In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum
Dear Friends
I pray that you are well.
If you try to get ahead using your brain, you are just making your life very difficult. Allah has made it so easy for us to get ahead by submitting to His Will like a dead body in the hands of the person washing him, turning as he wills. The dead body just turned whichever the washer turns him. Can a dead body use his brain to figure out what is good for him and object to what the washer is doing to him?
Whether the Lord tells you to do something or not to do certain things, you are expected to simply submit. The mind cannot know the intent of God. We can understand the intent of God only through Allah telling us. The mind is not the final source for right and wrong. It is a source of reasoning for the basis of religious belief and to bring revelation to the forefront and align ourselves to it.
Whether you know the "goodness" of the command or not, you are expected to submit, no question ask. This is the purpose of our creation.
وَمَا خَلَقْتُ الْجِنَّ وَالْإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُونِ ﴿٥٦[Qur'an Zariyat 51:56]
And I did not create man and jinn except to worship Me.
It is not acceptable for people to violate Allah's instructions. Violating Allah's instructions is violating His purpose.
Intellect is able to tell right from wrong but this understanding is based on the assumption that matters are intrinsically right or wrong. How can we be sure that what we feel good is good with Allah and what we feel bad is bad with Allah?
Good is that which is pleasing to Allah, that which results in an eternal rank with Allah. Bad is the opposite. There is a Truth that is behind Divine commands. Violating this Truth and acting contrary to Allah's commands has dreadful consequences like in the story of the People of Sabbath in the Qur'an.
We know that life is a blessing and taking it away is going against this. Everyone knows that oppression is wrong. Denying one of his basic right to live is an oppression. So, we are sure that to kill someone is wrong. But Ibrahim, Allah grant him peace, was commanded by God to sacrifice his only son, Ismail, and he obeyed the command. It was a good act to offer his son in sacrifice. The Abrahamic way is complete surrender and submission. Whatever Allah wants, Ibrahim was there to surrender. This is the essence of religion--humble slavehood. He did not ask "why?" and his son too did not ask "why?" They both submit to the decree. And the Lord rewarded Ibrahim and took him for a Friend (khalilullah) and made him the father of the prophets.
Allah is All Wise. His commandments have wisdom. Some of these are discernible to us, some are not. Our feelings or sense of worth are meaningless. Look at where Iblis ended up because he wanted to follow his own sense instead of following Allah's command to prostrate to Adam.
Ibn Khaldun says about the intellect, "Follow what the lawgiver has commanded you of beliefs and practices for He is more keen on your felicity than you, and more aware of what benefits you than you; because it is from a realm higher than yours, and a source more expansive than yours. There is not to detract from the intellect and its insights for the intellect is a true scale, its judgments are certain, no error in it, but you cannot hope to weigh in it...what is beyond its realm for that is hoping for the impossible. That is like the case of a man who saw a weighing scale that is used for weighing a gold and then hopes to weigh with it a mountain--this does not mean that the scale is wrong, but the intellect has a level that it cannot bypass."
People have values that they see to be universal and these values for them are so universal that they can't imagine not being right in everything. When they see to the contrary they do everything in their power to re-interpret the text. There is an essential problem because we need to know what Allah wants from us, not to know what we want Allah to be telling us about.
وَمَا كَانَ لِمُؤْمِنٍ وَلَا مُؤْمِنَةٍ إِذَا قَضَى اللَّـهُ وَرَسُولُهُ أَمْرًا أَن يَكُونَ لَهُمُ الْخِيَرَةُ مِنْ أَمْرِهِمْ ۗ وَمَن يَعْصِ اللَّـهَ وَرَسُولَهُ فَقَدْ ضَلَّ ضَلَالًا مُّبِينًا ﴿٣٦[Qur'an Al-Ahzab 33:36]
It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should [thereafter] have any choice about their affair. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly strayed into clear error. (36)
If we interpret the law based on our own sense of right and wrong then where do we we draw the line?
فَإِن لَّمْ يَسْتَجِيبُوا لَكَ فَاعْلَمْ أَنَّمَا يَتَّبِعُونَ أَهْوَاءَهُمْ ۚ وَمَنْ أَضَلُّ مِمَّنِ اتَّبَعَ هَوَاهُ بِغَيْرِ هُدًى مِّنَ اللَّـهِ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّـهَ لَا يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الظَّالِمِينَ ﴿٥٠[Qur'an Qasas 28:50]
But if they do not respond to you - then know that they only follow their [own] desires. And who is more astray than one who follows his desire without guidance from Allah? Indeed, Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people. (50)
The Prophet ﷺ said, “The closest that a servant is to the Lord is when he is in prostration”
We should know then where to put our brains in order to get ahead in this life and the next.
May Allah guide us to what pleases Him. Ameen.
Please keep us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.
And Allah knows best.
Wassalaam
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