Section Fatiha, part 9
Recap: Our need for eternal happiness is given to us and nothing of this universe can satisfy it. Whoever gave us this need is letting us know it is a promise for the existence of an eternal life i.e. there must be a Day of Retribution that will follow the consequences of our worldview, actions and consciousness in this life. Anything created in this universe cannot be worshiped because we are all subject to transience. Only the Creator of the universe deserves to be worshiped as the Owner of the universe. The human being acknowledges its Source of Existence as to be the only One worthy of worship and makes such a declaration to its Owner, the Lord of the universe on behalf of every created thing. Therefore, we declare with our tongue while recognizing, “You alone we worship and You alone we seek help.”
ٱهْدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلْمُسْتَقِيمَ صِرَٰطَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ
“Guide us on the straight path, the path of those You have blessed,”
Our bodily needs are only valid until we die; they do not go beyond the grave. We are human beings, and we seek more than just bodily satisfaction. We ask for our eternal needs to be satisfied. When we ask to be guided to the straight path (i.e. not deviate from the road to Paradise), we are asking to connect these eternal feelings directly to the One that gives us these feelings. The road to Paradise is a state of being where your feelings are directly communicating with the Source of Existence of those feelings. That is, only the Lord of the universe, the Creator of my eternal feelings can satisfy what my feelings need. For example, you are eating chocolate and if you think that the chocolate is provided by Your Lord to satisfy you, then you will not deviate from the straight path. In other words, while eating the chocolate be conscious that it is not the chocolate that is satisfying you, but the Creator of the universe is satisfying you. The chocolate is just a vehicle to be used to connect with the Source of Existence.
We must learn how to utilize the created things and the universe as vehicles so that we can board them to reach the Source of existence of the vehicle and ourselves. While your body is enjoying anything, and the 5 human senses are catching and perceiving the qualities manifested in creation, use that experience to communicate with your Creator directly. That is, the vehicle in which you are being entertained is informing you of their Creator’s qualities. For example, while your eyes are looking at the stars, your feelings of being entertained with the experience of “star gazing” should directly go to its Creator and your Creator i.e. the Creator of the universe.
While we pray to be guided on the straight path, it means that we do not want to dirty our minds by taking the vehicles as “causes” and giving credit to them. A vehicle is just an object or experience to mount on. In and of themselves, the things do not know that they are entertaining you because they are lifeless matter. The Creator of the universe has given them existence and provided them for you to be entertained to get to know the Source of your Existence and communicate with Him. The things are created with the qualities manifested in them by their Creator. Thus, the straight path means that “I want to directly speak with You (O my Creator) without any deviation”.
When we ask for the straight path, it is not to follow a spatial map of the physical directions to reach the destination that we are seeking, rather we are asking “to be put” directly in the map. There is a huge difference between requesting to “help me follow the straight path, O Lord” versus “put me on the straight path O Lord” because if you are directly put in your destination, then there is no room for deviation. Hence, guidance to the straight path means asking God to directly put us on the road to Paradise.
Who are those that God has blessed?
The blessed people are the ones that are “God conscious” in their interactions. For example, you ask for guidance from God, and you know that you are learning about staying on the straight path from the Quran, however, that does not guarantee that you will be successful in staying on the straight path by yourself with your studying and learning. We must bear in mind that while following the teachings of the Quran, our success from learning can only come from God i.e. if He wills. Hence, the blessed people are aware of the utmost reliance on the Creator for every matter and transactions they experience i.e. they are the ones who are following their Lord’s guidance and will prosper. To be successful for being on the straight path, I must try to bear in my being the qualities from verse below (underlined), so that I will be deserving of God’s help to put me on the straight path.
هُدًۭى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ ٱلَّذِينَ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِٱلْغَيْبِ وَيُقِيمُونَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَـٰهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ وَٱلَّذِينَ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْكَ وَمَآ أُنزِلَ مِن قَبْلِكَ وَبِٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ هُمْ يُوقِنُونَ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ عَلَىٰ هُدًۭى مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ ۖ وَأُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْمُفْلِحُونَ
“All those who are God-conscious, who believe in the Unseen, keep up the prayer, and give out of what We have provided for them; those who believe in the revelation sent down to you, and in what was sent before you, those who have firm faith in the Hereafter. Such people are following their Lord’s guidance, and it is they who will prosper.” (Baqara, 2:2-5)
God is Merciful by speaking to human beings to guide them via Revelation, which is available in various formats to be used as evidence for the existence of God and an eternal life of Recompense. The evidence for the Revelation which lets us know that God speaks are as follows:
- The universe is meaningful and wonderful as evidence.
2. Human feelings are meaningful and wonderful. The One who is giving them is pointing out who their Creator is.
3. Revelation conveys God’s speech translating this meaningful creation into human language.
4. The Prophet came to teach and represent God’s message to us by demonstrating that all these meaningful creations can be practiced in personal and social life.
God is Ever Merciful because He has been guiding all mankind from past to present. The Creator of the universe has always spoken to all human beings by speaking to them and guiding them. When we say that we believe in all the Divine Revelations, it means that God has always been speaking to human beings throughout human history. The One who created you with the ability to speak must Himself have the ability to speak as well. The One who created you with the ability to understand speech must Himself also speak to us as well. The One who has created us with the need to be guided on the straight path, cannot only speak to us to satisfy our temporary bodily needs. My spirit wants to know who my Owner is and what is the purpose in my existence? Therefore, the One that made me, my Creator, must answer my human existential questions which cannot be answered by anything of this universe.
Let’s say that you have never heard of “Revelation”, then how would you know why you are created? This universe we are in cannot give any answer. The way that we are created is a wonderful act of creation. Who made it? I do not know. But I do not want to die, and I know that I will die one day. Such a meaningless contradiction! What is going on here? My consciousness asks why the universe is so meaningful? Why do I desire never ending happiness? Where are the answers to such questions? I need explanation for this contradiction, which can only come as answers from Revelation.
We live in a culture where we have heard about God, Paradise/Hell and Day of Recompense in our upbringings, therefore we may start taking these existential concepts for granted, and thus at face value. We must think about how we got the idea of “Day of Recompense”, for example. If there was no Revelation, how would you know about life after death? The things in the universe are created in such a way that there is constant change that is observed. For example, how do you explain the existence of the barren tree that dies in the winter and becomes lush green in the spring? There is something mysterious going on here. If you seriously think about this, without the news about an Absolute Creator, i.e. God, that is brought to us through Revelation, your mind will go crazy. Most people have heard about the concept of God, so they think about it, otherwise, without access to news/information from Revelation, life in this universe will feel meaningless because the human mind cannot go beyond the confines of this universe. That is how we are made.
If we are careful, we can utilize the already available information given to us, question it and use the universe and ourselves to get evidence to confirm our belief in God and an eternal life. Otherwise, we can keep using the universe and just repeat the utterances of the news from Revelation without making sense of it. Therefore, we must question and go through the reasoning process to appreciate the news from Revelation (God’s Speech), which are answers provided for our human existential questions so we can be convinced about the existence of God, Eternal Life and Day of Retribution. Always ask yourself how you can confirm the news that the Revelation provides. For example, how can we confirm the existence of Angels, the Hereafter?
The universe is not created for us to learn from in order to exploit it only to satisfy our physical needs, rather the universe is created for us to investigate and question its Source of its Existence. For example, question how the wonderful tree comes into existence? However, be aware of the Materialist Science mindset that attributes the qualities manifested in the things to the things themselves. The Materialist worldview does not ask the question about, how come the things are given existence in the way that they are? Any idea, theory or worldview that does not offer us to question what the source of existence of something is, must be stayed away from.
Do we do anything purposelessly in this universe? No. Are you given eyes just to look and die at the end? No. So why are we then given wonderful tools and a beautiful universe if we will die at the end?! We keep away from the notion of death because we do not have any answer to it and we do not want to make sense of the news from Revelation. As soon as human beings are created, the One who created the universe and the human beings must provide the answer to existential questions that are within us (unveiling Revelation), otherwise there will be a contradiction in the existence of the human beings and their infinite qualities. In other words, any human being has the potentiality to receive Revelation from God for themselves. That is why, in the Islamic tradition, Prophet Adam (representing all human race) is regarded to be a caliph or representative (Khalifah) for himself.
We must ask our Creator’s help to be put in the straight path, like the people who worked on themselves to maintain the qualities, as mentioned on page 2 (Baqara, 2:2-5), and thus, they deserved the straight path. Like those successful people, I must also do my responsibility of acknowledging God, believing with conviction in the items of belief (God, Angels, Revelation and Prophets) by confirming with evidence from the universe. The message of the Quran makes the human mind question obvious practical interactions, for example, how does one explain the change in the existence of the night and day? The Quran gives examples of much evidence that we can use from the universe to be convinced about the items of belief. In the following verse out of many, we are invited to reflect upon our creation and the universe to understand the purpose of our existence.
وَكُنتُمْ أَمْوَٰتًۭا فَأَحْيَـٰكُمْ ۖ ثُمَّ يُمِيتُكُمْ ثُمَّ يُحْيِيكُمْ ثُمَّ إِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ
“… You were lifeless and He gave you life, then He will cause you to die and again bring you to life, and then to Him you will all be returned”. (Baqara, 2:28)
The verse is making it clear that we must worship God who created life and death, He will give us death, and will resurrect us again, because He has been doing it since the beginning of mankind. When you sleep at night, it is a certain type of creation. When you wake up in the morning, it is a new creation, and you wake up as a new person. Everything is a new creation at every moment. For example, Winter is a new creation, which paves the way for Spring, a new creation as well. The seed is lifeless and paves the way for the tree to bloom. These are examples showcasing how out of dead materials (soil, seed, sunlight, water and air), living beings are created. Similarly, when the body dies in this transient universe, a new life should be experienced by the spirit with a new body suitable to the conditions of an eternal life. Since God gave us the desire for a never-ending existence, then this desire (need) is a promise from the One who gave it to us that it must be fulfilled. Experiencing our meaningful human life we understand that we are not given existence purposelessly here; therefore, we must ask to be put on the straight path to our Creator to fulfil this purpose.
صِرَٰطَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ ٱلْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا ٱلضَّآلِّينَ
“The path of those You have blessed, not of those who have earned Your anger, nor of those who have gone astray.”
Who are they who earned God’s anger and who have gone astray? Does God get angry with some people? Is He not a Merciful Creator?
To reach the straight path, we must ask God to help us. Let us understand the above verse with a hadith, in which a few companions came to the Prophet (pbuh) to inquire about who are the people who have earned God’s anger and who are the ones that have gone astray? Please bear in mind that the Prophet (pbuh) speaks at the level of the people who were speaking to him. When some of the companions asked if such people are the Jews and the Christians, the Prophet (pbuh) replied, “Who else do you think?”
The Prophet’s answer to the companions should not be taken literally, just like the verses of the Quran cannot be taken at face value. The statement needs to be unpacked to make it applicable to any reader. When the Quran or the Prophet (pbuh) mention a certain person, group of people or place with a word, it is used to refer to a particular character traits, behavior and attitude found in the human psyche. We cannot read the Quranic verses as a law book; we must see the verses as a constitution, where the general principles are laid out. For example, some people out of their own choice receive God’s anger i.e. God is not happy with them.
In the Quran, the Jews (Children of Israel) represent a certain human attitude. Let us understand that with a few analogies.
Analogy 1: A mother cooks delicious food for her child. The child throws the food, and the mother is not happy with that act, because the purpose of the mother to prepare the food was for the child to enjoy it. By throwing the food, the child spoiled the purpose that the mother prepared the food for. Of course, the mother is not happy and will be angry at the child. That is what receiving God’s anger refers to i.e. “ghadab“.
Analogy 2: Jack and Jane are your children and you teach Jane everything about how to keep the house tidy, whereas Jack is not aware of it. If both dirty the house, who will you get angry with? You will get angry with Jane, because she knows how to clean the house, and she is not cleaning it knowingly. Similarly, in the hadith above, “Jews” represent a human attitude that is aware of God, has the Book (Revelation), has the concept of Prophethood, but chooses not to follow through. However, as the reader of the Quran, your civic identity may be “Muslim”, “Jew” or “Christian” but it does not mean that you are free from the attitude as described in these analogies. No one is born with their civic identities; it is our attitude that makes us who we are. Everyone is born as a person with the ability to submit to the truth, and with our choices we deviate from the straight path. The Quranic word “Muslim” means the one who submits to the “reality” or the “truth”.
The Quran always gives examples of Jews as a human attitude that is aware of the Revelation, Prophethood and belief in God, but chooses not to follow it. That is how the message of the Quran speaks in general terms with concrete examples, so people can hear it and learn it by visualizing these certain attitudes. When I read the Quran and hadith narrations, I must see if I am not doing the same thing after receiving the Revelation of the Qur’an.
To be a Muslim is not an identity, rather it is an attribute and attitude of a person. What makes a person a Muslim? The understanding that they follow, their behavior, life and the way they express themselves with submission to the truth without deviating it. One’s physical appearance does not make them “Muslim”, only the human quality of a person makes them a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian.
The attitude in the analogies is representing the “maghdoob” i.e. the people that God is unhappy with, because they represent a behavior that does not appreciate what they are taught and thus, they deviate from the truth by making up their own understandings to things.
If a person has heard of the Revelation of the Quran, and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and despite all these news, s/he chooses not to apply the teachings, or try to change it for his/her own convenience and misrepresent it, then s/he falls into the category of Jews (Children of Israel) i.e. the “maghdoob”. Many Muslims do not follow the exemplary life of the Prophet (pbuh), and because many people do not study the Quran, they do not know what the Quran is, therefore they do not act accordingly. Hence, they fall into the category of “maghdoob”.
The Quran never speaks about a certain people, rather, it speaks of the attitude represented by the human being by giving examples. The Prophet (pbuh) also does the same thing, because people only understand with examples. For human beings, abstract notions are difficult to grasp. The Prophet (pbuh) spoke to people who mostly did not know how to read and write. It is mentioned in a hadith that the Prophet (pbuh) used his hands and fingers so that people can count the number of days for the fasting in Ramadan. He (pbuh) ended the explanation by saying, “We are illiterate people and our community is illiterate”. We have to remember that we are talking about the conditions of the time 1450 years ago. This shows that those human beings do not understand abstract concepts easily. We must give concrete examples to understand these abstract concepts. For example, how can you explain to someone the understanding of the infinite perfect qualities of God (asma-ul-husna)? It means that you must encourage them to read creation i.e. take anything in creation, let say a bird, and study it in the way that it is created, fulfilling its mission and performing its act. Only then can the notion of asma-ul-husna make sense, and we can conclude that “The One who created the world, the bird and its act must create the whole universe”, hence “Allah-u-akbar“.
Finally, the “maghdoob” are provided the news and information about the message of God but have not been loyal to the message. On the other hand, the “daalleen” category doesn’t take notice of anything at all. They are in direct deviation from the message of God and explain everything in the form of natural happenings attributing divine qualities to beings of this created universe. The attitude of “daalleen” means having no connection with the Creator, and the person is totally lost.
In the hadith above, the “daalleen” is described as the Christian attitude. The Christian theology is based on giving a divine quality to a created being, which ultimately represents giving divine qualities to matter, thus making existence of created beings and their activities independent from God.
We should not fall into any of these categories by explaining God in terms of matter (daalleen) or knowing the Revelation and believing in the Creator thinking that it has nothing to do with me “maghdoob”. We can further extend this to thinking that the universe and matter is created by God, but matter is acting on its own and I am doing things by myself. That is the representation of “daalleen”.
In conclusion, we must be careful in our reasonings and ask God not to make us fall into any of these 2 categories. We must ask to be put only in the category of those He guides to the straight path. Ameen.