utterly refutes their forced interpretations is that you will not find a single one of them employing this wording himself, so that he would say in his supplication, for example: “O Allah, let Your Prophet intercede for me and let me intercede for him.”

Sixth: The scholars have cited this ḥadīth among the Prophet’s miracles, his answered prayers, and the extraordinary cures wrought by Allah through the blessing of his supplication. For by the Prophet’s prayer—peace and blessings be upon him—Allah restored that blind man’s sight. Hence the compilers of the proofs of prophethood, such as al-Bayhaqī and others, included it in their works. This shows that the real cause of the blind man’s recovery was the Prophet’s supplication.

Had anyone else who was blind invoked this supplication, sincerely turning back to Allah, and been cured—indeed, had even one such person been cured—that would corroborate their claim; yet this has never happened, and in all likelihood never will.

Moreover, if the secret of the cure lay in seeking intercession by the Prophet’s rank, status, or right—as most later people imagine—then other blind people who appeal to his rank should also have been cured. Some of them even add the rank of all the Prophets and Messengers, all the saints, martyrs, and righteous, indeed everyone who enjoys any standing with Allah from among angels, humans, and jinn! Yet we have never known, nor do we think anyone has ever known, of such a cure occurring in the many centuries since his passing up to the present day.

Once the discerning reader grasps, from the foregoing points, that the ḥadīth of the blind man turns exclusively on seeking nearness through the Prophet’s supplication and has nothing to do with seeking nearness through his person, it becomes clear that the blind man’s words: “O Allah, I ask You and seek nearness to You through Your Prophet Muḥammad” actually mean: “I seek nearness to You through the supplication of Your Prophet,” with the possessive term “supplication” understood though omitted. This ellipsis is well-known in Arabic, just as in the verse: “And ask the town where we were and the caravan with which we traveled; we are certainly telling the truth” (Q 12:82).