Three Essential Things

By: A K M Mohiuddin IslamiCity* -

Note to the reader: Please read "subhanahu wata'ala" (Glorified and
exalted is He) for swt after each mention of Allah's name. Read 'sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam' (May God's peace and blessing be on him) for saws after each
mention of the Prophet's name.
You need three essential things in order to be able to live by Islam in a
satisfactory manner. They are:
a. genuine conviction,b. sharp and acute senses, capacity for feeling,
and active imagination,c. and a ready heart.Without these, you run
the risk of finding Islam a burden or at least an inconvenience and of always
remaining an easy prey to Iblis and his agents. Everything is difficult unless
you first meet its basic prerequisites. Allah (swt) Himself testifies to this:
"Seek help in patience and prayer; and truly it is hard save for the
humble-minded, who know that they will have to meet their Lord, and that unto
Him they are returning" (2:45-46).You have to have the genuine conviction
that Islam is true. There are two aspects to this. First, you have to be
absolutely convinced that the Qur'an is the word of Allah (swt) and that
Muhammad (saws) is a true messenger of Allah (swt). The Qur'an survives intact
and is available to us, and whatever we need to know about Muhammad (saws) can
be known. Without this conviction there is no way one can advance any further.
This is all that needs to be said on this point.The second aspect of
this conviction follows from the first: you must accept the fact that together,
the Qur'an and the Sunnah provide guidance for mankind. The Qur'an in its
entirety is Allah's (swt) guidance for you, and Muhammad (saws) in all his words
and deeds is your only model to follow. You cannot pick and choose which parts
of the Qur'an or which aspects of the Prophet's (saws) life to accept. You
cannot allow your personal likes and dislikes to dictate what you choose from
the Qur'an and the Sunnah. There may be parts of the Qur'an that appear to you
incomprehensible or unnecessary, but remember that the Qur'an has its own
architecture, each part of which supports and sustains the rest. The same is
true of Muhammad (saws) himself: every aspect of his life is integral to his
totality as a prophet. He is the believers' model in an organic way. Every part
of his life is informed by his consciousness of Allah (swt) and reflects his
eagerness to please his Lord. So take Islam as a whole.Resist all
temptation to do what Allah (swt) has warned us against in Surah Baqarah (2:85): "Then is it only a part of the Book that you believe
in, and do you reject the rest?" You are required to submit. You have to let
the Qur'an and the teachings of Muhammad (saws) be the judge, rather than your
presuming to be their judge. This requires a humility of heart that, sadly, man
has to strive hard to acquire and then constantly nurture with tremendous
effort. You have to subdue your enormously powerful sense of self-importance in
order to achieve this humility and remain perpetually on your guard against its
capacity for sneaking back. It is in this effort that Iblis failed. Because of
the presence of this danger, Allah (swt) has taught us this prayer in Surah Ali
Imran: "Our Lord! Cause not our hearts to stray after Thou hast guided us,
and bestow upon us mercy from Thy Presence. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the
Bestower" (3:8). Even the Prophet saws used to make this du'a. The best
safeguard is to remember the greatness and glory of Allah (swt) and the
immeasurable superiority of Muhammad (saws) over any other human being. How
superior Muhammad (saws) is, no one has the capacity to measure. Remember
Allah's (swt) warning: "He (Allah) cannot be questioned for His acts, but
they will be questioned for theirs" (21:23). It was this fundamental fact that Iblis forgot and so
he began questioning Allah (swt), and you know the result of that. Remember who
you are, a mere created being - so puny and imperfect. Be on your guard and stay
humble. Try to be among those who wholeheartedly say," I am pleased to have
Allah as my Lord, Islam as my deen, and Muhammad as my Prophet"
(Tirmidhi).When the two aspects of this conviction are in harmony, the
effect will be readily felt in your heart. Your heart will be willing to engage
with Islam in a really meaningful way. Without the engagement of the heart you
can never have the essential motivation or urge to strive to live by Islam. The
role of the heart is crucial. It propels and guides. It is your
commander.Secondly, you need to sharpen your senses and your faculty
of feeling and your imagination. You must travel in your mind's eye to the
Akhirah. Envision yourself at that great final gathering on the Day of Judgment,
naked and entirely helpless, lonely in a vast crowd. Try to feel the anxiety of
that moment. Enter Jahannam: feel its heat, torment and ignominy; feel the
fright. Step into Jannah: feel its peace, joy and honor. You must shake
off any suggestion or temptation to think of Akhirah, Jannah and Jahannam as
mere symbols. Only recall what Muhammad (saws) took them to be. Look at this dua
with which he started his tahajjud prayer every night: "O Allah! All praise
is for you, You are the Holder of the Heavens and the Earth, and whatever is in
them. All praise is for You; You have the possession of the Heavens and the
Earth and whatever is in them. All praise is for You; You are the Light of the
Heavens and the Earth, and all praise is for You; You are the King of the
Heavens and the Earth, and all praise is for You; You are the Truth and Your
Promise is true, and the meeting with You is true. Your Word is true. And
Paradise is true. And Hell is true. And all the Prophets (Peace be upon
them) are true; and Muhammad is true, and the Day of Resurrection is true. O
Allah! I surrender (my will) to You; I believe in You and depend on You, and
repent to You, and with Your help I argue (with my opponents, the non-believers)
and I take You as a judge (to judge between us). Please forgive me my previous
and future sins; and whatever I concealed or revealed, and You are the Expediter
and You are the Deferrer. There is none to be worshipped but you" (Sahih Al Bukhari, Book 21, Hadith 221).
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However,
you should fear the Jahannam even more than you aspire for Jannah. Fear, fear of
the real, is essential to safety. If a deer in the jungle was without fear, it
would be devoured by the tiger. With fear come alertness and concentration,
enabling one to stay on the course of safety. Like the tiger, Hell is lying in
wait at every turn. For Muslims, what is there more real than Hell? Staying safe
from Hell ensures entry into Jannah. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.You
should fight your hardest not to let this duniya dull your senses, feelings and
imagination so as to make you indifferent to the reality of Akhirah and make you
think that they are only a distant possibility or at worst, a very far-off
event. Come to the Qur'an and to Muhammad (saws) with these same
sharpened senses, feelings and imagination. While reading or listening to the
Qur'an, do not think that you are just reading from the pages of a book or
listening to some mechanical device. Picture yourself beside Muhammad (saws),
watching the Qur'an being revealed to him, and then hearing it from him. He is
explaining the ayahs to you. When reading or hearing a hadith, imagine that you
are with him and he himself is telling you what to do and not do, what you
should be and not be. Make all these experiences direct and immediate for
yourself. You will feel their impact by the grace of Allah (swt). Impact is what
you need most in order for the guidance of Islam to sink deep into your heart
and take root there. Can man transport himself in such a way, cross this
huge gap in time and space? Of course he can. Man is imminently suitable for
this. There is nothing he can do better. Most of the time we are engaged in just
this kind of thing; all our plans, hopes and fears rely on this capacity of
ours. It all depends on what our hearts desire. When something possesses our
hearts, we get automatically transported to all kinds of worlds and situations,
which become more real than anything else. We do not know, or we do not care to
know, how far we travel into the realm of the most ridiculous and the most
grotesque without feeling the least bit surprised.Knowing is not enough.
To be of any benefit, it needs to be transformed into a feeling, a felt
experience. Only then can knowledge move you to do whatever you need to do or to
become. Only then can knowledge be a shaping force for you. This can never
happen unless you can bring your senses, feelings and imagination to fulfill
their rightful function.The message of the Qur'an and the teachings of
Muhammad (saws) have to remain fresh and alive in your heart with all their
irresistible dignity, beauty, and power to move. There is an ayah in the Qur'an
in which Allah (swt) warns man against a loss of the impact of His guidance:
"...they should not become like those to whom was given revelation aforetime,
but long ages passed over them and their hearts grew hard...for many among them
are rebellious transgressors" (57:16). When this happens, you lose sight of what is valuable
and get distracted by all that is destructive. Truth appears false, falsehood
appears true. In other words, a complete reversal of values takes place. The
heart loses its proper orientation, concentration and alertness. It loses its
sensitivity to the things that really endure. Where Allah's guidance is
concerned, man's senses get dulled, feelings blunted and his imagination becomes
dormant. He becomes nothing more than an inert mass; he eats, drinks, sleeps and
frolics, and one day dies in his heedlessness. This is a terrible danger to
which all human beings are subject. Islam can be kept fresh and alive in the
heart only with much effort; it is a hard task, but it can be done. With
your sharpened senses, feelings and imagination, the everyday aspects of your
life will be transformed. You will be able joyfully to discover in Nature around
you the varied manifestations of Allah's (swt) power and glory, to see through
the deceptive appearance of this worldly life, and to perceive death's constant
companionship with you. You will know what is of real value and what you really
need.Thirdly, your heart has to be ready. As the heart is moved, it
becomes eager to obey, so that it can say with other true believers, "We hear
and obey" (2:285). The ready heart is eager to please Allah (swt). It
will seize every opportunity to please Him and rejoice when able to do so and
likewise feel miserable at every missed opportunity. This heart is grateful,
humble and obedient. You are grateful to Allah (swt) because you realize what a
blessing Islam is for you. You are humble because you realize your own
insignificance beside Allah (swt) and the smallness of your own understanding
beside that of His Messenger (saws), and also because you know you are subject
to lapses and forgetfulness. You are obedient because you know that only through
obedience can you receive and hold the treasure that has been offered you in
Islam and hope to please Allah (swt). Such a heart will constantly be
supplicating to Allah (swt) for ever greater levels of sincerity and taqwa
(God-consciousness) for itself and tawfiq (ability) from Him (swt) to abide by
Islam. It knows that without tawfiq nothing can be attained, and tawfiq comes
from Allah (swt) alone. It places all its hope in Allah's (swt) mercy and
forgiveness.Islam will be a source of joy and contentment and no longer
appear burdensome or inconvenient. You will find the chambers of Islam opening
before you one by one, where you will find shelter, sustenance, clothing, rest
and comfort, a safe base from which you will be ushered into your permanent
abode in eternity where you will be greeted with the greeting of salam by your
Lord Himself: "'Peace!' - a word of salutation from a Lord Most Merciful"
(36:58).
*****
A. K. M. Mohiuddin is a retired university professor of
English literature living in Bangladesh. He can be reached at this address:
akmm45yahoo. com

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