A comprehensive guidance therefore involves leading in thought...

A comprehensive guidance therefore involves leading in thought, words, and behaviour. The guide should therefore practise what he preaches,[^13] and should himself be the supreme incarnation and the perfect embodiment of the message he spreads.

He should be a paradigm, a model, and a model-maker.'[^14] Muhammad was thus the Messenger who brought the comprehensive universal Message of Allah, and he was the incarnation of the divine message,[^15] and the living example of his mission, the model (shahid), the paradigm (uswa). The key word in the concept of prophethood in Islam is thus human guidance. This involves the recognition of what humanity should be…