Infallibility of the Prophets: A Research Based Analysis

The Research is about the Infallibility of the prophets. Infallibility means Protections form sins. It is a basic belief of the Muslim Ummah that Prophets are saved and protected from sins. They are models for the human being and having a strong character throughout their lives. Qur’an has mentioned the infallibility of the prophets in details and showed that the prophets are innocent and they do not pay attention towards the sins and prohibited acts. A small minority of Muslim scholars have opined that the Prophets might have committed sins of an minor type called zalla, meaning ‘error’ or ‘lapse’, and give some example from their lives Adam, Noah, Abraham and Joseph, [peace be upon them]. Before elaborating their cases, it should be noted that even if we even attribute some errors to the Prophets, they errors are not sins in the meaning of disobedience to God’s Commandments. The Prophets cared to wait for Revelation when they had a question to judge. On rare occasions, however, it happened that they would exercise their own power of reasoning in order to give a judgment as they were the greatest of mujtahids (jurists of the highest rank who can infer laws from the principles established by the Qur’an and the Sunnah). They might sometimes have made mistakes in their judgments or decisions, but such mistakes, which were immediately corrected by God, can never be considered as sins