the apprehension of beloved muhammed and the length of his worship

The Apprehension of the Beloved Muhammad and the Length of His Worship



To be afraid of God, secretly and openly, is to have the fruit of knowledge of the greatness of God. God, the Great and Almighty said, said, {Those truly fear God, among His servants, who have Knowledge} (Fatir V., 28). The Messenger of Allah said, ‘I know Allah the best and I fear him more than ypu all’. The fear of God is the result of the true knowledge of God, of His most beautiful names, and of His higher characteristics.
And who knows Allah better than the Messenger of Allah? Of course nobody does. So, no one is more pious than the Messenger of Allah. No one is more obedient to the Lord than His Prophet and no one fears God more than the Prophet himself.
A. The Signs of Muhammad’s Apprehension (Fear):
1. Tirmidhi transmitted from Abu Zar al-Ghaffari, may God be pleased with him, that the Messenger of Allah said, ‘I can see what you can not. I can hear what you can not. The sky made a sound. It was necessary for it to make that sound because it was filled with angels prostrating themselves for God. By God! If you knew what I know, you would laugh a little and cry so much. You would never enjoy yourselves with women on beds and you would go out to the roads and ask God’s forgiveness’. This Hadith (Tradition) is a clear evidence of the Messenger’s fear of his Lord.
2. Abdallah Ibn al-Shikkheer said, ‘Once I came to the Messenger of Allah and found him praying. His abdomen had a wheeze as the wheeze of the boiler‘.
3. He, the messenger of Allah, used to say, ‘I ask God’s forgiveness one hundred times a day’. In another Tradition, ‘Seventy times a day’. So, he always asks his God’s forgiveness. One day he asked his Lord’s forgiveness seventy times and the other one hundred times; this is because of his great fear of God, the Great and Almighty.
4. Abdallah Ibn omar, may God be pleased with them both, said, ‘The Messenger said, ‘O God, forgive me and pardon me. You are the Merciful, the Accepter of Repentance’ one hundred tomes in one seat’.
B. The Signs of the Length of His Worship:
1. In the correct Tradition (Hadith), al-Mughira Ibn Shu’ba, may God be pleased with him, said, ‘when they asked the Messenger of Allah about the long time he spends in worship and why he spends so much time in doing so though he was informed by god Himself that all his sins and faults were forgiven, he said, ‘Is it wrong to be a thankful servant?’’.
2. Abu Dawood transmitted from Awf Ibn Malik, he said, ‘One night, I was with the Messenger of Allah. He used the tooth cleanser, performed the ablution and then he began praying. I stood beside him. He began by the sura of (The Cow). Whenever he mentioned a verse of mercy, he stopped and called his God to save and forgive him, and whenever he mentioned a verse of punishment, he stopped and sought refuge with God. Then he bowed for some moments and said, ‘Glory be to Allah, The Possessor of Power, Kingdom and Glory’. Then he prostrated and repeated the same sentence. Then he read the sura of (The Family of imran) and the sura of (Al-Nisaa’ or The Women)’. And each sura he read, he said the same previous sentence.
3. The Mother of the Believers, A’isha, may God be pleased with her, said, ‘One night, the Messenger of Allah remained repeating a verse, which is of the last verses of the sura of (The Table Spread) the whole night. The verse is, {If Thou dost punish them, they are Thy servants: If Thou dost forgive them, Thou art the Exalted in power, the wise} (The Table V., 118)’
4. He is also the one who said, ‘You made the prayer the delight of my eye’.