Why obey God?
( This an extract from book " Let us be muslim " by moulana Abul Aala Moududi R A )
Brothers in Islam! I have frequently emphasized that 'Islam'means total surrender to Allah and the messenger, and that no one can become truly Muslim unless he gives up obedience to anyone or anything apart from God.
But why is so much stress laid on obedience to God and His Messenger? You may ask: Does God need our obedience so badly that He has to demand it so insistently from us? Is He, too, like the rulers of the world so power-hungry that He has to insist His rule cannot be sustained without these subjugating us?
Let us try to examine these questions.
Our Well-being :
Essentially, the demand for obedience to Allah is intended for the well-being and betterment of man himself. He is not like the rulers of the world. They subjugate people to benefit themselves, but Allah needs nothing from anybody. He is not need of taxes from you, nor does He require building mansions, buys cars and amassing luxury articles at your expense. He is not dependent on anyone for anything. Whatever is in the world belongs to Him alone and He alone is the master of all treasures.
He demands obedience from you only because He does not want man-that creation of His whom He has declared to be the noblest- to be the servant of another man like him, or of Satan or bow his head before unworthy things. He does not desire that His vicegerents on earth grope in the darkness of ignorance and, like animals, become slaves to their desire and thus degrade themselves to the level of the lowest if the low. Therefore he urges: You obey me and walk by the light I have sent through my messengers. You will find the straight path. By walking on it you will receive dignity in this world as well as in the Hereafter.
No coercion is there in religion. Distinct has become the right way from [the way of] error. So whosoever rejects false Gods and believes in God has indeed taken hold of the most firm handle which shall never break. God is All-hearing, All-knowing. God is the friend of those who have faith; He brings them out of darkness in to light and the disbelievers their friends are false gods that bring them out of the light into darkness; those are the inhabents of the fire ,
therein to abide forever (al-Baqarah 2:256-7) .
Obeying others besides Allah :
Why will a man Plunge into darkness by obeying others besides Allah and why is it that only by obeying Allah cans his life be illuminated? Let us look into this important question.
Our lives are made up of countless relations and transactions. Our first relationship is with our own bodies: these hands, these feet, these eyes, these ears, these tongues, these hearts, and the mind, this belly- all these have been entrusted to you by Allah to server you. You have also been given freedom to decide what end to employ them.
What to put in your bellies, and what to avoid. What to make your hands do and what to keep them away from. Where to let your feet walk and when to hold back. What to let your eyes see and ears hear, and what to refrain from, what to allow your tongues to say, and when to fall silent. What kind of thoughts to make your hearts and minds reflect upon, and what to shun. These servants of yours you can make do good work or bad, as you choose. In return, they can make you ascend great heights or plunge you into abysmal depths.
Then you have relationships with the members of your family - with you fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, wives, children and other relatives with whom you have to deal continuously. You have to decide how to behave with these people, what rights they have over you. Your comfort, your happiness and your success in this world as well as in the Hereafter depend very much on how correctly you behave with them. If you behave wrongly, you will make this world a Hell for yourselves. And in the Hereafter, too, you will have to answer to God.
You have relationship with many other people. They are your neighbours, friends and enemies. There are also many who work for you in various ways. To some you have to give something. Some entrust you with their works while you entrust your works to others. You are in command over some people and others are in command over you. In this world, your happiness, your honour and your good names-all depend entirely on your ability to maintain these relationships properly.
In the Hereafter, too, you can acquire places of honour near God only by scrupulously avoiding abusing the rights of others and doing them injustices. There, let no one charge you with having ruined his life or having illegally his honour, life or property. You, therefore, have to maintain these relationships in a proper manner; actions which may spoil or disrupt these relations should be avoided.
Now consider: in order to maintain proper relationships with your one body, with the members of your families and with all other people, you need the light of knowledge at every step. You have to know what is right and what is wrong; what is true and what is false; what is just and what is unjust; what rights you have over others and what rights others have over you; in what there is real benefits and what lies real harm.
If you try to find this knowledge with the help of your reason and feelings alone, you will not find it. Because you're self is overpowered by the urge to immediate gratification of desires. Your reason and feelings are, therefore, ruled by physical pleasure and immediate temptations. They will tempt you to earn money by doing illegal things, drink alcohol and commit adultery. They will lead you to usurp the right of others and with held things due to them on the grounds that such behaviour will profit you: take everything and give nothing. They will also make you exploit others t serves your ends while avoiding the doing of any service to anybody, arguing that this will make life easy and comfortable.
If you allow yourself to be led by a self who gropes in such darkness, it will drag you down to the level of selfish, depraved and corrupt persons and your lives both on earth and in the Hereafter will be ruined.
Alternatively, instead of following the self, you may rely on other human beings like yourselves, and place yourselves in their hands to take you in whichever direction they like. The dangers in such a course are obvious: selfish persons may make you slaves of their own desires, and ignorant men, who have themselves gone astray, may mislead you also. Tyrants may use you to perpetrate oppression and injustice on others.
From human beings like yourselves, too, you cannot get that light of knowledge which can guide you to distinguish between right and wrong, between good and bad, and direct you on the right path.
The only True Guidance :
In the final analysis there remains only one source of truth: that one Supreme Being from whom you can get the necessary light. God is All-Knowing and All-seeing. He knows the inner reality of all things. He alone can tell you precisely what is to your benefit and what is to your detriment. He alone can lay down which actions are right of you and which are wrong. He has no vested interest and no axe to grind. He has no need to secure any benefit by deception. Therefore, whatever directions that Holy and Self-subsistent being gives you will be without any ulterior motive and will be intended exclusively for you benefit .
Allah is also the ultimate dispenser of justice. There is not the slightest element of injustice in that holy Being; His commandments are based totally on truth and justice. In following them there is no danger of you doing any injustice
to yourselves or to other people
How to benefit :
Two things are necessary in order to benefit from the light given by God. First, you must believe sincerely in Allah
and His Messengers, through whom this light has been transmitted. This means that you should be absolutely certain that whatever guidance the Messenger has brought from God is right and true, whether at a particular time you understand the wisdom behind it or not. Second, after you have believed, you should follow that guidance, because without obedience nothing can be achieved .
Suppose a man tell you not to eat a certain thing because it is poisonous and you say, 'You are undoubtedly right, it is poisonous and fatal'. Then, despite acknowledging this truth, you eat that thing. The result will obviously be the same as if you had eaten it unknowingly. So what is the point of just knowing something without acting on your knowledge?
You can achieve real benefit only when you obey Allah after affirming faith in Him, when you obey His commandments and not merely utter your belief in their truth. Similarly, you should not simply promise verbally to abstain from things which have been forbidden, but in fact abstain from them. That is why Allah repeatedly urges: 'Obey Allah and obey the Messenger'(al-Ma'idah 5:92). And: 'If you obey him, you will be guided'(al-Nur 24:54). And: 'so let those who go against His command beware, lest a trail befall them. Or there befall them a painful
punishment'(al-Nur 24:63).
No blind Obedience :
Let there be no misunderstanding about one thing. By saying that only Allah and the Messenger should be obeyed I do not mean that you should refrain from listening to anyone else. No. The only thing is that you should not follow anybody unthinkingly: you should always examine whatever a person tell you to see if it is in accordance with the guidance given by Allah and the Messenger or not. If it is, you should accept what he tells you because you will in fact be obeying not him but Allah and the Messenger. If it is not, you should reject him because no one has a right to be obeyed as against Allah and His Messenger.
You understand that Allah does not himself appear before man and deliver His guidance. Whatever guidance He has to give he has conveyed through He Messenger. The Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, too, left this world for his heavenly home about fourteen centuries ago. The commandments given by Allah through him are preserved in the Qur'an and Hadith. But the Qur'an and Hadith cannot in their nature come before you and give orders to do certain things and not to do other things. It is men who will help you conduct yourselves according to the Qur'an and Hadith. There is therefore no other course of action open but to obey the teachings of men.
What is essential is that you do not follow people with closed eyes. As I have just told you, you should first see whether they are advising you according to the Qur'an and Hadith or not. If they are, then it is incumbent on you to obey them. But if they want to lead; you on to an opposing course, then it is forbidden to obey them.
Brothers in Islam! I have frequently emphasized that 'Islam'means total surrender to Allah and the messenger, and that no one can become truly Muslim unless he gives up obedience to anyone or anything apart from God.
But why is so much stress laid on obedience to God and His Messenger? You may ask: Does God need our obedience so badly that He has to demand it so insistently from us? Is He, too, like the rulers of the world so power-hungry that He has to insist His rule cannot be sustained without these subjugating us?
Let us try to examine these questions.
Our Well-being :
Essentially, the demand for obedience to Allah is intended for the well-being and betterment of man himself. He is not like the rulers of the world. They subjugate people to benefit themselves, but Allah needs nothing from anybody. He is not need of taxes from you, nor does He require building mansions, buys cars and amassing luxury articles at your expense. He is not dependent on anyone for anything. Whatever is in the world belongs to Him alone and He alone is the master of all treasures.
He demands obedience from you only because He does not want man-that creation of His whom He has declared to be the noblest- to be the servant of another man like him, or of Satan or bow his head before unworthy things. He does not desire that His vicegerents on earth grope in the darkness of ignorance and, like animals, become slaves to their desire and thus degrade themselves to the level of the lowest if the low. Therefore he urges: You obey me and walk by the light I have sent through my messengers. You will find the straight path. By walking on it you will receive dignity in this world as well as in the Hereafter.
No coercion is there in religion. Distinct has become the right way from [the way of] error. So whosoever rejects false Gods and believes in God has indeed taken hold of the most firm handle which shall never break. God is All-hearing, All-knowing. God is the friend of those who have faith; He brings them out of darkness in to light and the disbelievers their friends are false gods that bring them out of the light into darkness; those are the inhabents of the fire ,
therein to abide forever (al-Baqarah 2:256-7) .
Obeying others besides Allah :
Why will a man Plunge into darkness by obeying others besides Allah and why is it that only by obeying Allah cans his life be illuminated? Let us look into this important question.
Our lives are made up of countless relations and transactions. Our first relationship is with our own bodies: these hands, these feet, these eyes, these ears, these tongues, these hearts, and the mind, this belly- all these have been entrusted to you by Allah to server you. You have also been given freedom to decide what end to employ them.
What to put in your bellies, and what to avoid. What to make your hands do and what to keep them away from. Where to let your feet walk and when to hold back. What to let your eyes see and ears hear, and what to refrain from, what to allow your tongues to say, and when to fall silent. What kind of thoughts to make your hearts and minds reflect upon, and what to shun. These servants of yours you can make do good work or bad, as you choose. In return, they can make you ascend great heights or plunge you into abysmal depths.
Then you have relationships with the members of your family - with you fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, wives, children and other relatives with whom you have to deal continuously. You have to decide how to behave with these people, what rights they have over you. Your comfort, your happiness and your success in this world as well as in the Hereafter depend very much on how correctly you behave with them. If you behave wrongly, you will make this world a Hell for yourselves. And in the Hereafter, too, you will have to answer to God.
You have relationship with many other people. They are your neighbours, friends and enemies. There are also many who work for you in various ways. To some you have to give something. Some entrust you with their works while you entrust your works to others. You are in command over some people and others are in command over you. In this world, your happiness, your honour and your good names-all depend entirely on your ability to maintain these relationships properly.
In the Hereafter, too, you can acquire places of honour near God only by scrupulously avoiding abusing the rights of others and doing them injustices. There, let no one charge you with having ruined his life or having illegally his honour, life or property. You, therefore, have to maintain these relationships in a proper manner; actions which may spoil or disrupt these relations should be avoided.
Now consider: in order to maintain proper relationships with your one body, with the members of your families and with all other people, you need the light of knowledge at every step. You have to know what is right and what is wrong; what is true and what is false; what is just and what is unjust; what rights you have over others and what rights others have over you; in what there is real benefits and what lies real harm.
If you try to find this knowledge with the help of your reason and feelings alone, you will not find it. Because you're self is overpowered by the urge to immediate gratification of desires. Your reason and feelings are, therefore, ruled by physical pleasure and immediate temptations. They will tempt you to earn money by doing illegal things, drink alcohol and commit adultery. They will lead you to usurp the right of others and with held things due to them on the grounds that such behaviour will profit you: take everything and give nothing. They will also make you exploit others t serves your ends while avoiding the doing of any service to anybody, arguing that this will make life easy and comfortable.
If you allow yourself to be led by a self who gropes in such darkness, it will drag you down to the level of selfish, depraved and corrupt persons and your lives both on earth and in the Hereafter will be ruined.
Alternatively, instead of following the self, you may rely on other human beings like yourselves, and place yourselves in their hands to take you in whichever direction they like. The dangers in such a course are obvious: selfish persons may make you slaves of their own desires, and ignorant men, who have themselves gone astray, may mislead you also. Tyrants may use you to perpetrate oppression and injustice on others.
From human beings like yourselves, too, you cannot get that light of knowledge which can guide you to distinguish between right and wrong, between good and bad, and direct you on the right path.
The only True Guidance :
In the final analysis there remains only one source of truth: that one Supreme Being from whom you can get the necessary light. God is All-Knowing and All-seeing. He knows the inner reality of all things. He alone can tell you precisely what is to your benefit and what is to your detriment. He alone can lay down which actions are right of you and which are wrong. He has no vested interest and no axe to grind. He has no need to secure any benefit by deception. Therefore, whatever directions that Holy and Self-subsistent being gives you will be without any ulterior motive and will be intended exclusively for you benefit .
Allah is also the ultimate dispenser of justice. There is not the slightest element of injustice in that holy Being; His commandments are based totally on truth and justice. In following them there is no danger of you doing any injustice
to yourselves or to other people
How to benefit :
Two things are necessary in order to benefit from the light given by God. First, you must believe sincerely in Allah
and His Messengers, through whom this light has been transmitted. This means that you should be absolutely certain that whatever guidance the Messenger has brought from God is right and true, whether at a particular time you understand the wisdom behind it or not. Second, after you have believed, you should follow that guidance, because without obedience nothing can be achieved .
Suppose a man tell you not to eat a certain thing because it is poisonous and you say, 'You are undoubtedly right, it is poisonous and fatal'. Then, despite acknowledging this truth, you eat that thing. The result will obviously be the same as if you had eaten it unknowingly. So what is the point of just knowing something without acting on your knowledge?
You can achieve real benefit only when you obey Allah after affirming faith in Him, when you obey His commandments and not merely utter your belief in their truth. Similarly, you should not simply promise verbally to abstain from things which have been forbidden, but in fact abstain from them. That is why Allah repeatedly urges: 'Obey Allah and obey the Messenger'(al-Ma'idah 5:92). And: 'If you obey him, you will be guided'(al-Nur 24:54). And: 'so let those who go against His command beware, lest a trail befall them. Or there befall them a painful
punishment'(al-Nur 24:63).
No blind Obedience :
Let there be no misunderstanding about one thing. By saying that only Allah and the Messenger should be obeyed I do not mean that you should refrain from listening to anyone else. No. The only thing is that you should not follow anybody unthinkingly: you should always examine whatever a person tell you to see if it is in accordance with the guidance given by Allah and the Messenger or not. If it is, you should accept what he tells you because you will in fact be obeying not him but Allah and the Messenger. If it is not, you should reject him because no one has a right to be obeyed as against Allah and His Messenger.
You understand that Allah does not himself appear before man and deliver His guidance. Whatever guidance He has to give he has conveyed through He Messenger. The Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, too, left this world for his heavenly home about fourteen centuries ago. The commandments given by Allah through him are preserved in the Qur'an and Hadith. But the Qur'an and Hadith cannot in their nature come before you and give orders to do certain things and not to do other things. It is men who will help you conduct yourselves according to the Qur'an and Hadith. There is therefore no other course of action open but to obey the teachings of men.
What is essential is that you do not follow people with closed eyes. As I have just told you, you should first see whether they are advising you according to the Qur'an and Hadith or not. If they are, then it is incumbent on you to obey them. But if they want to lead; you on to an opposing course, then it is forbidden to obey them.
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