Muhammad sets the model for being a good statesman. He also sets the model for being a good warrior, for chivalry, of nobility, of all the things which the Quran and Hadith [The recorded collections of the sayings and traditions of the Prophet] says of treating your enemy with dignity and kindness.
Seyyed Hossein NasrThe Shariah has many other functions but also protects the tarqiah; it protects the spiritual path.
Seyyed Hossein NasrThere are millions and millions of Sufis who have existed in Islamic history and have the deepest impact on every aspect of Islamic culture and civilization to philosophy to art to science to social structure to economics who have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj.
Seyyed Hossein NasrThe traditional doctrine of man and not the measurement of skulls and footprints is the key for the understanding of that anthropos who, despite the rebellion of Promethean man against Heaven from the period of Renaissance and its aftermath, is still the inner man of every man, the reality which no human being can deny wherever and whenever he lives, the imprint of a theomorphic nature which no historical change and transformation can erase completely from the face of that creature called man.
Seyyed Hossein NasrIn the same way that we have a body and a soul and a spirit, our soul can't walk in the street without our body - we would be dead then. Religion is the same way; it has to have a body, it has to have a form, it has to have structure. Without that, the soul cannot be prepared to follow the tariqah.
Seyyed Hossein NasrOnly man can stop being fully man. He can ascend above all degres of universal existence and by the same token fall below the level of the basest of creatures.
Seyyed Hossein NasrMuhammad was, first of all, a Prophet of course, a beloved and lover of God, a father, an army commander, a judge, a ruler of a community, the King of Medina and later of Arabia, and all of these were combined in him and his destiny, the reason God brought him on earth, was to show how each of the functions which human beings have in life have the perfect form in the prophet.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr