Was Prophet Muhammad Al Mustafa Sallallahu Alayhi Wa Alehe Wa Sallam Infallible? Options

[Moostee]

Salaams,

What is the sunni perspective on the infallibility of the prophets (peace and blessings be upon them all) in general and the infallibility of our prophet - Muhammad in particular?

There are several possibilities:

- He was completely infallible in every aspect of his life.
- He was completely fallible in every aspect of his life.
- He was infallible in religious matters but fallible in other matters. ( i have heard stories that the prophet was asked advice about farming and when the advice he gave turned out to be rubbish advice - he told the person who had relied upon his advice that he was a prophet of god and not a farmer and therefore the person should not have relied on his advice in the field of farming)

I look forward to sunnis from different schools insha allah coming forward and stating their beliefs and trying to prove them logically and quranically.

for those who do not know - shias believe all the prophets (peace be upon them all) to be 100% infallible - the logical argument being that how can Allah entrust the responsibility of his message to people who will dilute the truth of his message by failing to act in accordance with the message themselves?

As for the quranic evidence - i will share a couple of ayats which will clarify their position:

"And we did not send any messenger, unless he should be obeyed by Allah's authority." (Quran 4:64)

"Whoever obeys the Messenger, he indeed obeys Allah." (Quran 4:80)

In the above verses as well as many other verses of the Quran, obedience of Allah has become synonymous with the obedience of the prophets. Such assertion would have been impossible if the prophets were not infallible (Ma'soom). Now, note the following verse:

"....and obey not from among them a sinner or an ungrateful one." (Quran 76:24)

The picture is complete! "The prophets are to be obeyed," and "the sinners are NOT to be obeyed." The only conclusion is that the prophets were NOT sinners or wrong-doers. In other words, they were infallible (Ma'soom) and sinless.

Salaams

[rizwan]

every sunni attributes it to the prophet. why? i don't know, i find it peculiar why any follower of the prophet, who we refer to as the mercy to MANKIND, would accept such a distasteful behaviour. it is not consistent, a mercy to MANKIND would not do such a thing as frown because someone is blind.

we may do such a thing, but we arent held as examples for others are we? we arent prophets.

thanks for your suggestion, but yes I have read the chapter.

And if you do a 5 second search on the Tafsir of Surah Abasa on google, there will be a myriad of tafsirs saying it was the Prophet SAW because HE was part of the context: Allah SWT was speaking to him. How can you deny that? Did you even READ the surah?

your argument that every sunni tafseer refers to the frowner as being the prophet is useless. being a majority is not an argument. otherwise we could say the majority of poeple believe jesus is the son of god, so why dont u become a christian?

And our Prophet Muhammad SAW was obviously the greatest prophet of Allah SWT. But don't say he was the BEST creation, he was created JUST like us.

Kindly point out to me what creation is greater than the prophet in the eyes of allah. Bear in mind, mankind is the greatest of allah's creation - and the prophet is the greatest man of mankind - therefore he is the greatest of allah's creation. find me a person who was better than the prophet, then ask yourself why are you following Muhammad and not the other man that you found better than him.

He required food,water,family,etc, EVERYTHING.

Totally irrelevent. requiring such things does not exclude him from being the greatest creation.

There is a fine line between greatly respecting him and doing INJUSTICE to him. Don't attribute traits to him which simply aren't true. He was NOT infallible.
Let me show you. Surah An-Nisa verse 28 ( I'm paraphrasing the last part) " ... and man is created weak" Every single human is created weak and NEEDS Allah SWT for everything because we are created WEAK. This applies to ALL of the prophets because they were OBVIOUSLY human. What differentiated.them was the knowledge and hidaya that only Allah SWT can give.

yes mankind is weak. such that something small and not even visible to the naked eye (a virus) can bring it to death. despite such weakness, in allah's opinion mankind is still the greatest of his creation, and the prophet remains the greatest creation of allah. if this does not make sense to you, take it up with Allah.

so its up to you if you choose to believe allah's greatest creation will show such disrespect, and we as humans are meant to follow him as an example.

anyway, lets look at the translation.

[Shakir 80:1] He frowned and turned (his) back,
[Shakir 80:2] Because there came to him the blind man.
[Shakir 80:3] And what would make you know that he would purify himself,

Notice the switch in the pronoun - 'He' frowned. If we assume that 'you' is the prophet, then this shows we're talking about two different people. If the opening verse was 'you frowned' then perhaps you'd have an argument.

so it is by no means clear that it is the prophet that frowned, and when taken in conjunction with the verses that tell us the prophet has sublime morality it is clear that to accept it was the prophet who frowned is to accept contradiction in the quran.