Trusting Allah
9. TRUSTING ALLAH
If not trusting Allah in everything believing in Him is a sham. If you cannot trust that Allah will always and without fail take care of you in terms of your best interests your image of Allah is imperfect and may be altogether wrong in fact.
I don’t think anybody can say “I have never heard anybody accusing Allah, saying that Allah has not been good to him” and things to that order. Some say “Is this my qadar (destiny)? how bad it is!”. One way or another people sometimes complain about Allah’s treatment of the
A Hadith al Qudsi (a hadith inspired into the heart of our Prophet in Allah’s Own Words) reads “Ana ‘inda zanni abdee lee”, i.e. “I am like My servant thinks of Me” meaning that Allah treats His subjects who think well of Him well and He treats who think ill of Him ill. Sometimes though this ill treatment is disguised in the form of a worldly sinful success but one day its evil dawns on the happy sinner and makes all his self-estimations upside down.
We have also many Qur’anic proofs of this principle. When the Prophet (S) and his companions were returning from Hudaibia where they had apparently just managed to negotiate a supposedly ‘humiliating’ truce with the idolaters of
Few of the Muslims in the returning army could see any merit let alone a conquest in the truce signed: it looked as if the Prophet had granted all the ultimatum-like demands of the enemies of Islam. One item was a cessation of hostilities for ten years which looked to benefit the enemy equally well and therefore not much gain to Muslims. Yet it proved to be the straw that broke the back of the camel that the idolatrous enemy was. Thanks to this truce the Prophet was free to break the last dangerous stronghold of the Jews in Arabia, namely that in the fortified town of
Now please see how Allah explained the crestfallen return of the Muslims from Hudaibia once the ‘humiliating’ truce was signed:
“We have opened for you an undeniable opening (of an opportunity for a quick and conclusive victory and the apparent humiliation was inflicted on thee was) in order that thy Lord to forgive thy past and future sins and complete His blessing on thee and guide thee on to a Straight Path and help thee with a Mighty Help (to make Islam fully and totally successful to all eternity)” (48: 1-3)
Actually the Prophet was in no doubt at any stage that the upsets and frustrations at Hudaibia were blessings in disguise: his only trouble was with his companions (excepting incomparable Abu Bakr as Siddiq) who were at a loss to understand why they were apparently losing out to the idolaters. When the Prophet was conceding almost every demand the idolater’s envoy was stipulating Umar was running to Abu Bakr and asking “Why on earth we are granting these humiliating demands despite us being in the right thanks to Allah and the enemy being in the wrong under Allah?”. Abu Bakr was replying “Umar, calm down, Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger, he knows what he is doing and he will never disobey his Lord”. It took some time for Muslims outside Abu Bakr to accept that the Prophet was infallible in things he did under Allah’s command and the pessimism was dissipating from then on. But the Prophet was hurt by both his companions’ misunderstanding and the idolaters’ joy and in the verses quoted above Allah was giving him comfort on their account. His sufferings was in order to forgive his sins, not only the past but also any future ones. The accepted convention among ulema is that prophets do not sin but given Allah’s explicit statements about all prophets’ instances of doing wrongs we must interpret the word of our dear ulema as an effort at good manners towards Allah’s most loved and worthiest servants who prophets are. What is more prophets’ any rare sins are not like the sins we humble followers are capable of but unintended and subsequently deeply regretted mistakes which, had we made them, we could perhaps get reward for. In a hadith we read that there are some sins which are blessed and there are some acts of obedience which are unblessed. We do not want to go into the details of this very interesting revelation but a very brief explanation may help. It may be that one prays, fasts or pays alms to the poor which do not so much come from the heart and may instead conceal some unworthy aims; such an impure act of worship may later lead to sins the doer will have brought unto himself. Contrarily a Muslim may commit some sins but they are done with an uneasy heart which Allah kindly notes and a day may come when this sinner offers such great repentance to Allah that even the angels take pity on hi
“Those (angels nearest to Allah) who carry the Throne and surround it praise and glorify their Lord, they believe in Hi
About those acting with impure intentions Allah says:
“Say: Shall I tell you about those who lose out most because of their deeds? They are those whose works in this world’s life lose direction and go to waste while they think that they are doing good things” (18: 103-104)
Apparently what turns Allah away fro
“They are just those who deny the verses of and meeting their Lord, those whose works go to waste…” (18: 105). Surely they are artful hypocrites!
True believers are different. One of their sure trademarks is in the title of this article: They trust Allah in everything under all circumstances. And that is only natural and logical. If Allah is infinite in all glories and merits He must be aware and appreciative of everything going on throughout the heavens and the earth and inside and outside His servants. If Allah is Just he should remedy all injustices sooner or later but always completely. If Allah is merciful He should be able to forgive all who ask for His mercy and works towards it. If Allah’s intelligence and skills are infinitely superior to ours it is only too natural for us then not to understand His reasons and wisdom in allowing or disallowing certain things we may like or dislike and yet one day surprise us with His superb gifts and rewards in response to our being patient with His wise deliberations despite our ego’s upsets at the time of their coming to pass.
Who then is the best believer? It is the person who always hopes the best from Allah while trying to do his very best for Allah. Yes, he will never be satisfied with his performance; after all who can deliver fully what is due to Allah in respect and service; in fact the prophets are most aware of this and therefore the humblest at heart of all servants of Allah.
The conclusion fro
“A young, sincere Muslim was unemployed for a very long time despite his excellent qualifications. For once he seemed lucky to have received an invitation to attend an interview with a big company offering a very good pay for a very good job for which the young man was well qualified. The place being far, he had to take a train. On his way to the train though something cropped up which caused him to delay and miss the unmissable train. An old woman stopped him, told him that she was lost and cold and could he please help her to find her home. The address she gave proved to be a bit too far for the young man if he wanted not to miss his train but the woman looked so helpless that his believer’s heart could not allow him to abandon her to some uncertain other person who could take advantage of her. Being a spiritually aware believer he saw this meeting of a helpless old lady as a command from Allah to help her and as a trial in fact and he TRUSTED Allah and hurried with help hoping not to miss the train. But miss he did. Turning homewards he found his heart, surprisingly enough, unresentful and instead thankful towards Allah. In the grateful face of the old woman whom he had taken to her home he had already seen Allah thanking him! Later that same day his telephone rang. It was the personnel manager of the company and he was asking why he had failed to turn up. The manager was adding that his application had proven to be the most promising and if he had not already signed up with another employer the manager would be delighted to sign him up after an as successful interview as he very much hoped would take place. Could he attend that same day and what time did he think he could arrive at the office. To make a story short, it transpired that the young man’s qualifications were exactly those which could satisfy the company on top of his application convincing them that he was the most intelligent of all applicants. To my mind, his trusting in Allah and helping a weak servant of Allah had so pleased the Lord that the company was made by subtle yet effective angelic inspiration to them to go for this young good man. There is always something compelling and captivating in an appeal when it comes fro
This is just one episode of or one anecdote about purer souls being first tried and then rewarded by the
“Whoever keeps his piety towards Allah then Allah opens up for hi
When the Prophet was despairing of success against his enemies who were denying every truth he brought from Allah and blocked his every move to access and save people Allah assured hi
“Surely a Messenger has come to you fro
(9:128-9)
10. RULES OF KARAMAT- SAINTLY MIRACLES
One of the much talked about subjects in Tasawwuf (Sufism) is those extraordinary, ‘supernatural’-looking events happening to or apparently initiated by some people. In the case of prophets of God these events are called ‘miracles’ while in the case of non-prophets they are called ‘karamat’. Both these terms show how much wrong seeped into Islam from other religions including pagan cults. Ideally all concepts and terms used in Isla
Let us begin with the abstract or non-material life principle in man, namely the soul. In the Book of Allah, Allah Who knows everything best and should therefore be most slavishly be followed, we never find the word ‘ruh’ (spirit) to mean the human soul. Repeat, never! Instead Allah the Knower of all secrets employs the word ‘nafs’ for the human soul, both when it dwells in a living body or departs from the body at death or in sleep. Read if you wish:
“Allah makes souls (anfus) depart during their death and those which are not to die, during their sleep. He retains the one (soul) on which He passed the judgment of death and sends the other (not to die yet) back until a defined term (39: 42)
Again “Each soul (nafs) is to taste death” (3: 185)
Can there be then a shred of doubt that Allah calls the eternal living principle in man ‘nafs’ and not spirit? Why nafs? Because ‘nafs’ implies a personal consciousness, a personal freewill and a personality. The term ‘spirit’ means less than that, it is far too obscure to be understood fully and therefore when asked about it Allah answers through His Messenger briefly and enigmatically “Al Ruh is an affair of my Lord; about it you are given but little knowledge” (17: 85). End of the matter; nothing was added to this till the death of the Prophet. Surely nothing more could and should be leaked after the Prophet. So all the pompous talk of making discoveries about the nature of the spirit and even worse, the replacement of the word ‘nafs’ which Allah uses for man with ‘ruh’ to mean man’s eternal personal consciousness can only be spurious claims.
A similar de-Islamisation occurred in the conceptual terms for wonderful events which Allah calls with full and final justification as ‘ayat’ while those who risk to be accused of claiming to know better than Allah call them either mu’jiza or karamat. With ridiculous sagacity and unnecessary discrimination they apply the first to wonderful happenings to prophets and the second to those happening to ‘saints’ (awliya), another spurious term. Allah Himself uses only one and one term: ayat! He applies it, certainly with full and exclusive justification to three wonderful things, namely and firstly, the phenomena displayed throughout the universe like the movements and benefits of the sun and the moon, the formation of rain clouds and their dropping rain which fertilises the earth, even the winds which move the sailing ships and most impressively the creation of babies in the womb from materials ultimately derived from the watered soils. Secondly He All-Knowing uses the word ‘ayat’ to mean the verses He reveals to His prophets which verses make up Divine Books like the Qur’an. Last and third (and of the least importance), He the Most Wise applies the word ‘ayat’ to those extraordinary happenings which are made to happen to support a prophet’s claims to Divine mission or to help a good servant’s case whatever it may be.
Before we study this third meaning or specialisation of the term ‘ayat’ let us first explain, with the help and permission of our Lord All-Gracious why He insists that the phenomena we nowadays term as natural are ‘ayat’, first adding though that this word ‘ayat’ means a sign.
To pick up again a natural phenomenon like the sun and its movements we must ask, why Allah is calling it a sign of His Existence and Perfection? Well, what else should He call it? Are not all makers of things judged by the quality of their works? That being surely so, who else can boast of a grander and more magnificent work than the universe Allah created and has been running with such precision and purposeful evolution since untold times? Among the items this universe contains the sun is the one, after our earth, which touches most on our lives. In our small corner of the cosmos it is the sun which supplies with all the energy we directly and indirectly depend on and without it life on earth is utterly out of question. So, Allah is fully justified to draw our attention to that masterpiece of His.
The second meaning of ‘ayat’ is equally valid: each verse of the Qur’an is a wonder of truth, moral and spiritual insight, practical motivation and good-doing on top of incomparable literary merit. Read the verse “Whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger and keeps Him in awed reverence then such are the prosperously saved” (24: 52). Who could utter and in what other book one could find a briefer and more excellently full summary of salvation than this verse we quoted from Allah’s Book? And there are more than six thousand of them each more excellent and unsurpassable than the other! What wonder is an event like a prophet’s turning a staff into a snake compared to a verse of the Qur’an, although both the verse and the prophet’s feat are Allah’s ayats? The Qur’an is the chief ayat as far as man’s salvation has been concerned and all the other ayats of Allah makes sense to us in the light of the Qur’an and nothing else. It is the greatest miracle granted to our master Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa salla
The third category and least of all miracles- and the most admired by the ignorants- are those wonderful events happening to or appearing to issue from certain extraordinary persons. I used the word ‘miracle’ for these events deliberately but not in order to depart from my definition of Divine signs but in order to imply that with these events we are not as on sure ground as in the case of the previous two categories of signs from Allah. To begin with, a lot of, arguably the overwhelming majority of such reported and even witnessed miracles are falsehoods (magic) or deluded or shameless lies. Since earliest recorded times the art of producing magical effects has been part and parcel of all civilisations and today it is at its most developed and sometimes comes under the name of technology. Because modern technology is normally a boon to humanity we will not include it under magic though.
‘Miracles’ other than modern technology applied to meeting to practical human needs can be either physical or psychological. An example of a physical miracle can be a magical number of a stage magician: there in front of the eyes of hundreds of intelligent spectators the magician seems to float up into air for example, apparently defying the law of gravitation. He is a direct descendant of ancient pagan priests residing in the temples who used such tricks to subject the masses to their will. The word for magic in Arabic is ‘sihr’ and derives from the verb which means ‘to cause an illusion’. All magical effects are illusory and laws of optics are their main source. I guess that the turning of staffs and ropes of the Pharaoh’s magicians into running snakes were simple tricks by today’s standards: if we take a staff, it may be made of a length of inflated, rigid-looking animal intestine suitably cured and painted to look life a wooden staff; when about to cast it the magician could remove the stopper at the end of it and then the staff-shaped balloon would move and wriggle violently thanks to the rapid escape of the pressurised air from the de-stoppered end. With suitable narrow passages at the air-ejecting end the balloon could emit snake whistles which could be the envy of real snakes! And Allah says as much: “Thanks to their illusionist’s effects (min sihrihima) they (the staffs and ropes of the magicians) appeared to him (Moses) as if they are running” (20: 66).
As for the psychological magic, the chief form can be worked by hypnosis. A hypnotist or somebody with hypnotizing skills can at times induce a person or group of persons to see or hear things which are not actually there. Mass hypnotisation and hysteria are employed consciously or unconsciously in situations of great emergency: The Crusaders who were defending the walled city of Antioch against the surrounding Musli
This certainly does not demote Islamic morale-boosting tactics to the status of magic: Islam embodies the spiritual truth behind the creation which is the unity and perfection of God (unassailable credentials) and its exhortations can only be morally justified if employed in pious and gracious hands. Islam’s is not magic, they are ‘ayats’, i.e. Signs from Allah. The Musli
As for the signs (ayat) given to prophets and believers, which is our main subject, we may note and speculate as follows. Allah so definitely and decisively described in His Qur’an many miracles He demonstrated through His prophets that doubting their veracity is out of question. Yes, he made Noah to prophesy a flood if his people did not mind his warnings on behalf of Allah and the flood came to pass. The infidel king caused Abraham to be thrown into fire and the fire, by Allah’s Command, instantly became cool and safe to Abraham. How it happened cannot be told from this distance in time but as a scientist I can assure you that we ourselves have the technology to duplicate such an effect. Allah is surely infinitely more resourceful and powerful than us. He caused the death of a man and his donkey (thought to be Uzair/Ezra the prophet, and then resurrected him to witness the resurrection of his donkey as well. I am withholding the possible explanation. The staff of Moses was turned into a snake which swallowed up the virtual snakes made from the staffs of the magicians. I a
To begin with, there can be no doubting that our so called objective perceptions of the world are joint products of external stimuli on our sense organs and our nervous system processing them. A small defect in a sense organ and/or the nervous system of ours can radically alter our perception. Colour blindness is one example, lack of eyesight is another. People with either handicap have utterly no clue as to how other people perceive things they cannot. Suppose we have people with sixth, seventh etc. senses. How could we have a clue to what more and how they can perceive more things than us? Lastly, suppose that we have a very little known sense for perceiving alternative possibilities in physical perception. Theoretical physics is telling us that there are alternative quantum states as well as relativistic effects from cosmic to subatomic levels which may make instantaneous alternative physical possibilities valid realities. It may then be surmised that in a Divine ayat given to a prophet or special believer another physical possibility which is only detected by another mode of mental perception is perceived instead of the usual possibility thanks to a Divinely triggered alteration in the perceptive mode of the minds of the people present at the scene of the ayat. Since this alternative is no less real than the usual one, if the miracle has happened it has and cannot be denied. After all the Qur’an assures us that this world’s life is made of illusion and that the real world awaits our discovery following our death and in some even cases before then as when the Prophet was taken up to heaven where he witnessed mind-boggling realities. Read if you wish:
“This world’s life is but play and entertainment while it the the very life of the hereafter which is the real life had they but knew” (29: 64).
What kind of play and entertainment? Of an illusory, deceptive kind. Read if you wish:
“Each and every soul shall taste death and what you have been doing shall be paid to you in full on the Day of Resurrection. Whoever then is distanced from Hell and made to enter the Garden will have been conclusively and fully prosperous. This world’s life is nothing but of a matter of illusion” (3: 185)
The same considerations explain also the ayat (popularly called ‘karamat) caused or given to good believers. These most often are in the form of lucky ‘coincidences’ a good believer enjoys so frequently that they cannot be ascribed to pure chance: there must be some blessed quality in the believer concerned to attract so many good breaks effortlessly. Allah describes such believers as follows:
“Whoever, whether male or female, behaves and acts well while also a believer, such We will keep alive with a good life and award them their rewards entirely in terms of the best of what they had been doing” (16: 97)
What better life than being a good person and live with good luck and in good cheer? Allah is promising this to his consistently well-behaved, sincerely believing servants. That He will not suffer such nice people to go through too terrible trials we can see from the verse:
“What Allah will punish you for while you are giving thanks and believing” (4: 147)
That Allah tries and tests believers is true but that is not the same as punishment. Punishment is when the person is pained and shamed and deservedly so. Tests and trials undergone by believers only enhance their luminosity of innocence and are tolerated gracefully by them which may be seen as part and parcel of a good life albeit in disguise. Nobody can deny that even an ordinary person wrongly persecuted by a tyrant may suffer physical pain but he will not suffer pains of conscience and instead radiate a saintly luminosity and unperturbed dignity which needs to be seen to be believed. Both Ghandi and Nelson Mandela unjustly suffered in the hands of arrogant and tyrannical governments but their ends have become the envy of all honourable souls cherishing high moral values and a credible social conscience. Their enemies bowed to them with apologies as they did to our Prophet and other prophets like Joseph.
Good servants of Allah are openly or secretly helped by Allah through angelic channels any time they are in narrow straits for no fault of their own or even when for their own fault they are sincerely repentant. This help, when visible to others must be seen as an ayat/sign that Allah is for the