Struggle and the Path of Abraham(As)
The message from
Abraham's life is simple- the love of Allah trumps all other loves- love for his
wife, love for a son, love for life.
And struggle for the cause of Allah,
a struggle deserving of Him. He has chosen you and has not placed in the
religion any difficulty. The religion of your father, Abraham. Allah named you
“Muslims” before and in this [revelation] that the Messenger may be a witness
over you and you may be witnesses over the people. So establish prayer and give
zakah and hold fast to Allah. He is your protector; and excellent is the
protector, and excellent is the helper. (Quran 22:78)
This is the
last verse of chapter Al-Hajj.
It is very interesting that it talks about
struggle, or jihad in Arabic, and yet there is no mention of fighting, and the
chapter itself doesn’t mention fighting for the cause of Allah.
Struggle
with the Inner Self
Imam Ibn Al-Qayyim writes in his book, Za’ad
al-Ma’ad about this verse and especially about the struggling:
“That the
slave struggles with his inner self so that the heart, tongue and body
completely submit to Allah.”
Thus it is understandable from the context,
especially of Hajj, and from the Surah, that it is talking of struggling against
our own selves to perfect it in its submission to Allah, Most
High.
However, my first thought was how can we do a struggle for Allah
that is truly deserving of Him? It is not humanly possible is it? And even Allah
says in the same surah earlier:
They have not appraised Allah His true
appraisal.(Quran 22:74)
That is, human beings have never exalted Allah as
He deserves to be exalted, never praised Him as He deserved to be praised, never
worshiped Him as He deserved to be worshiped! Then, how is it possible to strive
and struggle for His sake, a struggle that is truly deserving of Him?
The
idea here, as Imam Ibn Al-Qayyim says is that we try our best to make our hearts
submit to Allah, and our tongue and our deeds. And why is that? Why should we
even bother to struggle so hard?
Allah follows it up and gives us a
reason that is as compelling as anything:
He has chosen you.
Allah
has chosen you and I among the billions of people to be Muslims, and has chosen
us, and it is part of His right that because of the favor He has done on us, we
struggle to make sure that we truly submit.
He has honored us by making
us Muslims, He has honored us by guiding us to His faith, and the least we can
do is to struggle and strive to please Him, in a way that He
deserves.
And when we truly do submit, and try our best and struggle for
the sake of Allah, then the deen slowly becomes easy. How many of us struggled
with sins four or five years ago and thought it would never be possible to stop
them and today we have not sinned that sin for a year?
How many of us
thought praying 5 times a day would be impossible once upon a time and today we
can’t think of a day without prayers? When you strive and struggle, He will make
the deen easy for you, as He says straight after mention of His
choosing:
He has not placed in the religion any
difficulty.
Submission of Abraham
And then He reminds us of our
father, of the great Prophet Ibrahim (peace be upon him). Because anyone who
knows how to struggle, knows it is Ibrahim (peace be upon him). If one wants to
know about submitting to Allah, they know Prophet Ibrahim.
The message
from Abraham’s life is simple- the love of Allah trumps all other loves- love
for his wife, love for a son, love for life (interestingly all halal sources of
love).
He was willing to keep his wife and son in the middle of a desert,
all because Allah asked Him to. He submitted even if his heart initially
struggled to do so.
Allah ordered Abraham to slaughter his own son as a
sacrifice for Allah, and he was willing to obey. He loved his son dearly. He
only had him at a very old age. And yet, he was ready to let it all go only for
Allah. He was ready to sacrifice it all, and thus till date we still mention him
in our prayers.
That is our gold standard, and what we should be aiming
for. The gold standard of struggling for the sake of Allah is Prophet Ibrahim
(peace be upon him). The gold standard for submission to Allah is Prophet
Ibrahim (peace be upon him).
And then Allah mentions that He has honored
us by calling us Muslims- those who submit to Him in willing submission and who
put everything else secondary to Allah. He has honored us by the name already,
because we signed up to be Muslims knowing that we are required to
submit.
Submit to Him
Now, we need to honor our side of the
contract by truly submitting to Him! And thus Allah reminds us that on the day
of judgment the Messenger will be a witness for us or against us, depending on
our deeds and on how much we have followed his legacy.
Would we want to
stand on the Day of Judgment, and the lawyer basing a case against us be the
most beloved of Allah, Muhammad (peace be upon him)?
If only for this, we
need to struggle to set our hearts and tongues to submit to Allah. We have
submitted by the tongue when we accepted to be Muslims, and we learn from the
legacy of Prophet Ibrahim to submit with our heart.
Then Allah moves on
to the means of submitting to Him with our bodies. Allah orders us to pray and
give Zakah (can mean literally Zakah, the yearly charity or to purify
ourselves), and to hold fast to Allah.
The five daily prayers is the
minimum of the acts that we need to do for Allah. The obligatory giving of Zakah
is the minimum we need to do for Allah that helps the people. That is the
summary of Islam- worship Allah and be helpful to people. The minimum of each is
prayers and Zakah. And once that is done, we improve upon it and do other
deeds.
Prayer and purifying our soul are the means to hold on to Allah in
times of difficulty, temptation and weakness. We are humans and we will fail in
our good deeds, commit sin and do all sorts of bad deeds. We are tempted every
day. It is in those times that we use prayer and purification as our shields as
we hold on to Allah. We hold on to Allah for dear life, for the life
of Jannah.
Excellent is the Protector, Excellent is the Helper.
He
protects us from all harm, and He helps us avoid them. Turn to Him, and success
will be yours.
Struggle for Allah a struggle deserving of Him.
Big
words, easy on the tongue, very difficult to internalize.
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