Make Allah The Title Of Your Life

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum

Dear Friends

I pray that you are well.

Everybody wants to be happy. But we can't have true happiness without making Allah the title of our life. Allah should not be buried in the rest of everything else in our lives. Allah should not be just somebody we go to because we have to or because we are in trouble or because we want something of this life.

It is not sufficient that we pray 5 times a day and forget Allah in between. It is not sufficient that we fast in Ramadhan, pile up all good deeds that one month and never fast again until the next Ramadhan comes around. It is not sufficient that we drop a few dollars in the charity box of the masjid once or twice a year and shy away from the box the rest of the time.

Likewise, going to hajj is not a vacation but it is to help you train yourself to focus on Allah alone without the distraction of your everyday life and by the time you complete the hajj you should be a different person--a better slave of Allah. So if all you come home with, after hajj, are things of the dunya like pictures, boxes of dates, perfume and you resume your bad habits and your heedlessness, nothing change in the way you conduct your life and in the intensity of your worship of Allah, then you should go again next year and before that you must learn how to perform hajj and umrah in depth.

Islam is not a seasonal thing and Allah is not a teddy bear. Allah is Allah, Mighty and Majestic. When we make Allah the title of our lives, then all of a sudden our focus is on Allah. We will rush to please Him. When we want to please someone, what do we do? We do what the person likes. The most beloved things to Allah is what He has made obligatory on us (all our religious duties) and these things we should do and keep doing more.

If we don't feel the closeness to Allah and the sweetness of faith, it is because Allah is not big in our lives. He is there but in between projects and meetings at work, taking exams, taking the kids to school, shopping, cooking, and all those things that people do as if this life has no end.

Allah created us in our forms to worship Him and nothing else besides Him and then He will make us die and our forms will perish, and no one cares about our forms anymore. This is the reality.

The other day we were at an ancient cemetery where many members of the family of the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him peace, and members of the family of the Sahabah and thousands of shuhada' (martyrs, men and women, who fought the Romans during the Caliphate of 'Umar) were buried, some marked. It is still being used to bury the dead. As we were walking around the cemetery, suddenly we smell a repugnant smell and discovered that it was coming out from a new grave not too far from where we were standing. This does make us realize that we don't have much time to wait to repent for our sins. The repugnant smell is definitely nothing compared to the punishment a sinful person will suffer in the grave.

We have no one except Allah. We will have no one to help us in the grave. So remember Allah much and He will remember you.

On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: Allah (mighty and sublime be He) said:

Whosoever shows enmity to someone devoted to Me, I shall be at war with him. My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him. When I love him I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks. Were he to ask [something] of Me, I would surely give it to him, and were he to ask Me for refuge, I would surely grant him it. I do not hesitate about anything as much as I hesitate about [seizing] the soul of My faithful servant: he hates death and I hate hurting him.

It was related by al-Bukhari


On the authority of Abu Umamah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: Allah (mighty and sublime be He) said:

Truly of those devoted to Me the one I most favour is a believer who is of meagre means and much given to prayer, who has been particular in the worship of his Lord and has obeyed Him inwardly (1), who was obscure among people and not pointed our, and whose sustenance was just sufficient to provide for him yet he bore this patiently. Then the Prophet (peace be upon him) rapped his hand and said: Death will have come early to him, his mourners will have been few, his estate scant.
(1) i.e. he has not been ostentatious in his obedience.

It was related by at-Tirmidhi (also by Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Majah). Its chain of authorities is sound

May Allah make us His obedient slaves and give us an excellent ending and save us from the punishment of the grave. Ameen. Please don't forget us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.

And Allah knows best.
Wassalaam