and present, how did they reached (closeness to Allah/sainthood), they will say,  “We reached by intense love of the Messenger of Allah!” This is as man is too weak to approach Allah without a intermediary(perantaraan), Allah created for man from their species an intermediary as a mercy/blessing for them!

More Hadiths :

• “Do a lot of prayer on me on Friday. Your prayer is shown to me.”
• “There is no Muslim who blesses me but an angel conveys it to me and names him.”
• “A miser is someone who does not bless me when I am mentioned in his presence.”
• “Whoever forgets to pray on me, forgets the path to the Garden.”
• “Dust be upon the face of  the man who does not bless me when I am mentioned in his presence.”

2.

It is indeed heavy for the lower self, to bless another person as it is in its nature to be self-centred. Thus, in the beginning, the lower-self must get to know the Messenger of Allah pbuh, his sacrifices, his character, his rank with Allah, proofs of his Prophethood etc. The lower self then by the Grace of Allah gains the light of faith and becomes purified by stages. ‘You shall truly travel from stage to stage’ al-Inshiqaq :19. As we have clarified earlier the degree of love for the Prophet pbuh increases with the increase in faith/iman until when the lower self has been completely purified from self-centredness/interest (its love for itself).

Now the lower self has been transformed to the serene self (nafs al-mutmainnah) and loves the Messenger of Allah more than itself (may we be among them!), it experiences states whereby it is annhilated in the Messenger pbuh until it is established for him as a station. The acts, stillness, states of the person is the sunna, the Qur’an. This was alluded to by Shaykh ibn ‘Arabi when he said that ‘Shaykh Suhrawardi was dressed in the sunna from head to toe”.

 Such a person is an inheritor of the light of Prophethood. Its light shines from his outward and inward, when he/she is seen Allah is remembered. May Allah admit us among them! amin.

 

 1&2 – Compiled from various sources