Page 50 - Prayer in the Qur'an

48 PRAYER IN THE QUR'AN

only to Allah and this was a heavy responsibility that had to be dis-
charged under all circumstances… Whether people embraced
Allah's religion and thus became people worthy of Paradise was not
that messenger's ultimate responsibility; that was up to Allah; the
messenger's only mission was to convey the message, a mission that
has no parallels with anything else we know of. To be on such an as-

signment, against a society that is alien to the very idea, is indeed a
grave task.
In reality, Allah exercises absolute control over everything in this
world, so the messengers were not deterred or frightened by the
numbers of disbelievers nor the power they held, aware that they
were ultimately insignificant beside the power of Allah. So, thanks
to the trust they put in Allah, every messenger accomplished their
mission. Allah praises this superior character trait of His messen-
gers in the Qur'an. The Qur'an reminds us that Allah's help is al-
ways at hand and that He protects His prophets from people's
cruelty. In the Qur'an, Allah calls our attention to this fact while re-
lating a danger the Prophet Muhammad (saas) went through on his
migration from Mecca to Medina:

If you do not help him, Allah did help him when the disbeliev-
ers drove him out and there were two of them in the Cave. He
said to his companion, "Do not be despondent, Allah is with
us." Then Allah sent down His serenity upon him and rein-
forced him with troops you could not see. He made the word of
the disbelievers undermost. It is the word of Allah which is up-
permost. Allah is Almighty, All-Wise. (Surat at-Tawba: 40)
In the Qur'an, Allah praises the Prophet's (saas) closeness to Him
under all circumstances:

You have an excellent model in the Messenger of Allah, for all