The following is an interview with Seyeed Hossein Nasr, who was formerly of Tehran University, is now the University professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University:

Q- Is prophesy a part of all authentic teaching?

A- Yes, if you take it in the sense of the universal manifestation of God or the Divine Reality, or Divine Principle. It does not even have to be personal. It can be in the form of the illumination of the Buddha. From the Islamic point of view, Buddha is a great prophet.

Prophesy is the origin of all teachings. That is, you never have a single metaphysician, a single mystic, in all of human history (minus the 20th century in the West, & the decadent period of the Greco-Roman antiquity), who has not related himself, or herself, to the prophetic function. You never had any Taoist sages who were not Taoists, who did not belong to the universe created by Lao Tzu. You never had a single Hindu teacher who did not belong to the universe of the manifestations of Vishnu & Shiva, of the great avatars, of Krishna & Rama & so forth & so on. All Confucian sages were Confucian. From the Islamic point of view, one can say that Confucius is a prophet who exercised that function within the Chinese world.

In all traditional societies, including traditional Christian society, the link between the contemporary teacher & the original prophet, the source of prophecy, was always very clear. The teaching might be hidden, but the connection was clear for all to see. Today among so called modern teachers the teaching is manifest, but the relation between the teacher & the source of his or her teachings is often obscure. So it's a 180-degree subversion, really, of a rapport between the two.

Q- Doesn't the Qur'an point out that at all times people have had in their own language a teacher, or a prophet?

A- Islam recognizes different levels of prophecy. Daniel & Moses are both Hebrew prophets, but they're not on the same level [as one another]. "Verily, to every people we have sent a messenger," says the Qur'an. But some few prophets were destined, or given the mission of God, to found a new religion as did Abraham, Christ, & the Prophet of Islam.

The Qur'an is definitely very explicit that God has sent a prophet, in the sense of founding a religion-the highest level of prophecy-to all people. To deny this is to deny the explicit text of the Qur'an. And there's probably no scripture in the world which is as universal in it's assertion of the global nature of religion as is the Qur'an. It doesn't say that every religion in history has preserved it's authentic teachings, because a religious community can decay, like everything else in the world. But it means, in fact, that the phenomenon of religion coming from Heaven, the transcendent source of reality, is universal. It is not bound to any race; it is not bound to a geography or a geographical site; it is not bound to a language; it is not bound to time. That is, to be human is to be the receiver of revelation. And the key to this is that the first human being, the first anthropos, Adam, was also the first prophet. So prophecy is inseparable from the human condition.

In solidarity with the Ummah of brothers & sisters,

Birch Bricker