الرسالة
al-Risālah
Topic
God’s commissioning of a human being to convey and exemplify His message, and the life lived in loyalty to that task.
What it means
Al-Risālah is the message that God entrusts to a human being, together with the commission to carry it. The one commissioned must convey the message and also exemplify it by his own life. It is the office of the messenger (rasūl) and the content that he delivers. The word is also used for the life lived in constant awareness of that purpose and in loyalty to it. The Quran quotes the prophets as saying that they convey the messages of their Lord (7:62), and it commands the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to deliver what was sent down to him (5:67). Muslims speak of the Muslim community as having its own risālah, to bear witness to the truth.
Often misunderstood as
That it means simply a letter or a note, when it denotes a divine commission.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 33, listed as AL RISĀLAH. The definition is restated here.