Al-Qalam 
By Imam Dr A. Rashied Omar
This year, as the Islamic world marks 1500 years since the birth of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) – and welcomes the blessed lunar month of Rabiʿ al-Awwal – Muslims must continue to follow examples he set in defending the persecuted, sheltering the displaced and honouring justice wherever it is found, says scholar Imam Dr A. Rashied Omar.
“I renew a call we have made for many years: that each Rabiʿ al-Awwal we read a new biography of the Prophet (pbuh). Allah, the Lord of Guidance, describes the Prophet’s character in Surah al-Ahzab (33:21) as uswatun hasanah, a beautiful and excellent example to inspire and guide us. Yet to emulate that example, we must first know his life more deeply, understand his moral choices, and reflect on how they might guide us in confronting the challenges of our own time.
“This year, as the global community marks 1500 years since the Prophet’s birth, I warmly recommend a newly published volume edited by Professor Aslam Fataar, Prophet Muhammad at 1500: His Prophetic Legacy, Ethical Vision and Contemporary Resonance, produced by the Prophetic Legacy Commission and Awqaf-SA. It is a fitting local contribution to a worldwide commemoration that began, significantly, in our own city, a place shaped by colonialism, slavery and exile, and thus a living archive of how the Prophetic legacy has been sustained and reimagined under hardship”.
“What distinguishes this volume is that it does not merely recount the life of the Prophet (pbuh). Gathering chapters by some of our foremost local Muslim scholars and public intellectuals, it asks a more searching question: how can his ethical legacy inspire us to confront the inequality, violence, intolerance and fragmentation of our world today? In this, it reflects the wider spirit of the 1500 commemoration, which foregrounds mercy, social justice, environmental consciousness and interfaith dialogue, rather than nostalgia alone.
Comprising an introduction and 20 essays by 23 contributors, the collection is deliberately interdisciplinary. Its chapters move across spirituality and personhood, race and coexistence, justice and statecraft, education and pedagogy, journalism and the arts, economics, environmental responsibility and artificial intelligence.
He added: “These diverse inquiries are held together by iḥsan: the Prophetic ethic of beauty, excellence, moral attentiveness and responsibility. The book therefore presents the Sunnah not as a static archive to be admired from a distance, but as an ethical grammar through which Muslims can discern how to live faithfully and act responsibly amid the complexities of the present.
“The volume is rich and varied. My own chapter, “Hijrah from Makkah to Ḥabasha: A Template for Interfaith Coexistence Today,” revisits an episode of the Sirah that is profoundly relevant yet little known. When persecution in Makkah grew unbearable, the Prophet (pbuh) instructed a small group of his followers to cross the Red Sea and seek refuge in Habasha, ancient Abyssinia, in present-day Ethiopia. There, he assured them, ruled a king under whom no one suffers injustice. That ruler was the Negus, a Christian king. The quality the Prophet (pbuh) recognised in him was neither religion nor ethnicity, but justice. This is the abiding lesson of the Abyssinian Hijrah: justice must be honoured and upheld wherever it is found, and through whomever Allah chooses to manifest it, as the Qur’an commands in Surah al-Nisa (4:135) and Surah al-Ma’idah (5:8).
“The precedent teaches more still. Some refugees remained in Africa for years, even for good, living in peace under a just Christian ruler rather than being summoned at once to Madinah. Muslims, then, can practise their faith and flourish in a religiously diverse society wherever justice, safety, dignity and religious freedom are secured. And Allah’s mercy protected the earliest Muslims through a Christian community, a reminder that we should never imagine we hold a monopoly on goodness.
“These lessons speak directly to our present. We live in a world where millions have been displaced by war, persecution, poverty and ecological devastation, while xenophobia and Afrophobia continue to disfigure our own society. The Abyssinian Hijrah asks whether our homes, our masajid and our communities are truly places of refuge for the vulnerable.”
Imam Rashied pointed out that reading a biography this Rabiʿ al-Awwal is therefore not a scholarly indulgence but an act of love. Genuine love for the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) cannot be reduced to songs, speeches and sentimental praise; it requires that we embody his example, defending the persecuted, sheltering the displaced, honouring justice wherever it is found, and building bridges of trust across religious boundaries”.
“Professor Fataar’s volume is an excellent place to begin. I encourage every reader to acquire it, study it, and let it move us from remembrance to action,” he concluded.
