Muslims have a problem. Non-Muslims have a problem. They all have a problem. And it is not what most people may think it is – whatever people may think it is. I am talking about a very different problem, and which to me is at the core of all other problems anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, may have in this world.
I am referring to Dhikr Allah – thinking of God. They just don’t do enough of it. Neither group does. Not the Muslims, not the non-Muslims.
They just don’t think about Allah enough.
They don’t talk about Allah enough.
They don’t mention Allah enough.
They don’t remember Allah enough.
They don’t do Dhikr Allah enough.
ALLAH IS GOD!
Allah, of course you know, is God – God Almighty; the one and only. The only God there is – or can be.
Allah is the God of the Old Testament.
Allah is the God of the New Testament.
And Allah is the God of all Divine Scripture; and of all the Divine Messengers and Prophets in every place and in every age.
Fa-dhaalikumullah – as the Qur’ān says: He is Allah!
He is God – the Almighty: the one and only.
THINKING GOD
So, the big Muslim problem is that Muslims don’t think about God enough, which also is coincidentally – or maybe not so coincidentally – the big non-Muslim problem.
They just don’t do enough Dhikr Allah – whether it is at the individual, group, regional, national or international levels. I don’t know how Muslims got into this sorry situation. But that to me is the biggest Muslim problem.
ONE SINGLE, UNIFIED UMMAT
Along, of course, with all the other big and little problems the Muslims may have, in any particular place or time – or as an Ummat. Ummat is God’s word for the timeless and universal Nation of Believers in God. And that Ummat, according to the Qur’ān and the God of the Qur’ān, is one.
Hear God say it and then tell me which part of it is not clear or confusing.
Qur’ān: Inna haadhihi ummatukum ummatan waahidatan wa ana rabbukum fa’abudooni.
Paraphrase: “This Ummat of yours is one single unified Ummat, and I am your Rabb – lord, master, maker, owner, sustainer, cherisher, as Yusuf Ali calls him – so, serve, obey and worship me.”
Muslims of course went ahead and did with it what they have done with much else: they changed it.
FOR SOME, TWO UMMATS
Now, there are those among Muslims who shamelessly and blatantly use expressions such as these: Al-ummatain al-Arabiyyah wal-Islamiyyah.
“The two nations: Arabic and Islamic!”
Hello! And you tell me there aren’t Muslims among us who change the Qur’ān, and who do Tahreef to the Qur’ān? And, get this, not a murmur of protest from any quarter. Not one whimper or squeak!
And then you complain God did this to you, and did that to you, and did something else to you?
And then there are all those good Muslims – in fact great Muslims – who frown upon my criticizing the Muslims. What can I say?
And of course Ummat also simply means a nation or people – any nation or people of any kind.
In Qur’ān, even animal species are Ummats – just like us. Illaa umamun amthaalukum, is how the Qur’ān phrases it. Subhanallah, how beautiful this Qur’ān is! And how clear! Who but God could produce a book like that!
HOW IS IT CONCEIVABLE?
So, I find it utterly incomprehensible that anyone who believes in God even an iota will not be thinking, talking, mentioning, remembering and doing Dhikr of God all the time.How is such a thing even conceivable – that you will say you believe in God, and you love God, and yet you will not think, talk, mention and remember God all the time?
Well, if not all the time, even though that is what I mean, let us call it as much as they can possibly make it. If you want to know how to spend every moment of your life – waking as well as sleeping – doing Allah’s Dhikr, and don’t miss a beat, talk to me. For, that is what Islam is all about.
GOD IS GOD!
What we all must realize is that God is God. And he is everybody’s God. Muslims’ as well non-Muslims’.
So, whatever fight Non-Muslims may have with Muslims – rightly or wrongly – it should not spill over to God. For God is nobody’s God in particular, in the sense of being exclusive to them. And yet he is everybody’s God – in equal measure. Commonly shared by everyone of God’s creation.
More so than any loving parent that is every child’s parent – in equal measure.
So, the children may quarrel all they want among themselves. But they should not burn their bridges to their parent. In the same way, humans should not burn their bridges to God – no matter what their quarrel with any of their fellow- or sibling-creation of God.
MEMORISE THESE TWO WORDS
Dhikr Allah is one of the greatest miracles of Islam – a living and present miracle, not one that is dead and gone centuries ago. And it shows as conclusively and clearly as you can expect to have anything in this world that this Islam – and this noble and glorious Qur’ān; and this Rasul, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam; and this pure and perfected Hadih – can only come from God. And there is no earthly possibility any of it could have been cooked up by a human agency.
Yes, talk to me, and I will walk you step by step through it all and show you, item by item, how crystal clear and how irrefutably overpowering it all is. And remember the expression is Dhikr Allah. Doesn’t matter you are a Muslim or not, just memorize these two simple words: Dhikr Allah. It is good for you.
If there is a God, it works for you. If there isn’t, then, hey, you lose nothing. You come out ahead either way.
IT IS ALI’S IDEA
Don’t blame me or give me credit for this thought. I took it from Sayyidina ‘Ali, Radiyallahu ‘Anhu, when he challenged the Scientist (Munajjim: Astronomer) and the Doctor (Twabeeb: Physician), advancing precisely this argument. What simple and yet most overpowering logic!
Ali, Radiyallahu Anhu, which means “May God be pleased with him,” outlined two possibilities and said to the Astronomer and the Physician – in verse of course, in which Ali, Radiyallahu Anhu, was just great as in so many other things: “If there is no God, and if there is no Resurrection and no Day of Judgment, then, as a Believer, I lose nothing.”
“But if,” Ali, may God be pleased with him, continued: “If it turns out, and if we find out after death, that there indeed is a God, then you will be in jeopardy, don’t you think?”
Fal-wabaalu ‘alaikumaa, is how he said it. How simple and yet how powerful – this logic of Ali, Radiyallahu Anhu!