Answer
Wa `alaykum as-salamu wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
1- The Prophet’s miraculous night journey to Jerusalem and the heavens establishes several facts.
2- The Night Journey indicates the status of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), as he was chosen to lead all the prophets in Prayer, and to go where no one else, not even Jibreel, was allowed.
3- What the Prophet (peace be upon him was during the Night Journey is among the Unseen matters that each Muslim has to accept.
4- It is not correct to occupy one’s mind with the way such matters occurred.
Responding to your question, late Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi, former Deputy Chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, stated:
What the Prophet (peace be upon him0 was during the Night Journey is among the Unseen matters that each Muslim has to accept, as it is reported in the authentic sources of the Shari`ah.
It is not correct to occupy one’s mind with the way such matters occurred. However, in order for our minds to understand this, we say that there are two explanations for it:
First: Almighty Allah collected time—past, present, and future—for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) on the day of Al-Israa and Al-Miraj. He collected for him the past time when He brought all the prophets and made Muhammad lead them in Prayer (peace and blessings be upon them all).
He also collected the future time until the Day of Judgment and briefed the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) on some examples of what will happen on that Day. Both matters are miraculous and transcend people’s minds and universal phenomena, but Almighty Allah, the Creator of the universe, did this in support of one of His prophets.
Second: The kinds of punishment that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) saw were for the previous nations who disbelieved in their prophets, fought against Allah’s commands, and did several kinds of grave sins while all prophets forbade such sins.
Having stated the above, I am of the opinion that the first explanation is the most correct one. However, the true nature of its occurrence is known only to Allah, and we Muslims believe in it as reported in the authentic Hadiths.
Moreover, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, added:
The explanation for this is that the time and space were wrapped up for him in an instant, because the journey of Al-Israa and Al-Miraj is an experience that transcends the barrier of space and time.
Allah almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.