At the international level, there is a plenty of literature dealing with the life of Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a broader or narrower sense. At the academic level, it belongs to the field of biography of the Messenger (peace be upon him).
The abundance of literature in this field poses a challenge for authors who wish to contribute to this rich body of work: What new and valuable insights can be offered? End of 2019. published under Mešihat of Islamic Community in Croatia the book ‘Objava – oblikovanje “Nove prepoznatljivosti”’ (Revelation – Designing ‘New Recognisability’) by the chief imam of the Majlis of Islamic Community Osijek, the young author and master of Islamic studies Senad Hevešević.
As the author himself mentions, Tefsir, Hadith and Sira are the three areas covered by this book. We usually encounter Hadith and Sira in close connection, with the latter, the historical or, if you will, the historical, predominating. In the case of this book, however, we do not encounter a concept similar to other works in the field of the biography of the Messenger of God, a.s. The author's starting point lies in the first Islamic teaching – the Tefsir.
Specifically, the book itself deals with what is known in Tefsir teaching as the chronological sequence of the revelation of the verses of the Quran. In this case, such a sequence is not confirmed, not in order to prove the credibility of events that are more or less known to us, but to update certain phenomena that determined the socio-political currents in a historical period and which, surprisingly, are also reflected in later times – up to the present day.
The first phenomenon is that of revelation with all its characteristic features that followed it, and above all its influence on a society, its actual influence in a concrete space and time.
Revelation comes to a man, an Arab, a Meccan, who is chosen by God, the Exalted, to be His messenger: in a society that does not know Tawhid (Belive in One God), in which some of the fundamental values have been lost.
This is the author's initial point, emphasizing the difficulty of the task that lay before Muhammad, now the messenger. The way in which the author begins his work at the start resolve us, so to speak, with the subtle misconception that Resulullah a.s. was merely a puppet, an automated transmitter of God's Word. No, the very beginning of the first Revelation was a huge burden on his shoulders, which is reflected in his psycho-physical state. The Revelation was already having an effect. This was immediately reflected in the Messenger's a.s. close ones, among whom was his first wife Khadija, r.a., whom we know at that moment as a strong woman, ready to support her husband, now God's Messenger a.s.
The publication is set up, passes through various events, or follows after various events. It is released gradually. It is meant to guide, respond, instill strength, self-confidence, and hope. As the flow of the Revelation progressed, the people around the Prophet, peace be upon him, began to get used to his mission, they got used to the Revelation, and they became more aware that the Revelation was the Guidance.
It starts gradually, the community grows, people convert to Islam, social trends change, and above all, people change, people who are now imbued with the values of tawhid and continue to carry the message of Islam on their shoulders. This is the concept and subject matter of this book: the influence of publication on the formation of the individual and on the formation of the collective—which, according to the author, is this “new recognizability.”
In an important way, they emphasized something significant: during the process of publication, new members joined the Muslim community, but this did not mean the rejection of all the characteristics they had, nor did it mean the complete rejection of their past lives. nor did it mean a sudden drastic change in attitude towards different lifestyles. Rather, the declaration clearly indicated the basic values that needed to be adopted, and its gradual nature had to be reflected in the gradual change of individuals and the community.
Sight towards Mecca and Kaaba from Jabal al-Nour
Today, social psychology recognizes the term “life situation,” which is defined as “a specific constellation of psychological, social, biological, and geophysical conditions (elements) in the life of an individual that determine his or her activity and behavior in a given period.” In this context, life situations are characterized by dynamism. A life situation can be reflected in one aspect of a person's life as “favorable” and in another as “unfavorable” at the same time. In social psychology, understanding a life situation means “understanding the problem of the intensity of the influence that our desires have on our behavior in a given period.”[1]
The messenger himself and the people around him who came, but also those who did not or have not yet come, did not remain indifferent, and there was a reaction, even if only verbal, although for those who approached the Muslim community, this meant much more than verbal persuasion, and in the very verbal expression with which they accepted tawhid and risalat, they had a reaction, as we mentioned above - “favorable” and “unfavorable” at the same time.
Tefsir sience knows the term of tenjimu-l-Qur'an – step-by-step revealing of Qur’an. Authors from this field mention several reasons. In addition to technical reasons, whereby gradual publication enabled easier memorization of the Qur'an, which the Messenger had to convey, and he himself did not know how to write, so that it could be recorded and later collected in the mushaf, we also find reasons that are evident in the fact that the verses were answers to many questions, then the question of the derogation of some verses, and certainly to calm the heart of Resulullah, a.s.[2] Such an evolutionary character of the Revelation enabled a more effective impact of the Revelation that was to be adopted and transferred into practical life. The author attempts to present the dynamism of the process of Revelation.
Jabal al-Nour, the mountain atop which is the Hira cave, where it is believed Muhammad received his first revelation.
The book depicts scenes that speak of the profiles of individuals whom Resulullah a.s. encountered, and how those profiles changed under the influence of the Revelation. Religious studies talk about the phenomenon of religious experience that redirects the course of human behavior and causes people to change their attitudes.[3]. It is clear that people joined the Muslim community and experienced such a religious experience which, according to the literature, can best be described as a “spontaneous-direct experience,” while the experience of Resulullah, a.s., as the recipient of God's Word, can be described as a “spontaneous non-odirect religious experience” [4].
The author does not merely update the text (the Qur'an and hadith), but the entire context, and integrates it into a single whole. A mere dry recitation of the Qur'anic text, even if it follows the chronological order of its revelation, or a recitation of the text of the hadith, or historical data that often roughly follow the events, would not lead us to the key moment of this book—to the formation of a “new recognizability” achieved before the influence of the Qur'an, with its gradual publication that preceded troughout 23 years and responded to many things.
This gave the book a didactic character, because the subject matter is presented to the contemporary reader who, fourteen centuries later, is still looking for answers offered by the Qur'an, which offers the complete life of the Prophet Muhammad, a.s., and who tries to explain—according to the author himself—the greatest miracle of the Quran: its potential to change people and society for the better.
And in doing so, he asks what kind of interpretation, what kind of explanation will enable us to channel such power in this era, which we often find ourselves admitting is one of extreme human disorientation, and certainly a time of far more complex processes than before, but also another time that has the right to approach the interpretation of the Qur'an, the interpretation of the hadith; to understand the life of the Messenger, a.s., in the same way as Hevešević, who, with his approach, does not seek to refute and negate everything that has been written on this subject so far, He does not accept the principle of exclusivity, but rather that of inclusivity, only that his method seems very fresh and well-founded, and at the same time very comprehensive, but concise. His book leaves an impression of his intention to be a successor to the scholarly tradition, but also to move it forward.
His relationship with the language of the Qur'an is very interesting, and he does not shy away from entertaining his readers with his translations of Qur'anic verses, as well as with combinations of different translations at the level of the book, which reveals an important segment to which he has devoted attention, namely the language of the Qur'an, in which lies its supernatural nature that captivated the Meccan society, a society that achieved an enviable and astonishing level of poetry, a literary genre that stands out in the literary firmament and which no other literary genre will ever be able to dethrone.
This is what the Qur'an has achieved. So the author decided to examine the stylistic aspects of individual verses, while also emphasizing the didactic characteristics of the Qur'an.
With his approach, the author has indicated how important the experience of the Revelation to the Messenger himself was, and how important it was that the process of Revelation be exactly as it was, as well as the closeness that the Companions had with the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) during the process of the revelation of the Qur'an.