Miracles of Muhammad

Miracles of Muhammad are miraculous claims attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad. A number of terms are used in Islam to refer to the claims of events happening that are not explicable by natural or scientific laws, subjects where people sometimes invoke the supernatural.

In the Quran the term āyah (Arabic: آية; pl. آيات, lit. "sign") refers to signs in the context of miracles of God's creation and of the prophets and messengers (such as Ibrahim/Abraham and Isa/Jesus). In later Islamic sources miracles of the prophets were referred to by Muʿjiza (مُعْجِزَة), literally meaning "that by means of which [the Prophet] confounds, overwhelms, his opponents"; while of saints are referred to as karamat (charismata) included in the books of Manaqib.

The earliest records concerning the Prophetic biography contained "almost no miracles" ("dalāʾil al-nubuwwa"), but hundreds of them were added later, along with chains of narration, during the next 2-3 centuries. A range of miraculous incidents related to Muhammad have been reported in post-Quranic texts such as the Hadith and the Sīrah. Some of them relied on ambiguous Quranic verses that were then developed into elaborate narratives. Notably, the Quranic verses 53:1-2, which is said to have originally forecasted a forthcoming event linked to the Day of Judgment based on a sighting of a lunar eclipse, were ultimately transformed into a historical miracle, the splitting of the moon. This tradition has inspired many Muslim poets. The Qur'an does not overtly describe Muhammad performing miracles, according to historian Denis Gril, and the supreme miracle of Muhammad is finally identified with the Qur'an itself. At least one scholar (Sunni Modernist scholar Muhammad Asad) states that Muhammad performed no miracles other than to bring the Quran to humanity, and other scholars, such as Cyril Glasse and Marcia Hermansen, downplay the miracles of Muhammad, stating "they play no role in Islamic theology", or "play less of an evidentiary role than in some other religions".

Believing in the existence and miracles of Awliya is presented as a "condition" for orthodox Islam by many prominent Sunni creed writers such as Al-Tahawi and Nasafi and is accepted in traditional Sunnis and Shi'ism. Traditional Islam may severely punish the denial of miracles because of consensus of Sunni scholars, rejecting a single letter of the Quran or a hadith which is mutawatir causes one to become a apostate. According to them believing in the miracles of Muhammad in the Quran and in hadith were transmitted by mutawatir way and believing to them was obligatory. This understanding, along with expressions of respect and visits to the graves of saints, are seen as unacceptable heresy by puritanical and revivalist Islamic movements such as Salafism, Wahhabism and Islamic Modernism.