The Prophet's Tears

By Ruhudeen Ali
December 26th, 2005

Oh Prophet of God!
For what purpose did you shed your blessed tears?
Did you weep for your cohorts? Or were your tears for your future followers?
You had referred to us as your 'brothers and sisters' and not your 'companions'.
You would shed tears for us when you said that we would have earnest faith in you without seeing you.
Then where is this faith of ours that we don't concern ourselves with your character?
Where is this faith in you, if we no longer trust your words?
Or did you cry because you knew the times we would experience?
Perhaps your Lord showed you that we would be a massive community but with no honor nor influence.
And that we would cling to wealth and yet neglect our poor brethren.
That we would become a begging people, at the mercy of our occupiers.
That the ummah you once referred to as a single body is nothing but a paralyzed carcass.
The righteous among us are too weak to change our people peacefully so the tyrants among us have seized control.
They resort to disgraceful acts that bring shame before the example you and your companions left behind.
And the irony is that even those who try to fight back to fix the ills are themselves misguided: renegade cultist evil-doers, who terrorize the masses and wreak havoc, killing their own people, and for what!?
For the sake of the teachings that your blessed body ached, cried, and bled for in order to bring peace to the world.
That you and your companions sacrificied everything for - that, my dear Prophet, is the rubbish that the world is now attributing to you!

Now I understand why you wept so much, not just for us, but for the world...
Our Lord gave us the Book and left us with your example as guidance, simple it seems..until put in the hands of our so-called 'scholars.'
Bickering among themselves, they no longer speak to us so we are left to follow nothing but our own misguided whims.
And we throw away all our past heritage and pride, and call your practices "backward" in the search to be "modern".
So we caste aside our morals and adopt the ways of the worldly successful - a life devoted to the fulfillment of appetites.
They call it "modern" but are blinded by it's primitive animalism; reverting back to square-one.
Nobody likes us anymore; distrusted and despised, we are a people on our own...where once we guided the world out of darkness, we are now its antithesis.

I see now why you cried for us...
From the pools of blood, ankle-deep, clinging to the Crusaders' knees,
to the mountains of bones piled up from the aftermath of the Mongols,
to the imperialism of the West, and the illegal occupation and degradation of your people -
to your starving and homeless brothers and sisters in Africa,
to the mass-killings of your people in Europe and India,
to the massive loss of life from the tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other calamities,
to the bitter and bloody freedom resistance of your people in Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere,
to the "honor-killings" of the falsely accused and their perpetrators, who wouldn't know what real honor is even if it killed them.
to the ignorance and darkness that the misguided label as "Islam"
and alas, to our pathetic condition as a people, who for ages have been mentally and spiritually bereft of true enlightenment.
You shed tears for all of this...

Oh wise Prophet! We have gone far astray from your teachings...
Yes you, the Prophet who would always have on his noble lips, "my people, my people!"
You, the Prophet who was often found sobbing with his Lord, requesting our pardon!
The Prophet who saved his personal, God-given wish for his own people!
The Prophet who forgave his conspirators and would-be killers!
The Prophet who granted amnesty to the very city who despised and fought him; from which he was born!
The Prophet who begged his Lord to intercede for his followers!
How could you not have wept oh beloved Prophet?? For you knew that we would not ourselves weep.
Our hearts have long been hardened and dead, so it was you who wept on our behalf!
You wept so your tears would intercede for our apathy!
You wept so your tears would extinguish our Hellfire!
You wept so your tears would wake us up!
You wept so your tears would excuse us before our Lord!
You wept for our ownselves, for our own wretchedness, for our own heedlessness!
You wept, oh great Prophet, so that we might be saved!
You cried because you placed hope in us.
You cried because we betrayed that hope.
You cried because we can't.
And you cried for each and every one of us, and begged our pardon...
May our Lord forgive us, and accept your prayer, my beloved Prophet,
And grant you the Praiseworthy Station of the "Paradise on High," and the Rite of Intercession for the sinners among your nation!
And Peace and Blessings be upon you, your family, and your companions eternally!!! ameen.