Otherwise how could the same Noble Quran assert that he was chosen as the best model ( uswa) for Muslims to follow. It is because of the perfection borne by him that he has served generations of Muslims as perfect example. There is no doubt that he was given by God an eminence which is certainly not ordinary and not simply human as this word is used today although theologically he was not a divine descent but a man. There is no better proof of his extraordinary eminence than his inerrancy ('i$mah), that he was protected from error by God whether this protection is understood in the particularly Shi'ite sense of his very substance having been immune to sin from the beginning or that he was "washed" and purified by the angels as the story mentioned above about his breast being washed by the angels bears out.
In any case there is no greater danger for Muslims today than that of reducing the majestic grandeur of the Blessed Prophet to petty human conditions on the outward excuse that he was merely human while in reality catering to the prevailing humanism of the modern West. The fact that the Blessed Prophet was a human being does not mean that he was ordinary like any other human being but that the human state has the possibility of the grandeur and fullness displayed by his personality and character. To contemplate the life, virtues and achievements of the Blessed Prophet is to realize not only the greatness of God's power and that of his prophets, but also the tact that mankind as a whole lives so much below the level of the really human. The prophets and saints display to mankind the total possibility of existence. It is they who elevate the meaning of "human being" to its highest norm and no greater disservice can be done to human beings than to reduce them to the petty and often trivial standards of modern man rather than holding them as everliving ideals and examples who can help human beings realize to some extent at least the total and full nature of the human state.
For generations of Muslims, before the humanism of the modern world contaminated the minds and souls of many of them, the Blessed Prophet fulfilled such a function on the highest level and he remains and will remain, as long as Islam survives as a religion, as the supreme example for human beings to follow. The Blessed Prophet in a sense experienced the fullness of all that is human in order to be able to fulfill his function as the prophet of Islam which has penetrated every aspect of human life in order to be able to integrate all of life into the Center which sanctifies and gives meaning to all things.
There is practically no aspect of human life which the Prophet of Islam did not experience. On the personal and human level he experienced the loss of both parents at a tender age, loneliness, social pressures, material poverty and practically every kind of ordeal a young person could undergo in society. Later in life, he was to be witness to every form of grief, the loss of his beloved wife Khadijah, the early death of sons , betrayal by members of his own tribe, constant threats to his life, property and family not to speak of continuous dangers facing the cause for which he was chosen and to which he had dedicated himself totally, namely the cause of Islam.
The spread of Islam to Southeast Asia
