Islam for Beginners | Part One | 4- Characteristics of the Prophets.

     We knew in the past that God exists and that if the mind looks into the universe, it will see that the existence of the idea of ​​prophecy is something of divine kindness to humans.

Then we knew that there must be a sign for the prophets to recognize them. This sign is called the miracle. Then we knew what is the miracle.

And also we knew the difference between it and the things that contradict the mind or the things that is known as “mental impossible” and we got to know the difference between the prophet and the messenger, and we talked about the issue of the number of prophets and messengers, peace be upon them.

 After that, we should discuss the characteristics of these prophets. There are things that the prophets must be characterized by, if one of these attributes is absent, it is considered a slander in the claim of prophethood by that human being. If one of these attributes is absent, it's not possible for  this human being to be a prophet.

The first characteristic is honest. This means that these prophets are infallible from doing forbidden things, so the prophet cannot commit forbidden things, and if the prophet will not commit forbidden things according to the trust characteristic, then this includes not being a traitor, a deceiver or similar ugly qualities, because the Prophet is a role model, How can this role model be a person who commits crimes and ugliness!? God has said in the Qur’an about the prophets: "Those whom God has guided, so follow their guidance." And the Almighty said: "You have a good example in the Messenger of God." God will not command us to follow the example of the messengers, who are bad people, this is not possible in Islam.

The second characteristic is honesty, the Prophet doesn't lie to God, because lying to God is a crime. God says in the Qur’an: “And on the Day of Resurrection you will see those who lied against God, their faces blackened.” Also, the Almighty says about our Master Muhammad, peace be upon him: “And he does not speak from desire”. By reason What must be characterized by a prophet from the prophets is an obligatory attribute as well for everyone in whom the condition for the existence of this attribute is fulfilled, which is “prophecy.”

The third characteristic is conveying, this means that the messengers prophets convey what God commanded them to convey. The Almighty said: "O Messenger, convey what has been revealed to you from your Lord. If you don't do that, then you don't covey your message"

The fourth characteristic is intelligence, which means that the prophets are described with sharp minds and intelligence. It is not possible for the prophets - whether they were messengers or not - to be characteristic by idiocy, dullness or negligence, because they are sent to establish an argument on matters that the mind of its owner cannot be characterized by these deplorable qualities.

After we have known about the things that the prophets should be described with, then -by the reason- we will know that the things that are impossible for them to be characterized by are treachery, lying, concealing something from revelation, idiocy and things like that.

As they are human beings, it is permissible in their rights what is permissible in the right of humans, they eat, laugh, sleep, marry, get sick and forget, but they do not forget the revelation because it is one of the things that they are commanded to convey, so God protect them from its loss.

We may find in some situations that the Messenger while he was praying, he forgot things in it. In fact it's not from forgetting that is forbidden to them, because it was an oversight occurred after his coveying the rulings of prayer to the people, so the conveyin was occured and fulfilled, and nothing of the Sharia he was commanded to inform was lost.

Sending messengers is a favor from God over us. When the mind looks at the issue of prophecy, it finds it kindness from God and praises God for giving us these messages by which our lives are disciplined and without them we would have been in clear delusion.

We will return after that, my dear reader, to continue our conversation about the characteristics of God Almighty, and we will talk in the next article about some of the things that we should know about God’s characteristics.