True Meaning of 'Ibadah
( This is an extract from book " Let us be muslim " by moulana Abul Aala moududi R A)
Brother in Islam! There is an important word which we Muslims use a lot but understand little. The word is 'Ibadah. It is very important that we understand its true meaning and significance.
The sole purpose of our creation, the end of our lives, Allah says. Is to worship and serve Him alone.
And I have not created jinn and mankind except to worship and serve Me (al-Dhariyat 51:56).
This establish beyond doubt that you must be fully aware of the meaning of Ibadah. Otherwise you will not be able to fulfil the purpose for which you have been created. And anything which does not fulfill its purpose is a failure. If a doctor cannot cure his patient, he may be considered t have failed in his work. If a farmer cannot raise a good crop, he may be held to have failed in his job. Similarly, if you have not been able to fulfil the purpose of your lives, Ibadah, you must be judged failures. Listen, therefore, carefully and understand the meaning of Ibadah and constantly
remember it too . On this depends the success or failure of your lives.
Meaning of 'Ibadah :
What, Then, is worship of 'Ibadah?
The Arabic word 'Ibadah is derived form the same root as the word 'abd, which means servant and slave'. Thus, 'Ibadah means to perform the duties of a servant as does a slave or bondsman. A person is a slave of somebody only if he lives his whole life rendering service and obedience to him and behaves as one should behave to his master. But a person who is supposedly a servant and is being paid for his work but who does not render his master service and obedience as a slave ought, is guilty of disloyalty and rebellion.
How should a slave behave towards his master?
The first duty of a slave is to take only his master as his lord. He should be totally faithful to him alone who sustains, nourishes and protect him and give his loyalty to no one else.
The second duty of a slave is to be always obedient to his master, to carry out all his orders meticulously and to refrain from following his own desires or opinions or following anybody else contrary to his master's wishes. A slave is a slave, every moment and in all circumstances. He has no right to choose to obey a particular order and disobey another, or to say he will be a slave when it suits and ignore his duties for the rest of the time.
The third duty if a slave is to revere and adore his master. To express his reverence, he should follow the ways laid down by him. If he is constant and firm in his faithfulness and obedience, he must present himself at whatever time his master calls him for audience.
These are the qualities which together constitute 'Ibadah: first, loyalty to one's master; second, obedience to him; and third, reverence and adoration for him.
What Allah requires-when He says 'I have not created jinn and mankind except to serve and worship me'- is that we should be loyal, above all, to Him alone and to no one else; we should follow, against everything else, His commandments only; and we should honour and revere Him alone by kneeling and prostrating ourselves. Everywhere in the Qur'an the word 'Ibadah is used in this sense. This is also the substance of the teaching of our Prophet, and of all the prophets sent by god before him, peace be upon them. Each come with the same message, 'Worship and serve none except him, (Yusuf 12:40): there is only one Sovereign to who you must be faithful, and that Sovereign is Allah; there is one law which you must obey, and that is the law of Allah; there is only one Being you should worship, and that being is Allah.
Misunderstanding 'Ibadah :
Now look at the following situations.
What would you say about a servant who, instead of performing the duties required of him by his master, just stands in front of him with folded hands and keeps on chanting his name? his master orders him to go and discharge his obligations to his fellow human beings, but he stays where he is Again and again he bows to his master, salutes him and remains standing up with folded hands. His master instruct him to go and fight against evil to eliminate it, but he does not budge an inch; instead he keeps on prostrating himself before him. His master commands him to cut off the hand of a thief, but the servant, still standing there, recites scores of times in an extremely melodious voice: 'cut off the hand of the thief, cut off the hand of the thief', without ever trying to establish that orders which the hand of a thief may be cut off.
Would you say that this man was really serving his master? And what would be your verdict of you had servants and one behaved in this fashion? Yet how often you regard as devout worshippers so-called servants of God who behave exactly like this! What, for example about the man who reads from dawn to dusk the Divine injunctions in the Qur'an, but never stirs himself to carry them out, chanting instead the name of God on a thousand-bead rosary, praying uninterruptedly and reciting the Qur'an in a beautiful voice? When you see Him doing all this you exclaim: 'What a devout and pious person he is! You are misled because you do not understand the true meaning of 'Ibadah.
Here is another servant. This one is busy day and night carrying out duties given to him by people other than his master, while he constantly flouts the commands of his real master and tries to hides this by always being present at the appointed hours of audience and losing no chance to sing his praises. If any you had such a servant, what would you do with him? Would you not throw back his greeting in his face? If he called you 'Master' and 'Lord', would you not retort: 'You are an impertinent liar and a cheat, you take wages from me but work for others'. You pretend to call me master but actually serve everybody except me'. This is a matter of simple common sense which we can all easily understand.
But how astonishing that you think the Prayers, Fasting, chanting on rosary-beads, recital of the Qur'an, the Pilgrimage and Almsgiving of those people are in fact acts of worship, which day and night violate or ignore the laws of God and follow the orders of the unbelievers. Here, again, you are misled because you are unaware of the true meaning of 'Ibadah.
Now look at yet another servant. His uniform is perfectly tailored and always smart, just as desired by his master. He presents himself before his master showing the utmost honour and reverence. whenever he is given an order, he bows his head and says, 'With all my heart I will obey', as if no one could be more faithful. He is always to the forefront in parsing his master. Yet, at the same time, this man is serving the rebels and enemies of his master, participating in the conspiracies they hatch against him and co-operating with them in their efforts to belittle his name. In the darkness of night he commits burglary in his master's house, but in morning presents himself with folded hands before him like the most faithful of servants.
What would you say about such a servant? Clearly, your verdict would be: he is hypocrite, a rebel, and disloyal. But what do you call this so called servant of God who behave just like this? You call them Sheikhs, Mawlanas, Pirs, and so on. You consider them pious and godly men. This is because you have been misled by external trappings such as full breads, dresses above their ankles, prostration marks on their foreheads, their long sessions of the Prayers and their big rosaries of beads. Again, your error has arisen because you have not grasped the meaning of 'Ibadah and religiosity.
Too often you think that just facing the Qiblah with folded hands, bowing with your hands resting on your knees, prostrating yourselves with your face on the ground and uttering a few ritual words is in itself 'Ibadah. You think that just to be hungry and thirsty from mornings till evening every day from the first of Ramadan till the appearance of the Shawwal moon is 'Ibadah. You think that a mere verbal recital of some parts or Surahs of the Qur'an is 'Ibadah. You think that a visit to Makka and circumambulation of the Ka'ah is 'Ibadah. In short, you think 'Ibadah consists of merely performing certain outward worship rituals and ceremonies, and whenever you notice anybody doing these actions, and no more, you think that they have done their duty, they are true worshipers performing 'Ibadah of God, they have thus fulfilled the purport of the verse, 'I have not created Jin and Mankind except to serve and worship Me'.
'Ibadah, Lifelong Service :
But in reality the 'Ibadah for which God has created you and which He has enjoined upon you is something quite different. It is this: you must follow at every step in your lives the law of God and refuse to obey all laws which conflict with his law. Everything you do must accord with the guidance given by God. only then will your entire lives turn into lives of worship.
In such a life, everything is 'Ibadah: whether you sleep or are awake, whether you eat or drink, whether you work of rest, whether you are silent or talk, are all acts of worship/ so much so that in going to your wives and kissing your children, too, you serve God. All these actions which are usually considered secular and worldly become religious, provided that during their performance you observe the limits laid down by God and remain conscious every moment
and at every step of what is aproved by God (Halal) and what is forbidden by Him (Haram), what is a duty and what must be avoided, which actions please God and which actions displease Him.
For instance, easy opportunities to earn money in a forbidden ways may occur during your life. If you resist this temptation and in obedience to God, confine yourselves to earning money in approved ways only, then your work is itself worship. And you deserve rewards. And the earning you bring home for yourselves, your wives, your children and other have-nots will be blessed by Allah. Indeed whatever you do and whatever time you spend in doing His will and in pleasing Him, you worship Him: when you remove from road a stone or other obstacle which might hurt people; when you nurse an ill person or guide a blind man or help a person in distress; when you avoid lying, gossiping about people behind their backs, making sarcastic remarks and slandering; when you refrain from hurting people; when you talk truthfully and justly.
Real worship of God, therefore, is to follow the way laid down by God and lead lives according to His commandments from childhood to death. There can be no fixed time for this worship; it must be performed all the time God. Nor does it have one particular form ; in every thing you say and do, you must serve God . Since you cannot say: 'I am a servant of God at such a time', and I am not a servent of God at such a time, you cannot say that such and such a time is earmarked for God's service and the remaining time is not. If you truly honour and adore, love and fear God, all your actions will be motivated by these feelings and they will all constitute worship.
Brothers! You may now ask: 'What then is the position of prescribed worship rituals like Prayer (Salah), Almsgiving (Zakah), Fasting (Sawm), Pilgrimage (Hajj) and so on?'
These acts of worship, which Allah has enjoined upon us, in reality, prepare us for that greater overall 'Ibadah that we have to perform throughout our lives. The are the means which turn our lives into lives of worship. Prayer reminds you five times a day that you are slaves of Allah and that Him alone you must serve. Fasting prepares you, for an entire month once every year, for this very service. Almsgiving repeatedly brings home to you the truth that the money you have earned is a gift of God. Do not just spend it on physical pleasures or even solely on material needs: you must render what is due to your Master. Pilgrimage engraves on your heart such a love and awareness of the majesty of God that once take root; they remain with you all your lives.
If, by performing all these acts of worship, you grasp their true inner significance and your entire lives are transformed into an unceasing act of worship, then undoubtedly your Prayer is real prayer, your Fast is real fast, your Almsgiving is real charity and your pilgrimage is real pilgrimage. But if you do not, no purpose is possibly served by merely bowing, keening and prostrating yourself (ruku and Sujud), by spending days in hunger and thirst, by going through the formalities of the pilgrimage and by setting aside money for the Almsgiving. These worship rituals are like a human body: it is a living human being so long as it has a soul and moves about and does work; but if it is soulless, it is no more than a corpse. A corpse has hands and feet, eyes and nose, but you bury it under the earth because It is devoid of soul. So are worship rites if they are devoid of meaning, if they do not generate love and fear of God, loyalty and obedience to Him.
We should try to find out how each act of ritual worship prepares us for a life spent totally in worship; what a great and wonderful difference each can make to our lives if we perform them in full understanding of their meaning and purpose.
Brother in Islam! There is an important word which we Muslims use a lot but understand little. The word is 'Ibadah. It is very important that we understand its true meaning and significance.
The sole purpose of our creation, the end of our lives, Allah says. Is to worship and serve Him alone.
And I have not created jinn and mankind except to worship and serve Me (al-Dhariyat 51:56).
This establish beyond doubt that you must be fully aware of the meaning of Ibadah. Otherwise you will not be able to fulfil the purpose for which you have been created. And anything which does not fulfill its purpose is a failure. If a doctor cannot cure his patient, he may be considered t have failed in his work. If a farmer cannot raise a good crop, he may be held to have failed in his job. Similarly, if you have not been able to fulfil the purpose of your lives, Ibadah, you must be judged failures. Listen, therefore, carefully and understand the meaning of Ibadah and constantly
remember it too . On this depends the success or failure of your lives.
Meaning of 'Ibadah :
What, Then, is worship of 'Ibadah?
The Arabic word 'Ibadah is derived form the same root as the word 'abd, which means servant and slave'. Thus, 'Ibadah means to perform the duties of a servant as does a slave or bondsman. A person is a slave of somebody only if he lives his whole life rendering service and obedience to him and behaves as one should behave to his master. But a person who is supposedly a servant and is being paid for his work but who does not render his master service and obedience as a slave ought, is guilty of disloyalty and rebellion.
How should a slave behave towards his master?
The first duty of a slave is to take only his master as his lord. He should be totally faithful to him alone who sustains, nourishes and protect him and give his loyalty to no one else.
The second duty of a slave is to be always obedient to his master, to carry out all his orders meticulously and to refrain from following his own desires or opinions or following anybody else contrary to his master's wishes. A slave is a slave, every moment and in all circumstances. He has no right to choose to obey a particular order and disobey another, or to say he will be a slave when it suits and ignore his duties for the rest of the time.
The third duty if a slave is to revere and adore his master. To express his reverence, he should follow the ways laid down by him. If he is constant and firm in his faithfulness and obedience, he must present himself at whatever time his master calls him for audience.
These are the qualities which together constitute 'Ibadah: first, loyalty to one's master; second, obedience to him; and third, reverence and adoration for him.
What Allah requires-when He says 'I have not created jinn and mankind except to serve and worship me'- is that we should be loyal, above all, to Him alone and to no one else; we should follow, against everything else, His commandments only; and we should honour and revere Him alone by kneeling and prostrating ourselves. Everywhere in the Qur'an the word 'Ibadah is used in this sense. This is also the substance of the teaching of our Prophet, and of all the prophets sent by god before him, peace be upon them. Each come with the same message, 'Worship and serve none except him, (Yusuf 12:40): there is only one Sovereign to who you must be faithful, and that Sovereign is Allah; there is one law which you must obey, and that is the law of Allah; there is only one Being you should worship, and that being is Allah.
Misunderstanding 'Ibadah :
Now look at the following situations.
What would you say about a servant who, instead of performing the duties required of him by his master, just stands in front of him with folded hands and keeps on chanting his name? his master orders him to go and discharge his obligations to his fellow human beings, but he stays where he is Again and again he bows to his master, salutes him and remains standing up with folded hands. His master instruct him to go and fight against evil to eliminate it, but he does not budge an inch; instead he keeps on prostrating himself before him. His master commands him to cut off the hand of a thief, but the servant, still standing there, recites scores of times in an extremely melodious voice: 'cut off the hand of the thief, cut off the hand of the thief', without ever trying to establish that orders which the hand of a thief may be cut off.
Would you say that this man was really serving his master? And what would be your verdict of you had servants and one behaved in this fashion? Yet how often you regard as devout worshippers so-called servants of God who behave exactly like this! What, for example about the man who reads from dawn to dusk the Divine injunctions in the Qur'an, but never stirs himself to carry them out, chanting instead the name of God on a thousand-bead rosary, praying uninterruptedly and reciting the Qur'an in a beautiful voice? When you see Him doing all this you exclaim: 'What a devout and pious person he is! You are misled because you do not understand the true meaning of 'Ibadah.
Here is another servant. This one is busy day and night carrying out duties given to him by people other than his master, while he constantly flouts the commands of his real master and tries to hides this by always being present at the appointed hours of audience and losing no chance to sing his praises. If any you had such a servant, what would you do with him? Would you not throw back his greeting in his face? If he called you 'Master' and 'Lord', would you not retort: 'You are an impertinent liar and a cheat, you take wages from me but work for others'. You pretend to call me master but actually serve everybody except me'. This is a matter of simple common sense which we can all easily understand.
But how astonishing that you think the Prayers, Fasting, chanting on rosary-beads, recital of the Qur'an, the Pilgrimage and Almsgiving of those people are in fact acts of worship, which day and night violate or ignore the laws of God and follow the orders of the unbelievers. Here, again, you are misled because you are unaware of the true meaning of 'Ibadah.
Now look at yet another servant. His uniform is perfectly tailored and always smart, just as desired by his master. He presents himself before his master showing the utmost honour and reverence. whenever he is given an order, he bows his head and says, 'With all my heart I will obey', as if no one could be more faithful. He is always to the forefront in parsing his master. Yet, at the same time, this man is serving the rebels and enemies of his master, participating in the conspiracies they hatch against him and co-operating with them in their efforts to belittle his name. In the darkness of night he commits burglary in his master's house, but in morning presents himself with folded hands before him like the most faithful of servants.
What would you say about such a servant? Clearly, your verdict would be: he is hypocrite, a rebel, and disloyal. But what do you call this so called servant of God who behave just like this? You call them Sheikhs, Mawlanas, Pirs, and so on. You consider them pious and godly men. This is because you have been misled by external trappings such as full breads, dresses above their ankles, prostration marks on their foreheads, their long sessions of the Prayers and their big rosaries of beads. Again, your error has arisen because you have not grasped the meaning of 'Ibadah and religiosity.
Too often you think that just facing the Qiblah with folded hands, bowing with your hands resting on your knees, prostrating yourselves with your face on the ground and uttering a few ritual words is in itself 'Ibadah. You think that just to be hungry and thirsty from mornings till evening every day from the first of Ramadan till the appearance of the Shawwal moon is 'Ibadah. You think that a mere verbal recital of some parts or Surahs of the Qur'an is 'Ibadah. You think that a visit to Makka and circumambulation of the Ka'ah is 'Ibadah. In short, you think 'Ibadah consists of merely performing certain outward worship rituals and ceremonies, and whenever you notice anybody doing these actions, and no more, you think that they have done their duty, they are true worshipers performing 'Ibadah of God, they have thus fulfilled the purport of the verse, 'I have not created Jin and Mankind except to serve and worship Me'.
'Ibadah, Lifelong Service :
But in reality the 'Ibadah for which God has created you and which He has enjoined upon you is something quite different. It is this: you must follow at every step in your lives the law of God and refuse to obey all laws which conflict with his law. Everything you do must accord with the guidance given by God. only then will your entire lives turn into lives of worship.
In such a life, everything is 'Ibadah: whether you sleep or are awake, whether you eat or drink, whether you work of rest, whether you are silent or talk, are all acts of worship/ so much so that in going to your wives and kissing your children, too, you serve God. All these actions which are usually considered secular and worldly become religious, provided that during their performance you observe the limits laid down by God and remain conscious every moment
and at every step of what is aproved by God (Halal) and what is forbidden by Him (Haram), what is a duty and what must be avoided, which actions please God and which actions displease Him.
For instance, easy opportunities to earn money in a forbidden ways may occur during your life. If you resist this temptation and in obedience to God, confine yourselves to earning money in approved ways only, then your work is itself worship. And you deserve rewards. And the earning you bring home for yourselves, your wives, your children and other have-nots will be blessed by Allah. Indeed whatever you do and whatever time you spend in doing His will and in pleasing Him, you worship Him: when you remove from road a stone or other obstacle which might hurt people; when you nurse an ill person or guide a blind man or help a person in distress; when you avoid lying, gossiping about people behind their backs, making sarcastic remarks and slandering; when you refrain from hurting people; when you talk truthfully and justly.
Real worship of God, therefore, is to follow the way laid down by God and lead lives according to His commandments from childhood to death. There can be no fixed time for this worship; it must be performed all the time God. Nor does it have one particular form ; in every thing you say and do, you must serve God . Since you cannot say: 'I am a servant of God at such a time', and I am not a servent of God at such a time, you cannot say that such and such a time is earmarked for God's service and the remaining time is not. If you truly honour and adore, love and fear God, all your actions will be motivated by these feelings and they will all constitute worship.
Brothers! You may now ask: 'What then is the position of prescribed worship rituals like Prayer (Salah), Almsgiving (Zakah), Fasting (Sawm), Pilgrimage (Hajj) and so on?'
These acts of worship, which Allah has enjoined upon us, in reality, prepare us for that greater overall 'Ibadah that we have to perform throughout our lives. The are the means which turn our lives into lives of worship. Prayer reminds you five times a day that you are slaves of Allah and that Him alone you must serve. Fasting prepares you, for an entire month once every year, for this very service. Almsgiving repeatedly brings home to you the truth that the money you have earned is a gift of God. Do not just spend it on physical pleasures or even solely on material needs: you must render what is due to your Master. Pilgrimage engraves on your heart such a love and awareness of the majesty of God that once take root; they remain with you all your lives.
If, by performing all these acts of worship, you grasp their true inner significance and your entire lives are transformed into an unceasing act of worship, then undoubtedly your Prayer is real prayer, your Fast is real fast, your Almsgiving is real charity and your pilgrimage is real pilgrimage. But if you do not, no purpose is possibly served by merely bowing, keening and prostrating yourself (ruku and Sujud), by spending days in hunger and thirst, by going through the formalities of the pilgrimage and by setting aside money for the Almsgiving. These worship rituals are like a human body: it is a living human being so long as it has a soul and moves about and does work; but if it is soulless, it is no more than a corpse. A corpse has hands and feet, eyes and nose, but you bury it under the earth because It is devoid of soul. So are worship rites if they are devoid of meaning, if they do not generate love and fear of God, loyalty and obedience to Him.
We should try to find out how each act of ritual worship prepares us for a life spent totally in worship; what a great and wonderful difference each can make to our lives if we perform them in full understanding of their meaning and purpose.
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