آخری نبی (ﷺ) اور آخری مسجد

Abdullah ibn Ibrahim ibn Qariz said: I bear witness that I heard Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) say that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “I am the last Prophet ﷺ, and my mosque is the last mosque.”

A prophet, in reality, comes to convey and explain the commandments of Allah Most High to the people. In earlier times a prophet would be sent at a particular time for a single region or a single tribe. But this present ummah is the final ummah, and there will be no ummah after it; so with the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) the chain of prophethood came to an end. He ﷺ is the final Messenger of Allah, and he ﷺ is the Prophet for the entire ummah until the Day of Judgement. That is why his ﷺ teachings will remain until the Last Day. It is therefore obligatory, in believing in the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, to hold complete certainty that he is both the Messenger and the final Prophet; whoever accepts him ﷺ as a Messenger but does not accept him as the final Prophet is by no means a Muslim.

Some people accept the Messenger of Allah ﷺ as a prophet but also regard some other person as a prophet or as his equal; such people are outside the fold of Islam. The finality of prophethood is the agreed-upon creed of the Muslim ummah, and this blessed hadith is a proof and a proclamation of it.

However, before the Day of Judgement, when Prophet Isa (Jesus, peace be upon him) descends again into this world, even he will come as a follower of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and will have people act upon the Shari'ah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ alone. Those who do not accept the finality of prophethood should not insist on being called Muslims, because Islamic beliefs are not a matter of arbitrary interpretation. Whoever wishes to be called a Muslim without accepting the consensus creed of the Muslims is a victim of folly. To save people from this very folly, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made the announcement that no prophet before him had made: that “I am the last Prophet of Allah; no prophet will be born after me. Yes, some false claimants will arise, so never fall into their web of deception.” What Muslim could there be who, after this guidance from the crowned master of the finality of prophethood, the leader of the two worlds ﷺ, would be ensnared in the deception of false claimants?

In this same hadith the Prophet ﷺ also stated that his mosque is the last mosque. In reality there are three mosques in the world that enjoy a special excellence over ordinary mosques, in which the reward for praying is a thousand times greater than praying in other mosques; for this reason it is permissible to undertake travel to pray in them. The first of these is the one famous as al-Masjid al-Haram, whose builder was Prophet Ibrahim (peace be upon him). The second is famous as al-Masjid al-Aqsa, the first qiblah of the Muslims, which through the negligence and heedlessness of the Muslims is under the control of the Jews, and which was built by Prophet Sulayman (peace be upon him). The third is the mosque of Madinah al-Munawwarah, famous as al-Masjid al-Nabawi ﷺ, whose foundation was laid by the Seal of the Prophets, the Mercy to the worlds (peace and blessings be upon him).