There are two ways to guide anyone. One is to give them a map and leave it to them to follow it. The other is to send a guide with the map, who teaches them how to read the map and guides them on the right path, course correcting as necessary, so that they can never be lost. In corporate consulting, we recommend a course of action and then run a pilot program as Proof of Concept to demonstrate the benefits of following our recommendation. That not only builds credibility in the new way but also prevents costly mistakes from being made. Allahﷻ chose that method, when He decided to give the world a new way of life for the last time.
That is why Allahﷻ taught us to make dua for guidance to the Path – Siratal Mustaqeem and not to the destination, Jannah. The Path of those who He blessed and not those who incurred His anger or became misguided. That is the dua we make at least 17 times a day when we recite Sura Al Fatiha in every Salah – Ihdinas Siratal Mustaqeem. Allahﷻ accepted this dua and said:
هُوَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَرْسَلَ رَسُولَهُۥ بِٱلْهُدَىٰ وَدِينِ ٱلْحَقِّ لِيُظْهِرَهُۥ عَلَى ٱلدِّينِ كُلِّهِۦ وَكَفَىٰ بِٱللَّهِ شَهِيدًا
Fath 48:28 He is the One Who has sent His Messenger with ˹right˺ guidance and the religion of truth, making it prevail over all others. And sufficient is Allah as a Witness.
The question to ask is, ‘Allahﷻ accepted my dua and sent His Messengerﷺ. But am I following him or someone else?’ Let us ask before we’re asked.
Allahﷻ not only accepted our dua but He also told us what the result of following His Messengerﷺ would be. The way of Muhammadﷺ, Islam would become the most preferred and prevalent way of life on earth. Today we wonder at how certain negative and harmful lifestyles and choices have become so prevalent and powerful when just a few years ago they were despised and kept hidden. That is the power of living your choice with confidence. No matter what it is, if you do it with confidence, the world will follow you. If this is possible with negative things, how much more with positive ones. But when the ignorant are confident and the knowledgeable are diffident and apologetic, ignorance will prevail. Remember that when the truth must be spoken, silence is culpable. Rasoolullahﷺ and all those who followed him in excellence demonstrated this and will be our witnesses.
Everything we have in this world, from the air we breathe, produced by trees we cut, to gravity which cancels the centrifugal force of the spinning of the earth and saves us from flying off into space; to water which came from outer space and is the most ancient substance on earth, essential to survival of all living things, locked into a perpetual cycle of self-purification and renewal; to the Northern Lights, evidence of the shield that Allahﷻ placed to protect us from solar flares, a single one of which would be enough to reduce us and our arrogance to ash. From love in the heart, to courage, to Imaan which makes those who have lost limbs and families in Gaza, ask questions related to the Fiqh of Wudhu and the permissibility of adopting an orphan who not only doesn’t have parents, but who has nobody in the world. From the food we eat to our health and wealth, families and friends, power and authority, to happiness and the equanimity to face grief. For Tahajjud and His descent to the lowest heaven and offer to accept our dua, and even more for the Tawfeeq to get up and pray and ask Him to forgive us. And most of all for His Mercy and Forgiveness, His Generosity and Grace, His Glory and Majesty and the faculty to recognize it as such and fall in Sujood and say, SubhanAllah and Allahu Akbar instead of saying, WOW or OMG. Every single one of them, all that I mentioned and all those I cannot possibly mention, or even count, are the blessings of Allahﷻ. That is why He said:
وَءَاتَىٰكُم مِّن كُلِّ مَا سَأَلْتُمُوهُ وَإِن تَعُدُّوا۟ نِعْمَتَ ٱللَّهِ لَا تُحْصُوهَآ إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ لَظَلُومٌ كَفَّارٌ
Ibrahim 14: 34 And He has granted you all that you asked Him for. If you tried to count Allah’s blessings, you would never be able to number them. Indeed, humankind is truly unfair, ˹totally˺ ungrateful.
He gave us all this and more. Yet the only blessing that He drew our attention to and called that His Blessing on us, is the presence of Rasoolullahﷺ among us. It is very important to reflect on the Qur’an, on the meaning and import of the words used and the way they are used to emphasize certain things. This is because when Allahﷻ emphasizes something, it makes it essential for us to acknowledge that and to ensure that we express our gratitude for it.
Allahﷻ said in the case of Rasoolullahﷺ and emphasized His statement:
لَقَدْ مَنَّ ٱللَّهُ عَلَى ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذْ بَعَثَ فِيهِمْ رَسُولًا مِّنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ يَتْلُوا۟ عَلَيْهِمْ ءَايَـٰتِهِۦ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ وَٱلْحِكْمَةَ وَإِن كَانُوا۟ مِن قَبْلُ لَفِى ضَلَـٰلٍ مُّبِينٍ
A’al Imraan 3: 164 Indeed, Allah has done the believers a ˹great˺ favor by raising a messenger from among them—reciting to them His revelations, purifying them, and teaching them the Book and wisdom. For indeed they had previously been clearly astray (misguided, ignorant).
Allahﷻ emphasized two things; the fact that the sending of His Messengerﷺ who was human, is a double blessing and that before the coming of the Messengerﷺ, the believers were misguided. This is the most certain evidence that guidance is only in the way of and through Muhammadﷺ and that all other ways that do not come from him or bypass him are misguided.
Allahﷻ sent Rasoolullahﷺ with four connected duties. Another way to understand this is to see these four as progressive stages of learning and guidance. Four steps to Jannah. These four are: Recite, Purify, Teach, and Demonstrate. From the perspective of the audience, these four steps would be: Listen, Submit, Learn, and Practice. These four are not independent of each other but a continuum like a staircase which takes you to the top. We must experience each of these to benefit. If we leave out a stage, we will fail.
The Qur’an tells us that Ibrahim (A) made this dua when he built the Ka’aba.
رَبَّنَا وَٱبْعَثْ فِيهِمْ رَسُولًا مِّنْهُمْ يَتْلُوا۟ عَلَيْهِمْ ءَايَـٰتِكَ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ وَٱلْحِكْمَةَ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْحَكِيمُ
Baqara 2: 129 Our Rabb! Raise from among them a messenger who will recite to them Your revelations, teach them the Book and wisdom, and purify them. Indeed, You ˹alone˺ are the Almighty, All-Wise.”
Allahﷻ granted Ibrahim (A) his dua but changed the order of what he asked for, which underlines for us the importance of the sequence of learning. Today this is our biggest problem. Out of the four steps or stages, we focused on two and almost totally discarded the other two, mostly paying lip service to them but nothing more. We focused on the recitation of the Qur’an and what comes with it i.e., Hifdh and Tajweed but ignore Tazkiyyatun Nafs wa Tarbiyatul Akhlaaq (Purification of the soul (heart) and Adab and Manners. Then we focused on teaching the Book i.e., Uloom ul Shari’ah and produce Muftis (today almost exclusively in Islamic Finance because they get jobs on the Shari’ah boards of banks, including Islamic Banking windows in commercial interest-based banks) and ignored the practice of the Sunnah. The tragedy is that when we separated Tazkiyya (purification) from Ta’aleem (teaching) and Ta’aleem from Amal (action), the Noor left the Ilm and only words remained. That is how we can recite beautifully, the Ayaat about the Glory and Majesty of Allahﷻ, but the fear of Maqlooq remains in our heart.
However, Allahﷻ mentioned the condition and responsiveness of the heart to His Word as the criteria of true believers and not how much or how well they can recite the Qur’an. This shows how skewed our focus is. Allahﷻ said:
إِنَّمَا ٱلْمُؤْمِنُونَ ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَا ذُكِرَ ٱللَّهُ وَجِلَتْ قُلُوبُهُمْ وَإِذَا تُلِيَتْ عَلَيْهِمْ ءَايَـٰتُهُۥ زَادَتْهُمْ إِيمَـٰنًا وَعَلَىٰ رَبِّهِمْ يَتَوَكَّلُونَ
ٱلَّذِينَ يُقِيمُونَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَـٰهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ
أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْمُؤْمِنُونَ حَقًّا لَّهُمْ دَرَجَـٰتٌ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ وَمَغْفِرَةٌ وَرِزْقٌ كَرِيمٌ
Anfaal 8:2-4 The ˹true˺ believers are only those whose hearts tremble at the remembrance of Allah, whose faith increases when His revelations are recited to them, and who put their trust in their Rabb. ˹They are˺ those who establish prayer and donate from what We have provided for them. It is they who are the true believers. They will have elevated ranks, forgiveness, and an honorable provision from their Rabb.
That is why Allahﷻ called the whole life of Rasoolullahﷺ, not only his words, an excellent example for those who look forward to meeting Him.
لَّقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ فِى رَسُولِ ٱللَّهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ لِّمَن كَانَ يَرْجُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَٱلْيَوْمَ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَ وَذَكَرَ ٱللَّهَ كَثِيرًا
Ahzab 33: 21 Indeed, in the Messenger of Allah you have an excellent example for whoever has hope in Allah and the Last Day and remembers Allah a great deal.
The path to Jannah is his whole life. Not selective obedience, picking and choosing what suits us. I gave the example of how we teach Uloom ud Deen but this applies even more powerfully or should I say, destructively to how we learn secular knowledge and lead our lives. This is why when we study the life of Rasoolullahﷺ and his Sahaba it sounds like a fairy tale or legend. Not real. To get results we need to use the entire recipe in the right order.
To help you understand, think agriculture – think planting. If you are a farmer and get a consignment of the best seeds and want to plant them, what is the first thing you would do? You would prepare the soil and ensure that the soil was free from all toxic things and conducive to growth. You would set up the irrigation system. You would fence the field. Only then would you plant the seeds. If you simply threw the seeds on the earth, either they would perish or even if they germinated, you wouldn’t get any harvest. Islam is a practice. Islam is agriculture. That is why Allahﷻ gave us the example of an ear of corn with 7 ears, each with 100 grains. It is about the multiplier effect. But that will happen only if we follow the sequence and ensure that all the conditions are satisfied. I advise myself and you to change our ways and ensure that when we read or teach the Qur’an, we focus not only on the pronunciation but even more on understanding what we recite and its effect on our hearts.
Then to look at how the one who received the Qur’an practiced it in his life and what he taught. And then try to practice that in our lives to the best of our ability. That would be the whole sequence. Allahﷻ made the life of His Messengerﷺ a pilot program to prove that Islam works.
Rasoolullahﷺ didn’t come to tell us about Islam. He came to teach us how to do Islam. The Sahaba didn’t learn about Islam. They learnt to do Islam. Like any martial art. You can learn about it and become an expert. Or you can do it and become an expert. Both are experts. But only one will remain standing if he’s attacked in the street. Islam prepares us not only to remain standing but to teach others how to fight and win the great battle between good and evil. Between virtue and vice. Between Shaytan and his agents and ourselves. That way is the Way of Muhammad Rasoolullahﷺ, the Sunnah. It was the Sunnah, the Way of Muhammad Rasoolullahﷺ which took his Sahaba from being the most oppressed, weakest, most despised and victimized people to becoming the role models and rulers of their world in a period of 23 years. The Qur’an is the blueprint, the Sunnah is the method, the manual, the field book. Without that, the blueprint can’t be used. The Teacher did his job to perfection. It is for us to learn and practice if we want to succeed.
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