One of Ibn Sina (Avicenna)’s students said to him one day that if, with his extraordinary understanding and intelligence, he were to make a claim to prophethood, people would gather round him. Avicenna said nothing; then when they were on a journey together in wintertime, Avicenna awoke from his sleep one morning at dawn, woke up his student, and told him he was thirsty, and asked him to fetch some water. The student procrastinated and made excuses. However much Avicenna persisted, the student was not prepared to leave his warm bed in the cold winter. At that moment the cry of the muezzin (caller to prayer) called out from the minaret: “God is the greatest. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” Avicenna saw that this was a good opportunity to give the answer to his student, so he said:
You, who averred that if I made claim to be a prophet, people would believe in me, look now and see how the command I just gave you, who have been my student for years and have benefited from my lessons, has not even had the effect of making you leave your warm bed to fetch me some water. But this muezzin strictly obeys the four-hundred-year (now fourteen-hundred-year)-old command of the Prophet. He got up from his warm bed, as he always does every morning together with hundreds of thousands of others, climbed up to this great height and borne witness to the unity of God and to His Prophet. Look and see how great the difference is!
His name has been pronounced five times a day together with that of God for fourteen centuries all over the world, whilst he is loved heart and soul by so many people whose number is in-creasing day by day. The present-day conditions of the world gives the good tiding that he will be greeted by the whole world in a near future as the “Ruler of the world”, as was foretold by Jesus Christ.
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