Is There Consensus That the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) Is the Best of Creation?

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Question

I have heard there is a consensus that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is the best of creation.

Did some misguided sects deny that the Quran is uncreated, and even rank a creature above the Quran — would that not be disbelief?

Or is it more accurate to say the consensus is that of Ahl al-Sunna, excluding the deviant sects?

Answer

Yes. Ahl al-Sunna affirm by consensus that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is the best of all creation.

Your instinct on the rest is sound. The Quran is the uncreated Speech of Allah, so it stands outside the comparison entirely. And the binding consensus is that of Ahl al-Sunna, which the dissent of deviant sects does not break.

Three distinct points sit within your question, and it helps to break them down slowly. Let me take each in turn.

The Prophet Is the Best of All Creation by Consensus

It is the settled creed of Ahl al-Sunna that our Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is superior to the whole of creation — to every prophet and messenger, and to the angels, including the greatest among them.

Imam Laqani (Allah have mercy on him) fixed this in verse in Jawharat al-Tawhid, the creedal poem so many of us first learned our creed from:

وَأَفْضَلُ الْخَلْقِ عَلَى الْإِطْلَاقِ … نَبِيُّنَا فَمِلْ عَنِ الشِّقَاقِ

He then gives the ranking that follows:

وَالْأَنْبِيَا يَلُونَهُمْ فِي الْفَضْلِ … وَبَعْدَهُمْ مَلَائِكَةُ ذِي الْفَضْلِ

“The prophets come next in rank, and after them the angels of excellence.”

Imam Bajuri (Allah have mercy on him) builds this point out in his commentary [Bajuri, Tuhfat al-Murid].

The dominant Ashari and Maturidi position, then, is that the elite of humankind — foremost the messengers, and at their head our Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) — surpass even the elite of the angels.

The commentators defend this directly.

When the great Quranic exegete Imam Zamakhshari, a Mutazilite in his views, read Sura al-Takwir as implying that Jibril (peace be upon him) was superior to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), Imam Dusuqi (Allah have mercy on him) answered him plainly in his gloss (hashiya) on Imam Sanusi’s creed:

“This is a great audacity from Zamakhshari, and recklessness on his part. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is described with many qualities not even mentioned in this verse, which neither Jibril nor any other ever attained.”

Imam Bayadi affirms the same in [Bayadi, Isharat al-Maram], as do other major Maturidi theologians.

One nuance is worth holding, so you neither overstate it nor wave it away. The detailed ranking of humankind against the angels in general is not, as Imam Taj al-Din al-Subki (Allah have mercy on him) observed, among the beliefs every responsible person is obliged to settle.

But the Prophet’s standing as the best of all creation (Allah bless him and give him peace) is affirmed, and it is not in dispute among Ahl al-Sunna.

Why the Quran Is Not Even Part of the Comparison

Here is the distinction that dissolves your difficulty. To be the best of creation is to be the best of created things. The Quran is the Speech of Allah, an eternal attribute of His Essence, and it is uncreated. It is therefore not a created thing at all.

So the Quran never enters the scale on which the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is the best of creation. The two are not ranked against each other because they do not belong to the same order of being.

This is the explicit creed of the imams. Imam Tahawi (Allah have mercy on him) states:

“The Quran is the Speech of Allah. From Him it came forth as speech, without modality; He sent it down upon His Prophet as revelation; the believers affirmed it as truth, and were certain that it is, in reality, the Speech of Allah Most High, not created like the speech of created beings.”

Imam Najm al-Din al-Nasafi (Allah have mercy on him) fixes the same in his creed, with the precision your question needs:
“The Quran is the uncreated Speech of Allah Most High. It is written in our copies, preserved in our hearts, recited by our tongues, and heard by our ears, yet without indwelling in any of them.”

Abu Muin al-Nasafi establishes the same doctrine at length in Tabsirat al-Adilla, as does Imam Bayhaqi among the Ash’aris.

The sect you have in mind reversed the truth at two points. The Mutazila and the Jahmiyya called the Quran created — which Imam Tahawi names as disbelief outright:

فَمَنْ سَمِعَهُ فَزَعَمَ أَنَّهُ كَلَامُ الْبَشَرِ فَقَدْ كَفَرَ

“Whoever hears it and claims it is the speech of humans has disbelieved.”

Ranking a creature above the Quran compounds the error, for it sets a created being above an eternal attribute of Allah.

Affirming the Prophet as the best of creation (Allah bless him and give him peace) does not, and cannot, place him above the Quran, since the Quran is not created at all.

And yes, to knowingly hold any creature greater than an attribute of Allah is grave misguidance, reaching disbelief where a person deliberately exalts the created above the Divine. The ruling on a specific individual, however, has its own conditions. It is the province of qualified scholars, not a label to apply loosely.

Consensus (ijma) is the agreement of the qualified scholars of the Umma, which in practice means the scholars of Ahl al-Sunna who hold to its foundations. The opinions of sects that broke from those foundations do not count against an established consensus.

The lone dissent of Imam Zamakhshari, based on a flawed reading, did not undermine the consensus on the Prophet’s superiority (Allah bless him and give him peace). In the same way, the deviant sects standing outside the consensus leave it intact.

So your final phrasing is the exact one: this is the consensus of Ahl al-Sunna.

A closing word, because the real danger in questions like this is to become a cataloguer of sects and forget to be a worshipper.

Learn your creed from a reliable text. Understand it until it is truly yours. Then turn it into a lived reality through sincerity, reflection, and remembrance.

Imam Maqqari in Idaat al-Dujunna conveys the sound belief briefly but beautifully:

وَنَزِّهِ الْقُرْآنَ أَنْ تَقُولَا بِخَلْقِهِ

Then he points the seeker home:

وَاسْلُكْ سَبِيلَ السُّنَّةِ الْغَرَّاءِ … وَالْخَيْرُ مَضْمُونٌ بِالِاتِّبَاعِ

“Tread the path of the radiant Sunna; good is guaranteed through following.”

Belief is meant to grow and bear fruit. Imam Qushayri (Allah have mercy on him) records, in the chapter on certainty of his Risala, the words of Abu Bakr al-Warraq (Allah have mercy on him):

اليَقِينُ مِلَاكُ الْقَلْبِ، وَبِهِ كَمَالُ الْإِيمَانِ، وَبِالْيَقِينِ عُرِفَ اللَّهُ تَعَالَى

And Ibn Ata’illah al-Sakandari (Allah have mercy on him) warns in his Hikam:

العِلْمُ إِنْ قَارَنَتْهُ الْخَشْيَةُ فَلَكَ، وَإِلَّا فَعَلَيْكَ