Moral and Ethical Message of Prophet Muhammad
Prophet Muhammad is the central human figure of Islam and is the last messenger of Allah who established Islam in the Arabia. This process took a lot of struggles and hard work, and thus Muhammad is known for his leadership as a political leader as well as religious leader. Until today, people still follow the sunnah of the Prophet or the way or practice of Muhammad. This sunnah includes hadith (Prophet’s words), actions, and acceptance or refusal of other actions. The Path of Muhammad is a book comprised of Islamic morals and ethics based on the words of the Prophet. From the topics discussed in the book, we can see that the ethical and moral message of the Prophet was only due to his earlier upbringing in Mecca, but also because of his role as a leader of the community. Muhammad was raised in Mecca as an orphan and thus saw a lot of things that could be fixed ethically and morally. As the Muslims arrived in Medina, Muhammad’s role changed from being a political leader to being the community leader. He was able to reach out to his followers with messages that concern domestic issues that a new community would face. In this paper, the two factors will be discussed along with examples.
In his early upbringing, Muhammad lost his mother at the age of six and he became fully orphaned. Muhammad was taken care of by his uncle Abu Talib, the new leader of Banu Hashim. Muhammad began accompanying his uncle on trading journeys to Syria gaining some experience in commercial career; the only career open to Muhammad as an orphan. Muhammad became a successful merchant later in Mecca. From this specific example of Muhammad’s upbringing in Mecca, we can see that Muhammad has a lot of experience in trade and business and thus was later able to teach his followers about the ethics and morals of how to use and not waste money. In one hadith, the Prophet said: “God gives a man knowledge and money. And if he is...