The Blueprint To Living Like the Prophet ﷺ in the Modern World

The Hunger for a Role Model

This generation is hungry, is hungry for a role model. And because we don't have the Prophet ﷺ alive with us today, talking in podcasts and doing speaker tours and writing articles and running around, many of us in our amnesia and our short-term memory, we have forgotten what he really was like. The solution to our crisis, the crisis of masculinity, the crisis of role models, is to revive the original role model, not to invent a new one.

Every role model that we take today will have their deficiencies, but the length to which they will help us improve our lives depends on how close they are to the persona and the personality and the character of the best of creation ﷺ.

What Does It Mean to Love the Prophet ﷺ?

What does it mean to love the Prophet ﷺ? For many of us, loving the Prophet ﷺ is a birthday ritual, a once-a-year commemoration, once-in-a-while celebration. It is something that we do with our clothing, something that we do as an occasional thing now and again to pay tribute to him. But how did the Prophet ﷺ himself define love for the Prophet? Because we can't talk about the character of the Prophet, we can't talk about imitating his character, until we talk about what comes first.

First we have to love him more than we love ourselves. The Prophet ﷺ informs us in a hadith collected by Imam al-Tirmidhi: the most severe of my ummah, my people, the most severe of them in their love for me, the ones who love me the most, are people who will come long after I have passed away.

They are people who would be willing to give up their family and their children and their wealth just for the chance to see me, to see me with their naked eyes. (Sahih Muslim, Book 52, Hadith 7)

Imam al-Tirmidhi also narrates from the hadith of Bilal ibn al-Harith that the Prophet ﷺ says:

Whoever revives one of my practices — one of my character traits that was dead after me — you will get the reward of reviving something which has died. And people you inspire to revive that act of the Prophet ﷺ, you will get their reward as well, and nobody will lose their reward. (Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2677)

And the Prophet ﷺ says:

None of you have complete faith until he loves me more than himself and his family and all of humanity. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 15; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 44)

What is the greatest route to loving the Messenger ﷺ? It is learning about who he was.

Attaching Our Children to the Prophet ﷺ

And if we want to ensure that our children don't get attracted and attached to the next Jordan Peterson or the next Andrew Tate or the next B-Tech personality on the internet, then we have to make them attach to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. And we have to attach ourselves to the Prophet ﷺ. And that will only happen through one action — through one action and one action only. And that is for every one of us sitting in this room, and every person hearing this on the internet, and every person who will hear this until their grave.

So often we hear that the earliest Muslims would complete the recitation of the Qur'an every month. But there is another practice we need to revive in our families, which is reciting and reading the life of the Prophet ﷺ. Every month, every two months, every three months, every four, every five — it doesn't matter. To mention his name in the gathering. To teach our children to send salat and salam upon him.

These practices, if they die, they will be a huge vacuum in their lives, in our lives. A vacuum which will only be filled by another personality. Another celebrity, another rich person, another businessman, another tycoon, another historic figure. And it will not hold the place of the Prophet ﷺ because the love of him has disappeared.

The love of the Prophet ﷺ is not a ritual. It is not something you force somebody to do at gunpoint — love the Prophet ﷺ or else. That is not how it works. But if somebody is to learn who he was, the love comes automatically. And if there is a deficiency in that love, it is because we have not known who he was.

The Prophet ﷺ one day says to his companions, "I am missing my brothers. I want to see my brothers, ikhwani." So his companions said to him, "Aren't we your brothers?" He said, "You are not my brothers, you are my companions. My brothers are people who came long after I died. They never saw me. But they follow me and they try to relive what I left behind."

The First Duty: Being the Shield of the Prophet ﷺ

If we think of love of the Prophet ﷺ, the first way to live the character of the Prophet in the 21st century, the first duty we have towards the Prophet ﷺ is to be the shield of the Prophet ﷺ. In the Battle of Uhud, as arrows were raining down from the sky, a small group of seven to eight companions of the Prophet made themselves shields to protect the Prophet ﷺ from any damage, any harm.

After the Battle of Uhud, Ismail ibn Muhammad ibn Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas narrates that there was a woman from the Ansar of Medina, from the tribe of Banu Dinar, whose husband and her brothers and her sons — all of them were slain and killed in the Battle of Uhud. This lady lost all of her male relatives in the Battle of Uhud. Not a single one of them left. She was left alone.

And she comes to the battlefield and she asks, "What happened to Muhammad ﷺ?" They say to her, "He's fine." "Don't you want to know about your husband, your brother, your sons?" She says, "No, I'm not interested." She says, "I want to see him with my own eyes. I will not feel content until I see him." And when she comes and she sees him and they say, "Here he is. He's fine. He's okay." She says — and this is the word, the sentence to remember:

"Every harm, every injury, every loss other than you is a tolerable loss. I can tolerate it. But I cannot tolerate an attack on you, Ya Muhammad ﷺ."

The attacks on the character of the Prophet ﷺ should make us examine ourselves. How low we have become that we do not live up to this character, that people have to resort to a comic book to learn about who he is.

Intellectual and Moral Defense

There is the intellectual defense of the Prophet. By learning all of the misconceptions people level against him — that he was a womanizer, that he was a barbarian, that he was X and Y and Z — learn those arguments and be ready to defend him.

The second is to have an impeccable character, especially when dealing with people who are non-Muslims, people of other faiths, people of no faith. All of us, to some extent or the other, living in the UK, we interact with non-Muslims. We interact with them in the workplace. We interact with them as neighbors. We interact with them as colleagues, as friends, as acquaintances.

But how often do we go out of our way to show kindness to them? How often do we go out of our way to show them a glimpse of the beauty of our character? When was the last time we had tea? When was the last time we bought coffee? When was the last time we got a bouquet of flowers? When was the last time we showed gentleness, kindness, softness, genuine character? When was the last time we stood up for someone who had been done injustice to — from our neighbors, from our friends, from our companions, from our colleagues? And then when they are surprised at this, we say to them, "This is something I learned from Muhammad ﷺ."

This is the first way to live his character in the 21st century. Is to realize that if we don't step up now at this juncture in history, we will go down as the people who watched his character get assassinated and we let his character get burnt, put on buildings, mocked, comicked, laughed at — and we stood there watching, and our lives continued running on the hamster wheel, competing in the rat race until we fall off and somebody takes our place.

The Second Duty: Understanding and Living the Sunnah

The second thing — living the Prophet's ﷺ character in the 21st century — we have to really understand this concept of sunnah. What does it mean to follow the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ? I want to ask you — what does it mean to follow the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ? How do we follow the sunnah? How should we follow the sunnah, the way of the Prophet ﷺ? The first step is to learn the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.

Everybody says we follow the sunnah — Quran and sunnah, kitab and sunnah. What do you mean by that? What does it mean to follow the sunnah practically in real life?

The Prophet's ﷺ Physical Appearance and Clothing

Let us start with the physical appearance of the Prophet ﷺ. How can we live the physical appearance of the Prophet ﷺ? Let's start with clothing. What was the sunnah, the practice, the way of the Prophet ﷺ when it came to clothing? What was his style?

The Prophet's ﷺ sunnah is to dress as the people dressed. The Prophet's ﷺ dress is identical to the dress of Abu Jahl, the greatest enemy of the Prophet ﷺ — from the turban to the kamees to the shirwal, he dressed the same way as the greatest enemy of Islam. Why? Because that was the dressing of the Arabs.

Those of us who mistake and we hide behind our thob and we hide behind our turbans and we think that we are following the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ — his way purely by dressing like an Arab — the Prophet's ﷺ way was to dress as the people dressed. You work in a particular setting where people dress in a particular way — dress as the people dress. As long as you cover the part of your body that needs to be covered, and your clothes are not transparent but opaque, and your clothes are loose and not figure-hugging, and you avoid certain colours — dress as the people dress. This is the way of the Prophet ﷺ.

His Mercy, His Smile, and His Character

Many things which were customs of the people, the Prophet ﷺ would follow the customs and the culture of the people. But there was one thing the Prophet ﷺ would do which made him stand out to people around him, and melted the hearts of those around him, and was the greatest feature of him that people would always remember. It was his mercy and his gentleness and his smile.

His smile when you'd see him, his mercy when he'd deal with you, his firm handshake, his whole body turning in your direction, his attention that he would give you in the room, the presence of his mind, the presence of his heart. He would tailor his dealings with every person — the old person different from the child, and the orphan different from the Bedouin. Everybody had a special dealing with the Prophet ﷺ. Everybody thought they were his best friend, his closest companion. The way he sat humbly in a gathering, to the way he stood and dealt with people. He tailored his dealings to those around him. He understood well the context he was in and what would offend and what would not offend, what would endear and what would hold close.

So many of us don't realize we have so many opportunities to apply the Prophet's ﷺ life in our daily contexts — at work, at school, at university, while driving a taxi, while laying bricks. It doesn't matter what you're doing, there is an opportunity there. But many of us forget.

The Secret: Reviving Our Connection Through Salawat

And when we forget, there is a secret to remember and to remind ourselves of this duty. And the secret is that every morning and evening, without fail, we have to have a portion of our day — even if it's two minutes, even if it's three minutes — for us to say:

These words — as-salatu 'ala al-nabi — these words are meant to revive our connection with him. Salah comes from silah, connection. When that connection becomes weak, this sentence was created and taught for us to revive that connection, for us to refresh on the webpage.

Why Do We Send Salawat? The Benefits

But what does it actually mean? When we say, "O Allah, send salah on the Prophet," what does that actually mean? Many of us say we don't know what it means. Before we get into what it means, what are the benefits of saying this sentence every day? Why do we say it? Because Allah and his angels say it. Allah said in the Quran:

Allah and his angels send salah on the Prophet. Then Allah asks us: believers, you send salah and salam on the Prophet.

In another hadith, the Prophet ﷺ informs us that whoever sends salah and salam on me, that is a source of tafrij al-humum — to relieve their anxieties. In short, in modern terms, if you're anxious, if you're depressed, if you're angry, you've had a bad day — there is a special form of therapy that the psychologists haven't told you about. It's called salawat therapy. Try it once. It is a form of therapy because it genuinely eases your anxieties. I'm not saying it's the only form, but it is a form of therapy. It eases your anxieties, removes your fears, as you remember what the Prophet ﷺ himself went through. And as you remember his persona and his character and his walk and his stance and his sitting and his smile — how can it not put a smile on your face?

What Does Salah on the Prophet Actually Mean?

But let us come back to the first question — what does it mean, "O Allah, send salah and salam on the Prophet"? They say salah originally in the Arabic language means du'a — to call somebody, to supplicate, to call out to somebody. But when it comes to the Prophet ﷺ and Allah's calling out to the Prophet ﷺ, we are asking Allah to spread his mercy and to raise the rank and to mention the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ amongst the greatest group of angels.

So imagine this: whenever you say اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ عَلَى مُحَمَّدٍ, Allah mentions the name of the Prophet ﷺ amongst the angels that are guarding his throne in that moment. And every time you say اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ وَسَلِّمْ عَلَى مُحَمَّدٍ — and this, if you really stop for a moment and think about it, it will blow your mind — Allah sends his soul back to him to respond to your salah. Whenever you say اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ وَسَلِّمْ عَلَى مُحَمَّدٍ, something real is happening in the heavens and something real is happening to the Prophet ﷺ. It is a conversation with Allah and his messenger. It is not a simple word that we learn as children and we just say — it is a conversation with Allah and his messenger.

The Story of Ubayy ibn Ka'b

Ubayy ibn Ka'b (may Allah be pleased with him) approaches the Prophet one day and he says to him, "Of the time I spend in the morning and evening remembering Allah, how much of that should I give to mentioning you and sending salat and salam on you? Half of it? A quarter of it? Two-thirds of it? Three-quarters of it? How much?" And every time he says a portion, the Prophet ﷺ tells him, "This is good, but if you do more it will be better." Until he reaches a point and he says, "I will leave all of it just for your remembrance."

How to Supercharge Your Salawat

One of the secrets of this dhikr is: every time you say it in the morning and the evening, every time you say it, remember something about the Prophet. Take your time. There is no rush.

Remember the way he would greet people.

Remember how he bled at Ta'if.

Remember how he would kiss his daughter Fatima on her forehead when he entered the room.

Remember how he would treat the Christian delegations from Najran.

Remember how he would rub the head of the orphan and hold them close.

This way, by the time you reach 100, the day you do this will not be like any day in your life, because you spent 100 moments with the Prophet ﷺ.

We have to supercharge our salawat. We cannot say them like empty words. People use them like chants. Often I get messages, I get emails — "How many times should I say salawat to pass my exams?" What is this, a magic spell? You're going to go to 1,000 and you're going to pass your exams. Is this how it works?

The effect of the salawat on your character depends on you taking your time. Say it five times. Say it one time — but take your time. Taste it with your tongue. Let its sweetness enter your throat. Let its sweetness enter your heart. And then you can move on to the next one.

The Rights of the Prophet ﷺ Upon Us

The Prophet ﷺ said:

What a miser is a person who my name is mentioned in front of them and they don't send salat and salam on me. (Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 3546)

This is one of his rights upon us. We have women's rights, men's rights, children's rights — everybody has rights, even human rights. But there are prophetic rights. And the first of the prophetic rights is that we communicate with him. That we greet him. We show that respect. The health of any relationship is based on how much communication takes place. And the way we communicate with the messenger is by sending salawat and sending salam upon him ﷺ.