“What’s the Point?”

 

After the revelation of the first 40 verses of the Bovine, the Prophet looked up Gabriel, the delivery angel, with dismay.

“Are you sure this is what He said, that whatever I do and say man is and will remain obtuse? That man’s heart is as hard and harder than stone?”

The archangel grinned and shrugged his shoulders, making his vast wings glimmer and jingle. Majestic, but eerily funny. “That’s what we – all the angels and demons – have said to Him from the first day man was created. And ye know how that went, don’t ye?”

With a ಠ_ಠ face, Muhammad said, “Then what’s the point in troubling me with this job? What’s the point in spending the best of my years trying to inspire and guide and save mankind?”

The archangel made his funny shrug again, “That’s what the other prophets and lesser-prophets before ye have said too. And ye know how that went, don’t ye?”

Oh, yes, he did. Noah with the deluge. Moses with a floating pharaoh. Lot with an upside-down town. Jesus with the cross.

And man still insisted on arrogant stupidity.

“So, basically the idea of reforming man is futile?” asked Muhammad again.

But the archangel was no longer at his side. Like all revelations, the truest must come in solitude.

Hence, in the lonely silence, the dejected man heard, “Ye’re only there to offer choices: perfecting what’s already right, and make better what’s helpless.”

(إنما بعثت لأتمم مكارم الأخلاق)