Editing Isra' and Mi'raj (section)

===Sufism===
The belief that Muhammad made the heavenly journey bodily was used to prove the unique status of Muhammad.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Schimmel|first=Annemarie|title=And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety|publisher=The University of North Carolina Press|year=1985|isbn=978-0-8078-1639-4}}</ref> One theory among [[Sufism|Sufis]] was that Muhammad's body could reach God to a proximity that even the greatest saints could only reach in spirit.<ref name=":0" /> They debated whether Muhammad had really seen the Lord and, if he did, whether he did so with his eyes or with his heart.<ref name=":0" /> Nevertheless, Muhammad's superiority is again demonstrated in that even in the extreme proximity of the Lord, "his eye neither swerved nor was turned away," whereas Moses had fainted when the Lord appeared to him in a burning bush.<ref name=":0" /> Various thinkers used this point to prove the superiority of Muhammad.<ref name=":0" />

The Subtleties of the Ascension by Abu ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Sulami includes repeated quotations from other mystics that also affirm the superiority of Muhammad.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Colby|first=Frederick|date=2002|title=The Subtleties of the Ascension: al-Sulami on the Miraj of the Prophet Muhammad|journal=Studia Islamica|issue=94|pages=167–183|doi=10.2307/1596216|jstor=1596216}}</ref> Many Sufis interpreted the Miʿraj to ask questions about the meaning of certain events within the Miʿraj, and drew conclusions based on their interpretations, especially to substantiate ideas of the superiority of Muhammad over other prophets.<ref name=":0" />

[[Muhammad Iqbal]], a self-proclaimed intellectual descendant of [[Rumi]] and the poet-scholar who personified poetic Sufism in South Asia, used the event of the Miʿraj to conceptualize an essential difference between a prophet and a Sufi.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Schimmel|first=Annemarie|title=And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety|publisher=The University of North Carolina Press|year=1985|isbn=978-0-8078-1639-4|pages=247–248}}</ref> He recounts that Muhammad, during his Miʿraj journey, visited the heavens and then eventually returned to the temporal world.<ref name=":1" /> Iqbal then quotes another South Asian Muslim saint by the name of '[[Abdul Quddus Gangohi]] who asserted that if he (Gangohi) had had that experience, he would never have returned to this world.<ref name=":1" /> Iqbal uses Gangohi's spiritual aspiration to argue that while a saint or a Sufi would not wish to renounce the spiritual experience for something this-worldly, a prophet is a prophet precisely because he returns with a force so powerful that he changes world history by imbuing it with a creative and fresh thrust.<ref name=":1" />