Working for Allah: A Summary Introduction | January 29, 2005
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Dr. Pasha
If you are a human being, two things are true about you:
That is because as a human being, your life has two distinct aspects:
Working for Allah, therefore, means to choose to work for Allah in all the seemingly voluntary aspects of your life, even as your entire being works for Allah in all the involuntary aspects of your life by the very nature of your creation and by the necessity of your design.
Thus, working for Allah is a matter of choice – careful and considered choice – and not a matter of simple habit or of mindless reflex.
To the extent your body slavishly obeys the laws Allah has created to govern this universe, you are a slave of Allah. That is how you involuntarily work for Allah as a human being – the way slaves do. Your body automatically does what it is designed and created and told by its creator to do. You have no choice in the matter.
Your ears hear sounds; your eyes see pictures, forms, shapes and colors; your nose smells scents; your tongue experiences tastes; your hands touch, feel and hold; and your legs support you when you stand up and help you to walk.
This makes you a Muslim – albeit only involuntarily and automatically. That is, those aspects of your life and body are Muslim over which you have no control. That part of you, therefore, is a dutiful and obedient slave of Allah.
But the other, the more voluntary aspects of your life that is where the real test lies. With regard to them, you must make a conscious and rational decision as to whether or not to work for Allah. At this level, you must choose, decide and prefer to work for Allah. At this stage, working for Allah is a choice you make.
Choosing to work for Allah – voluntarily and willingly – that is what Islam and being a Muslim is all about. It is this decision – and this choice – that makes you a Muslim or a non-Muslim. It is that choice that is at the heart of what God Almighty calls Islam.
Thus, if you choose to work for Allah willingly and voluntarily, consciously and by choice, then you are a Muslim. That is, you are a Muslim in those aspects of your life in which you have a degree of choice, control and freedom. If you reject that choice – and instead choose to work for someone other than God Almighty who made you and made everything in this world for you – then you are not a Muslim.
When you reject that choice – the choice of working for your creator who made you and made everything in this world for you -and you do so knowingly, willfully, and even arrogantly, then you are exactly what you chose to be: a rejecter or a denier.
Kaafir is what the Qur’an calls those who reject God knowingly, willfully, arrogantly.
The challenge, therefore, is that you must consciously, voluntarily and willingly obey Allah and work for him, even as the entire universe obeys Allah and works for him by its very design. And even as your own body and its parts and systems work for Allah in all those areas and aspects over which you have no control.
That is because you are a slave of Allah – that is how he made you – as is the rest of the creation a slave of Allah. It is clear that since he made you, he owns you, just like you say you own the car that you did not invent, design or make but only paid a few thousand dollars or pounds to purchase.
And that is what slaves do: they work for their master. Just like your car works for you. They obey the commands of their master – in every aspect of their lives. They follow the manuals and directives and instructions provided by their owners and masters.
When your car stops obeying your commands or responding to your instructions, it gets sent for service or repair, where its problem parts are cleaned, adjusted or replaced. It then comes back a more responsive and well-behaved car; a car more obedient to your commands and directives; altogether a more “Muslim” car.
But at the same time, working for Allah means embracing a more practical as well as a broader perspective on life. It means “worshipping” God and serving his creation.
That means you cannot claim to love and “worship” God and at the same time hate or distance yourself from God’s creation. You cannot profess to be devoted to God in heaven but do nothing to help alleviate the suffering of human beings right here on earth; and to raise and change their condition and make it better; and to invite them to come to God; and show them in the most beautiful and supportive ways how to do it.
For, if you really loved or feared or “worshipped” God, those are all some of the things you will be automatically and powerfully drawn to.
Custodian of the world – that is the status that being a slave of Allah confers upon you. For, now you are not just anyone’s slave, but the slave of the master of the worlds – Rabbul ‘Aalameen, as he calls himself in his last revealed book the Qur’an.
You learn from the Qur’an, which is your primary book of guidance on how to be a good slave of your master, Allah, that your master is also the one who made and owns every ant and elephant, every plant and planet in the universe. He is their only, true and undisputed maker, master and owner.
Just as you also learn that your master – and the master of all the worlds, Rabbul ‘Aalameen – is not only an all-powerful and just master but also a deeply kind, compassionate, caring, loving, doting master. There is none like him in this world.
Most merciful and even more merciful, those are his primary attributes in the opening chapter of the Qur’an called Surah Al-Fatihah.
That means, as a conscious and committed slave of Allah – as a good Muslim that is, or even just as an ordinary Muslim – you accept the authority and sovereignty of God Almighty, your true and only lord and master, in all aspects and facets of your voluntary life.
That means you believe in him; you teach yourself to love, fear, honor, serve and obey him; and you do your best to live up to the individual and collective code of conduct that he prescribed in the Qur’an and that his messenger Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, so beautifully and so completely practiced in his life – both of which are in our hands today in their entirety and in their full glory, majesty, authority, completeness, accuracy and authenticity.
That also means you embrace a broader and more inclusive perspective on life, on the world and on humanity in general. As a result, you work hard to bring more and more people to see the wisdom and beauty of accepting God as their master. And you also work hard to make the world of Allah a better place for all human beings, regardless of creed, culture, race, age, nationality or gender.
If you did that – if you worked for Allah willingly and voluntarily using a perspective on life that is big and broad and that is inclusive of all human beings and all of Allah’s creation – you are a conscious and committed Muslim. You are a good Muslim, that is. You are now a proper and dutiful slave of Allah.
The name for what you do is Islam. And anyone who submits to his master, to God Almighty, willingly and voluntarily is called a Muslim – the one who submits. You now fear God in his heaven and love and serve his creation right here on earth.
That means you carry out your obligation to God in terms of praying, fasting, pilgrimage and everything else and you do your duty to God’s creation in terms of serving their needs and promoting their welfare.
You are thus connected to God through what people call worship, while you are at the same time connected to God’s creation through service – which in Islam is one of the finest forms of worship. The more clearly you see this and the more deeply you get engrossed in it, the two become increasingly one and the same.
If you reject your master’s call knowingly and willfully, after receiving that call, and after having had time and opportunity to consider and evaluate that call, then you are exactly what you chose and decided to be: a rejecter.
You then become, by your own choice, a rejecter of your master’s will, command and authority in the conscious, willing and voluntary part of your life, even though the rest of your body continues to obey him and work for him involuntarily.
The name for such rejection of Allah’s authority is Kufr. And the one who becomes a rejecter is called a Kafir – the one who rejects.
Kufr is thus knowing, willful and arrogant refusal to work for Allah in the conscious and voluntary aspects of your life. It is a deliberate rejection of Allah’s authority, mandate and law in those areas of your life that are seemingly under your more direct and immediate control.
Or, at a more fundamental level, Kufr is little more than a denial of his very existence or his role in this world and your life. But regardless, it is a choice each one of us makes and must make – and must live with. These names and titles – Islam and Kufr – simply go with the choices we make.
They describe the position we have adopted in life. They indicate whether we have made a decision – a conscious and rational decision – to work for Allah or not to work for him, but rather to work for someone else. For, work for someone we must, that being the nature of human life.
As a result, when we decide not to work for Allah, we in effect make a decision to work for others, even if it is just for ourselves. So, for us as human beings the question is never whether or not to have a master – and whether or not to work for someone – but rather which among the many competing masters must we choose and for which one of tem must we work.
Muslims are simply those people who, ostensibly, have chosen God as their master and have made a conscious and rational commitment to work for him as his slaves, while other people have chosen to work for other masters besides God.
We may ask: Why should we work for Allah anyway?
Well, let me turn that question around and ask: If you didn’t work for Allah, who gave you everything you have, who will you work for?
Will you – and should you – then work for those who gave you nothing? And who can give you nothing?
Does that make sense?
Ask yourself: Who gave you all the blessings and privileges that you enjoy in life? And who can ensure the continuity of those blessings and privileges throughout your life?
Even more fundamentally, who gave you life, which you take so much for granted? And who gave you the complete package of tools to live life with?
Who gave you your central nervous system? And who gave you your circulatory and digestive systems?
Who gave you your disease-fighting – immune – system? And who gave you your reproductive system? And all the other systems and subsystems that comprise the perfect package of human life that you call your body?
Who fitted your body and being with any or all of these systems and their tiniest components and mechanisms?
Who made all the fundamental decisions and choices in your life as regards how you came into this world, each one of which has had such a profound impact on the kind of life you have had thus far?
Or look at the converse of it, and ask yourself these four most fundamental and basic of all questions with regard to how you will go out of this world when your time comes:
How many of these simple questions do you have the answers to? If you don’t know the answers to any or all of these questions, do you know anyone else who does – like your parents; teachers; doctors; scientists; politicians; priests; government officials; basically anyone, anywhere?
If no one knows any of this, then who do you think can control any or all of it? That is the point I am trying to make.
Of course, you may say the whole thing is a fluke, a matter of sheer chance. This is what the passage of 15 billion years – or whatever the correct number – will do to you, you may claim. And you have a right to make that claim. And it is a right given to you, believe it or not, by God Almighty himself – in that noble and glorious miracle of a book called the Qur’an.
Or you can somehow bring yourself to consider an alternative hypothesis, a different way of looking at your existence and how you came to be in this world: that your coming into this world – and the way you came into this world – is an act finely and exquisitely calibrated by your creator and master.
For whatever reason – and who can fathom his mind or guess his reasons? – he decided to make you the way you are, and place you on earth in the time and the place he did, and in the nation and community and with the family he did. And with every one of those decisions went a physical, social, psychological and economic package that was custom made for you.
When your time came to show up on this earth, you were born to that welcome package. You inherited all that stuff.
And he was the one – the only one – who made all those decisions for you with regard to your coming into this world. Just as he is the only one who will make all the decisions with regard to your exit from this world. For, in spite of all the orchestrations and efforts that go into these things, you can no more control your departure from this world, than you were able to control your arrival into it.
These are then two alternative – rival – ways of looking at the world and your place in that world. Call them two hypotheses if you will. Neither is more “provable” or “scientific” than the other, even though there is a great deal of evidence on either side.
But the evidence is inconclusive. That is the beauty of life on earth. Evidence points in both directions. And you are asked to make a choice. In either direction it is a leap of faith. One is called science and the other Islam.
But when done right, they are both the same. They both lead to the same ultimate outcome – reality. Science may call it reality or truth. Islam calls it Haq. And God Almighty is that ultimate reality – clear, complete, full, indubitable, manifest: Al-Haqqul Mubeen (24:25).
Thus, in the ultimate analysis, it is a choice you make. It is the great big test you face in life. Your life will be shaped and determined by the choice you make – right here in this world as well as after your death, in the next world.
If you still don’t get it, let me try and explain a bit further: Who gave you your body? Who made the trillions of parts and components of that body? Who makes them all – each one of them, most of which you don’t even know you have – function properly at the individual level? And who makes them all work together – in unison and in cooperation with one another – the way they do?
Who do you think made the billions of cells in your brain that allow you to do everything you do in life – from thinking, talking and dreaming to walking, seeing and having the use of the various parts of your body, for your day-to-day, second-to-millisecond living?
And who do you think made the earth, the air, the water and the entire solar system and all the galaxies that make life possible for you and all other living things?
So, if everything you have is what Allah gave you, and if the only one who makes it possible for you to continue to enjoy what you have is Allah, then ask yourself: Who should you work for if not for him?
It is that simple!
This is one of the most interesting, intriguing and important questions of all? Not too many people seem to have a good handle on it.
All too often people tie themselves into knots in trying to answer this question. And yet, as I said, this is perhaps one of the most important questions of all. And it is a question that needs a clear answer – an answer that we can understand and also live and work with. So, calling on Allah to help, let me have a shot at it.
Below are some ideas that will help you to develop a clearer understanding of what it means to work for Allah.
If you really want to get a clear handle on what it is to work for Allah then the first thing you need to do is to get away from using the term “religion” to refer to you relationship with God Almighty – and to the entire system of Islam.
While others may not have too much of a difficulty with the use of that term to denote their beliefs and behaviors, it does not make much sense when used to denote Islam and its teachings. In fact, God gave human beings Islam to set them free from the tyranny of religion.
That is because religion is something that you do on a part-time basis. Islam is something you do 24-hours a day. Religion requires doing certain “holy” rituals, in certain “holy” places, on certain “holy” occasions, using certain “holy” formulas and chants presided over by certain “holy” men.
On the other hand Islam, in what is perhaps one of its greatest boons to humanity, sets human beings free from dependence on “holy” men and allows every man and woman to build a direct personal relationship with God Almighty. The more you think about it the more you wonder if this was not one of Islam’s most revolutionary accomplishments – giving every human being a direct and unfettered access to the creator.
As a result, Islam is accessible to all. It is something that is done all the time, in every aspect of one’s life, anywhere convenient, by anyone and everyone – male or female – using life’s everyday tools and wherewithal.
As a result, when you work for Allah, you do not become more “religious,” though it may seem that way to a world conditioned to view life through the sacred-secular prism. You just become instead a more conscious, more committed, more responsible, more caring and more active individual. Above all, you become much more targeted, much more focused and much more efficient and optimal in what you do.
In other words, you become a better human being overall.
Working for Allah then begins with accepting God Almighty as your maker and master and by acknowledging his authority and sovereignty over every aspect of your individual and collective life.
That means from now on you do what you do keeping three simple principles in mind:
a. The first thing is to make sure your motives are pure. That means you do everything you do with one clear, primary and overriding purpose in mind: to please God Almighty and not to curry favor with anyone else or to seek any worldly gain or advantage.
b. The next thing is to make sure everything you do is done based on and according to God’s law and commandments. This has five easily identifiable guidelines and parameters:
i) The Qur’an.
Derive all your actions from the Qur’an – God Almighty’s own book in your own mortal and feeble hands.
There is no book like it. It is “The” book, as Allah himself calls it. There is no doubt or error in it. Where else are you going to find a book like that?
ii) The Sunnah.
Let all your actions be guided by the model of the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, as found in the wonderful and most amazing collection of Hadith we have at our disposal.
It is the most complete and the most authentic and accurate record of the most fully, comprehensively and wonderfully lived human life on earth. There is nothing like it in this world.
It is among the greatest miracles of all.
This package of the Qur’an and Hadith taken together is what is called the Deen of Allah – God Almighty’s chosen way for you.
Islam is the divine system that operates the universe that God created – what many non-Muslims would refer to as nature. Islam is what holds the heavenly bodies together – call it gravity if you will. It is what makes the earth rotate on its axis.
Now the same Islam that runs the world at a cosmic level is in your hands in the form of the Qur’an and Hadith. And now it is recast by God Almighty to fit the needs of your daily life on planet earth: your life as individuals as well as your life as families, groups, organizations, institutions, societies, nations, cultures and collectivities of all kinds.
iii) Common Sense.
While trying to conform to the letter and spirit of the text of the Qur’an and Hadith with utmost faithfulness, do not ignore common sense and the demands of practical life in the environment and context in which you live.
For, God sent Islam into this world to help you, not to make life impossible and miserable for you. And he equipped you with intelligence, reason and common sense to help you navigate the turbulent waters of life.
iv) Science.
What is science if not common sense and basic human logic, rationality and observation put through tighter thinking and more rigorous analysis and testing? So, science and rationality form key pillars of thought and behavior in relation to working for Allah – Islam that is.
Do you see how the equation has already changed dramatically? Instead of talking about Islam and science being at loggerheads with one another, we are now talking about both having the same goal and seeking the same outcome – and in fact one being a close ally of the other.
As I mentioned earlier, done right, the distinction between the two disappears – except maybe to note that one comes down from God to help humans while the other is the earthbound human attempt to reach God.
A great deal of the trouble Muslims are in today comes from their generally having turned their back on knowledge and education in general and on science in particular, which is in significant part due to their flawed understanding of Islam.
v) Pragmatism.
There is nothing negative or pejorative about this idea. What I mean by pragmatism is that Muslims, in order to be successful at the human level, need to have a good, solid connection with reality. They need to be fully aware of their environment and use a problem-solving approach to cope with the reality that surrounds them.
That is because Islam is as much a practical guide to solving our daily problems as it is a set of sublime ideas about God and the Day of Judgment. There was no more pragmatic and problem-solving man on earth than Prophet, Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam.
c. The third important principle to keep in mind while working for Allah is to make sure your ideas and efforts are geared toward serving the best interests of all of the creation of Allah – from Muslims and non-Muslims to animal and plant life and the environment and the entire universe.
They are all different manifestations of the majesty, power and glory of Almighty Allah. No matter how you look at it, the universe is one seamless family. Kullun Lahu Qaanitoon, as Allah says in the Qur’an: each working for him in its own way.
All this means your commitment to work for Allah must translate into a serious commitment to do five things:
There are two areas of focus in human life that are relevant to the question of working for Allah. And most people have trouble getting them right. The confusion comes from the fact that the two areas, on surface, seem to pull in two different directions. One toward self-focus and self-interest and the other away from it.
The first is a more personal and private focus. It has to do with one’s “personal” life – if there is such a thing as that. This would include one’s personal beliefs, prayers, fasting, personal morals and such other things.
The second is a more social and public focus. This has to do with the dealings of individuals with the rest of the creation of Allah. This starts out with one’s closest circles and spreads out to cover the entire known accessible universe.
The fact is humans are social beings and they need other human beings to exist and function in life. In fact, they need all of the creation of Allah, without which they are lost and doomed.
Imagine what would happen to the world – and to us in that world – if there were no water on earth; if the wind did not blow; if the trees did not grow; if the sun did not rise; if there were no animals; you imagine the rest. Our existence, thus, is most intimately connected with the existence and functioning of the rest of the creation of Allah.
That is why it is important for us to clearly understand our place and our role in this world. It is important for us both as part of the larger creation of Allah as well as in relation to our unique identity as members of different communities and social networks of human beings.
For example, it takes a man and a woman to produce one of us. And then there are all kinds of others who are involved in different ways in one’s life: nurses, doctors, teachers, butchers, bakers, undertakers, bureaucrats, police officers, military personnel, masons, carpenters, taxi drivers, gardeners – the list is virtually endless.
All this means one thing: People need people at all stages of their life. And no human being, as a poet once put it, is an island, but rather, a part of the whole.
And humans go on to build societies and nations that have their own political, social, economic and cultural structures and arrangements. Individuals must find a place in these larger structures, of which they are both makers and products.
It is such a human being – a basically social, political, economic and cultural creature – that Allah Almighty created as his representative on earth to run and manage this world in accordance with his laws and guidance.
He provided this guidance to us in his revealed books such as the books of Moses, David and Jesus, God bless them all. The Qur’an is the final, eternal and most comprehensive compilation from God of his laws for all people, for all times, in all places.
So, public focus means, on the one hand, how to deal with all of life’s situations in a way that would be in conformity with the commands and laws of Allah and, therefore, will please Almighty Allah. And which would on the other hand mean how to move life on earth forward and make it better for all of Allah’s creation.
Those who truly understand the relationship between these two areas of focus know that one is not possible without the other. And that the path to one inevitably must go through the other.
At the top of it all, however, is the imperative of working for Allah in such a way that the two seemingly contradictory areas of focus become one and the same. This seamless integration of different aspects of human life into one organic whole is one of the greatest contributions of Islam to human life, culture and civilization.
The challenge is to successfully combine the two – and doing so in a judicious and balanced manner, so that one aspect of your life does not completely overshadow or rob the other of its legitimate rights.
So, good human beings in general and good Muslims in particular are those who combine in their lives both private and public focus.
And make them both flow from and conform to Allah’s laws, commands, revealed will and pleasure.
It is not one or the other, but both together. That is the living miracle of Islam: the fact that it rolled all the divergent needs, demands and pulls of human life into one integrated and seamless whole.
As a result, Islam asks human beings to live a privately pious, God-fearing, God-loving, noble, civilized and decent life that would become a public boon and blessing for all of one’s neighbors, friends and relatives and for all members of the community and society and the world at large.
That means Muslims – Good Muslims if you want to call them that – are people who not only believe in God and obey him in their own personal lives – if there indeed is such a thing – but they are also people who toil mightily to make Allah’s world a better, happier and more just and compassionate place for all other human beings – and for all of the rest of Allah’s creation.
That means such people, in addition to having a private and personal focus centered on their own lives, also have a strong public and social focus embracing the lives and concerns of others.
That then is the true and fuller meaning of the expression working for Allah.
It means using the instructions and the blueprint given by Allah in the Qur’an, and using the practical example provided by the Rasul of Allah, Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, in his own life and times, to make our own lives better and to make this world a better place for all – in our own times and in the context of the conditions and circumstances in which we live.
That is quintessentially the ideal human being that Allah designed as his vicegerent on earth. Not superman, but a regular, ordinary human being with the right and proper perspective on life and existence. And that is also, precisely, the essence of being a Muslim – what you may call a good Muslim.
May God Almighty make us all of those who submit to him and work for him in the most wonderful manner, using his laws and commands as well as the model and example of his Rasul, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, to make our own lives better – as well as to make Allah’s world a better, nicer and more just, fair, compassionate and rewarding place for all of Allah’s creation!
May Allah help, guide, accept and bless our efforts! For, it is in his acceptance, grace and blessings that success is to be found.
And may he protect us from Shaitan – the devil – whose mission is to create impediments and roadblocks in our path and keep us from working for Allah.
END
(Revised)
© 2005 Syed Husain Pasha
Dr. Pasha is an educator and scholar of exceptional
talent, training and experience. He can be reached at DrSyedPasha [at]
AOL [dot] com or www.IslamicSolutions.com.