Islamic Interpretation
In the language of the soul a prophet is the perfect mirror of mercy, every gesture a silent covenant that the universe is still watched by an attentive Creator; to meet him is to be folded into the original tenderness that existed before the word “I” was ever spoken, so that grief itself becomes a cradle and every wound is turned toward the light like a sunflower. He is the living syllabus of heaven, each breath a lesson in how to let the ego fall like a brittle husk and discover the sweet kernel of servanthood; whoever walks beside him walks inside the pulse of revelation, tasting the nectar that once dripped from the lips of Gabriel, and the heart learns the rhythm of certainty until doubt dissolves like salt in the ocean of la ilaha illa Allah. To wear his cloak is to inherit the weather of prophethood—its winter of exile, its spring of triumph—so that the body becomes a tent of resilience and the voice carries the echo of mountains that once knelt before David. If he offers you bread you are eating the same sustenance that once nourished Job in the ash of his patience; if he offers you water you are drinking the same stream that once gushed for Moses from a dry rock, and every drop writes on the tablet of your cells: trust, trust, trust. To see him impoverished is to witness the secret that treasure is not gold but nearness, and the bowl he extends is the sky itself upside-down, catching the coins of your tears to purchase for you a kingdom that never perishes. Whoever claims his station in sleep is claiming the wound of love that never closes, the thorn in the breast of the nightingale that keeps the song alive; if he speaks to you he is dictating the final exam of your life, and every syllable is a seed that will break open in the grave and blossom into a garden where your name is written on every leaf. To kill him in dream is to assassinate your own capacity for wonder, to tear the last page out of the book of guidance and scatter its letters like frightened birds; yet even then the blood that soaks the earth is ink, and from it will rise a single red rose whose fragrance is forgiveness. Living in his era of vision is to step out of chronological time and into the fresh clay of the first dawn, where Adam still rubs the dust from his eyes and sees every soul as his own rib; there, trade is conducted in luminous deeds, and the currency is tears of recognition. If he strikes you he is only beating the drum that announces your soul has been discharged from the army of forgetfulness; the bruise is a passport stamp that grants entry to the country of the living. Thus the prophet is not a figure but a frequency, a tuning fork struck by the divine hand; whoever hears it in dream wakes up inside the echo, and the echo keeps repeating: you were never abandoned, you were merely asleep, and the morning you asked for has already arrived. (Also see Muhammad, upon whom be peace.)