1981-July-31

Bialian News

Submission to Allah's Will

Imam Warith Deen Muhammad


(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from a Khutbah delivered by Imam Warith Deen Muhammad at Masjid Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Friday. June 19, 1981)

Praise be to Allah. Guardian, Evolver, Cherisher, and Sustainer of all the worlds. We seek His help. We ask forgiveness of Him. We put our trust in Him. We pray to Him on the gift of Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah to us all.

Dear beloved Muslims, Allah says in Quran, ''Surely Allah sustains the skies and the Earth. And if it were not for Him sustaining them, they would not be sustained; none could hold them if it were not for Allah."

We understand by that, then, that Allah is Creator of everything and has power over everything. Everything depends on Him for its continued existence. The skies are created by Allah; the Earth and everything therein is created by Allah. We, ourselves, are the creation of Allah, and our well-being depends upon the blessing of Allah.

Dear beloved Muslims, again we are to understand that we believe in the will of Allah, that His will overrides everything. We believe in the Oneness of Allah and in the Oneness of His will. There is only one Allah; not two, not more than one—only one Allah! "Say He is Allah, the One and Only," And He is the same One who created everything.

Allah says in the Quran that He is the One that created you and the earliest generation. He is not divided in His will. We know that the Prophets, peace and blessings be on them, came to serve the will of Allah. They were sent or missioned to serve the will of Allah, Allah says of us, of the Prophets, of all His creation, that we cannot will except as He wills—the Lord, Sustainer of all the worlds.

Then, we shouldn't expect to have any power of our own, to execute judgment or to carry out our will unless that is the will of Allah, the Almighty. There is the unity of His will, and unless we abide by His judgment and seek to please Him, to concur in what He wants in His will, we perish. There is no salvation for us except in obedience to Allah who created us and all that exists.

The life of a believer is not an easy one. Allah has not invited us to a rose bed of ease.
Allah has invited us to accept the challenge, a challenge to live a righteous life while facing all kinds of temptations that are designed to disconcert, to break your will, so that your desire is broken up into the desires for the things of this world. But if you can keep your desire uniform, desiring what Allah wants, then that is salvation.

Dear beloved people, we are asked to live this religion for Allah's sake —that's the key. If you do it for your own sake, then pretty soon you will fail yourself. We are not big enough to be a motivation for ourselves. The individual will fail himself as a motivation sooner or later. If we do it for the family's sake, sooner or later the family will fail us, because the family is not big enough motivation in our lives to keep us going. If we do it for our friends' sake, for our associates" sake, pretty soon that will also fail us, because that is not a big enough motivation in our life.

There is a motivation, however, that is so big that it cannot fail us. If you do something to please Allah, that's a big enough motivation to keep you going forever. That will never fail you. We should live this religion not for my sake, not for your sake, not for the loved one's sake or for the sake of society; we should live this religion for the sake of Allah, for His pleasure.

Who will enter the Paradise? It will be the soul that pleases Allah, In pleasing Allah, it receives its pleasure. That's what Allah tells us in the Quran.

I believe the whole trouble of this world can be summed up in this one aspect of our troubles. We are looking for happiness, trying to find it from things that don't have the power to give it. We are looking for happiness from the created things instead of looking for happiness from the Creator. The happiness that we seek must come from the Creator.

If I seek to please myself without respecting what is Allah's pleasure, I'm going to go against the will of Allah. But if I seek to fulfill my life in the light of what Allah has ordained for me, and I strive hard to live a good life as a believer, then I'm going to get enjoyment out of this life. I'm going to be happy when other people are miserable, simply because I am living rightly in terms of my attitude towards life.

After all, faith is a maturing of attitudes. There is no true faith without proper attitudes. If we are motivated by something or if we are .aspiring to something that is selfish, we will soon fail ourselves.

We find that even without the pure concept of Allah, if we give service unselfishly, we get more happiness out of life. This is true for all even for the atheist. People who will give of themselves unselfishly find more reward in life. But those who give selfishly, who give thinking what am I going to get out of this, they are constantly thinking about themselves, and missing the concerns of others. "What is it doing for me?" This attitude deprives the individual. They can never find happiness with that attitude.

Live to give —the human being has a heart, and a heart is supposed to give and receive.

We have been created to serve Him. He, Most High, says He has not created men and Jinn except for His service or worship. That tells us that the express purpose of our creation is devotion, service.

If that attitude dominates us, then we will live a better life. The emphasis is on giving, more than on receiving. Well, you are going to receive. Receiving doesn't mean you are going to be happy. Look at the fat fellow who receives all the food but is still miserable. Look at the one with all the money who is still miserable. The one at the top of the heap, he's in the seat of power but is still miserable. Receiving doesn't mean you are going to be happy.

It's a matter of correct attitude, brothers and sisters. The attitude of the believer is one of submission to Allah. We live in a spirit of peace and humbleness. We see ourselves as creatures that have been favored with a limited free will —for what? To try us, to test us! To prove excellence by excellent behavior.

Allah says that if we fail, he revolves the gift so that it goes to others; you will be without it, someone else will have it as a test for their behavior. He rotates the kingdom to prove how you will behave. This life is a test, dear brothers and sisters. Prove that for which you have been created: Prove excellence.
