In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum
Dear Friends
I pray that you are well.
Our noble guest, Ramadhan, is coming our way very soon. Soon it will be Rajab, Sha'ban and then Ramadhan. We ask Allah to make us able to witness its arrival and grant us good health and strength to do more worship and opportunity to be draw closer to Him.
While we anxiously waiting for our noble guest, we should prepare ourselves so we can make the most out of it.
First, we should remind ourselves that we are His slaves. Allah Almighty says,
وَمَا خَلَقْتُ ٱلْجِنَّ وَٱلْإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُونِ ﴿٥٦[Qur'an, Adh-Dhariyat 51:56]
And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me. (56)
In worshiping Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala (glorified and exalted be He), we must have total obedience to His commands, full love for Him and complete loyalty to Him. If we have one and not the other, then we need to work on our worship. It is natural that if you truly love someone, you always want to please that person and loyal to that person. This is how we should worship Allah.
We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. How can you love Allah Subḥānahu wa Ta'āla if you don’t know Him that well? We fall in love with people as we get to know them more and realize that they have a lot of beautiful qualities and characteristics. Of course Allah is above any analogy, but we need know Him more.
The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and grant him peace), said, "One among you who knows Allah best is the one who fears Him most, and I fear Him even more than him."
Ibn `Abbas says that a bedouin once came to the Messenger of Allah and said, "O Messenger of Allah! Teach me of the most unusual of knowledge!" He asked him, "What have you done with the peak of knowledge so that you now ask about its most unusual things?!"
The man asked him, "O Messenger of Allah! What is this peak of knowledge?!" He said, "It is knowing Allah as He deserves to be known." The bedouin then said, "And how can He be known as He ought to be?" The Messenger of Allah answered, "It is that you know Him as having no model, no peer, no antithesis, and that He is One and only: He is the One Who is Apparent yet Hidden, the First and the Last, having no peer nor a similitude; this is the true knowledge about Him."
Accurately knowing Allah is the pillar whereupon Islam in its entirety hinges. Without such knowledge, any action in Islam does not have any real value whatsoever: it has neither essence nor value. The Question is: "How can we get to know Allah, and what is the venue for attaining such knowledge?"
The answer is crucially conditional: If we do not know the right course, we can never reach our destination.
Any erroneous approach to knowing Allah is a major contributor to distancing a large number of people from accurately getting to believe in Allah. The Qur’an narrates to us stories about those who disbelieved in Allah in every age and time, depicting for us how they insisted, in order to believe in Him, on hearing or seeing Him, relying on their senses.
Following are only a few examples: Allah Almighty has said,
وَقَالَ ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ لَوْلَا يُكَلِّمُنَا ٱللَّهُ أَوْ تَأْتِينَآ ءَايَةٌ ۗ كَذَٰلِكَ قَالَ ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِم مِّثْلَ قَوْلِهِمْ ۘ تَشَـٰبَهَتْ قُلُوبُهُمْ ۗ قَدْ بَيَّنَّا ٱلْءَايَـٰتِ لِقَوْمٍ يُوقِنُونَ ﴿١١٨[Qur'an, Al-Baqarah 2:118]
Those who do not know say, "Why does Allah not speak to us or there come to us a sign?" Thus spoke those before them like their words. Their hearts resemble each other. We have shown clearly the signs to a people who are certain [in faith]. (118)
وَقَالَ ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يَرْجُونَ لِقَآءَنَا لَوْلَآ أُنزِلَ عَلَيْنَا ٱلْمَلَـٰٓئِكَةُ أَوْ نَرَىٰ رَبَّنَا ۗ لَقَدِ ٱسْتَكْبَرُوا۟ فِىٓ أَنفُسِهِمْ وَعَتَوْ عُتُوًّا كَبِيرًۭا ﴿٢١﴾ يَوْمَ يَرَوْنَ ٱلْمَلَـٰٓئِكَةَ لَا بُشْرَىٰ يَوْمَئِذٍ لِّلْمُجْرِمِينَ وَيَقُولُونَ حِجْرًۭا مَّحْجُورًۭا ﴿٢٢[Qur'an, Al-Furqan 25:21-22]
And those who do not expect the meeting with Us say, "Why were not angels sent down to us, or [why] do we [not] see our Lord?" They have certainly become arrogant within themselves and [become] insolent with great insolence. (21) The day they see the angels - no good tidings will there be that day for the criminals, and [the angels] will say, "Prevented and inaccessible." (22)
وَقَالَ فِرْعَوْنُ يَـٰهَـٰمَـٰنُ ٱبْنِ لِى صَرْحًا لَّعَلِّىٓ أَبْلُغُ ٱلْأَسْبَـٰبَ ﴿٣٦﴾ أَسْبَـٰبَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ فَأَطَّلِعَ إِلَىٰٓ إِلَـٰهِ مُوسَىٰ وَإِنِّى لَأَظُنُّهُۥ كَـٰذِبًا ۚ وَكَذَٰلِكَ زُيِّنَ لِفِرْعَوْنَ سُوٓءُ عَمَلِهِۦ وَصُدَّ عَنِ ٱلسَّبِيلِ ۚ وَمَا كَيْدُ فِرْعَوْنَ إِلَّا فِى تَبَابٍ ﴿٣٧[Qur'an Ghaafir 40:36-37]
And Pharaoh said, "O Haman, construct for me a tower that I might reach the ways - (36) The ways into the heavens - so that I may look at the deity of Moses; but indeed, I think he is a liar." And thus was made attractive to Pharaoh the evil of his deed, and he was turned away from the [right] course. And the plan of Pharaoh was not except in ruin. (37)
"Turned away from the (right) course" refers to the course that ends with acquiring a sound and accurate knowledge of the Almighty. Such a goal should be our first and foremost concern. Without properly knowing Allah, how can we properly worship Him?
The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and grant him peace) said in a hadith qudsi, "For everything there is a path, and the path to Paradise is knowledge."
Muslims Start Everything in the Name of Allah
In one hadith, the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and grant him peace) is quoted saying, "Anything which does not start with the Name of Allah is cut-off (from Allah's blessing)." It is customary for Muslims to invoke the Name of Allah whenever they do anything, or whenever they seek His protection against His arch-enemy and ours Satan the Accursed.
When Muslims stand up or sit down, when they eat or drink, when they enter their homes, when they open the door of their bathrooms or any room in the house, when they put on or take off their clothes, when they comb their hair, when they open their laptops, when they start the engines of their cars, when they ascend or descend a ladder, when they start writing something, when they slaughter an animal decreed by Allah as lawful for their food..., and even when they cohabit with their wives in the hope Allah will bless them with righteous progeny.
Such are the manners of good Muslims. So let us start in the Name of Allah Who created and determined everything from nothing, the ever-Living, the Eternal Who is never affected by time, nor space, nor anything else, Who never initiated a place for His being, nor did He attain His might after having created everything, nor was He weak before then. In the Name of Allah Who never needed company before creating everything.
In the Name of Allah the like of Whom there is none at all, nor was He without His domain before the latter's creation. In the Name of Allah Who hears without a hearing faculty, Who sees without vision. In the Name of Allah Who is Mighty without having to derive His might from His creation. In the Name of Allah the eyes of Whose creatures can never see Him, the Most Exalted One, the all-Knowing. I testify that Allah is the One and Only God; there is no partner with Him, the One and only.
One upon Whom all things and beings depend. He does not beget, nor is He begotten, nor is there anything like Him. I further testify that our master Muhammad is His Servant and Messenger, bearer of His Message and of the glad tidings, the one whom He trusted for His revelation; blessings of Allah be upon him and his righteous and pure progeny.
The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and grant him peace) has said,
All Praise is due to Allah, the One and only God. His being Eternal is compounded by His being Divine. He is Proud in His own right and in His Greatness. He creates whatever He wills and initiates the creation without having to have a model for any of what He creates. Our Lord is the One Who has always been beyond time as such; through His knowledge has He split the seed; through His Might has He created all creation; through the light of the morning has He started the dawn; there is none that can alter what He has created, nor is there any that can change what He has made, nor is there any that can revoke His decree or repeal His command or be exempted from His call.
There is no extinction to His domain, nor is there a term for His Divinity. He is the first to create, the One Who is eternal even beyond eternity itself, the One Who has obscured Himself from His creation in the horizon of ambition, in the lofty Exaltation, in the abundant domain, higher than anything that is high. Yet He is close to everything, so He manifests Himself to His creatures even without being seen, while He is the most Sublime! By His Light He veiled Himself and ascended the height, obscuring Himself from His creation.
He sent them messengers so that He would have the clear argument against them, and so that His messengers would testify against His creation. He sent prophets to them to bring them glad tidings and to warn them, so that He would guide whomsoever He pleases after providing them with His clear signs and bringing to life whomsoever He pleases with the same, hence the creation will know about their Lord that which they did not know, and they will know Him as their God after having rejected Him. They will believe in His Unity after having persisted in denying it.
May Allah grant us His Light and make Him our only love. Ameen.
Allahumma salli 'ala Muhammad wa 'ala aalihi wa sahbihi wassallam.
Please don't forget us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.
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