LOVE LEADS TO WORSHIP - A Personal Reflection

Worship is instigated in the heart due to the love of a thing. 

The word 'اله' ‘ilaah’ in its root verb form denotes the meaning of loving something. Our hearts incline towards worshiping ALLAH more when our hearts are filled with love for HIM. We want to be of service to HIM and do what pleases HIM because we love HIM.

I was reflecting on how love brings about obedience, worship and service to the thing that is loved and also how a heart that is full of the love of other things cannot be filled with the love of ALLAH. It’s like a container that can only contain one type of water in it. If you put juice (love of ALLAH) in a cup but then put the cup under running water and keep filling it with the love of other things eventually there will be no juice and only water in the cup. Also if the cup already has attachments or stones that are stuck to its inner surface then the juice will not be able to fill that space. I was thinking about how in these times this idea is used to lead people‘s hearts away from ALLAH and also how our attachments to people and the Dunya take up space that stops our hearts from filling with the love of ALLAH.

We are surrounded by a culture where the love for pop stars, celebrities, sportsmen, and football players is placed in the hearts of people via media, magazines TV and the same ideas and concepts that are or should be used to inculcate love for ALLAH and HIS people are used to increase love for these people.

The Prophet (Salla ALLAHu alaihi wa Sallam) said: my companions are like stars whichever one of them you follow you will be guided.

Now celebrities and footballers are called stars.

They are given titles and names. They are constantly discussed and ‘fans’ learn about them, their lives, their personalities, what they do, what they like, and what they wear - all of this increases love in the hearts of the people for these personalities.

Go to the nearest medical surgery, hospital and you will find magazines with the lives of these people

Even children are surrounded by toys based on such personalities or even fictional ones, spiderman, batman and so on. They know what they do and their ‘super powers’ (doesn’t ALLAH alone have super powers?), they have figurines of them and the children love them so much. I’ve seen children get upset because they lost their ‘spider man’ for example.

Also, when we grow up as children we develop a love for what we are familiar with like a certain TV programme or a cartoon and its characters. How many of us can only look back at ‘Tom and Jerry’ with love and affection?

And then I was imagining how it would be if all that heart energy was directed towards ALLAH in adults and children. What if all the media was full of ALLAH and HIS names, getting to know HIM in detail as we do with celebrities or if they were full of stories of the Prophets(alaihimus salam) and the ashaab (Radi ALLAHu anhum), what if everywhere we went or every billboard we looked at reminded us of our Rabb or taught us something new about our Prophets. How much love would that inculcate in our hearts?

What if our children were surrounded by such information, stories and ideas? What if they knew ALLAH and HIS Prophet (Salla ALLAHu alaihi wa Sallam) before they knew any cartoon characters, pop stars or fictional characters and when I say know, I don’t mean know in the sense that someone taught them the kalimah or taught them that out last Prophet (Salla ALLAHu alaihi wa sallam) is called Muhammad but I mean know like you know something so much that you love it and have a fondness towards it. When you love it so much that you want to worship it, when you love it so much that you want to imitate it.

What if all this energy that is directed at inculcating a love of all these other characters, personalities and fictional figures was directed at developing the love of  ALLAH in the hearts of children and adults alike?

And all of that got me reflecting on what we can do to purify our environment for ourselves and those we love so that everything leads to loving ALLAH more because that is the key to worshipping HIM more. 

It’s not about establishing a ‘habit of’ tahajjud or duha or any other worship, rather it is to have so much love in your heart that your heart drives you to these acts of worship because the love and attraction towards its Rabb naturally pulls it that way just like a teenager who is in ‘love’ wants to stare at the person they like, learn about them, shower them with gifts and write their name on every piece of paper they can find.

What if our hearts were nourished constantly by what increases the love of ALLAH and if we just loved ALLAH so much that our tongues remained wet in HIS remembrance constantly?

All of this also reminded me of a talk I went to many years back by a Sheikh on the upbringing of children in Islam and how one of the stories he mentioned was of Sayyiduna Ali (Radi ALLAHu anhu) teaching his daughter to count. He said since he was teaching her counting she must not have been more than 4-6 years old if not younger. The Sheikh said: Ali (Radi ALLAHu anhu) said to his daughter; one, two, three wanting her to repeat after him as we do with children but she would not repeat it. She would only say ‘one’ واحد in Arabic and then she would stop so after a while he asked her why she doesn’t say ‘two or three or four’ and she replied that: father the heart that has ONE in it cannot have two and three in it referring to ALLAH.

SubhanaALLAH. I was just awestruck but on reflection, I thought those children of companions will have been surrounded socially, culturally, family wise and at all levels by what would inculcate a deep love of ALLAH in their hearts and so they would indeed naturally incline towards that fitrah.

 

Your Inner World Requires Action

You see, everything in our inner world requires action to change it. Just like we work towards buying a house or setting up our business or getting a job we also have to actively work on our inner world. Things like:

• Increase the love of ALLAH in my heart
• Release resentment and anger
• Release jealousy

The major factors in changing our inner world are: 

• Healing unhealthy emotional patterns
• Changing what and who we are surrounded by
• Reframing negative beliefs and replacing them with positive ones
• Releasing all toxins within that is an obstacle to connecting with ALLAH

 

And this is exactly what I help my clients do via my group coaching programs and 1-1 coaching. The change it creates is lifelong and deeply transformational. If you want to explore working with me and get clarity on your next steps to achieving your inner and outer goals book a clarity consultation call here: bit.ly/mryamakramclaritycall

May ALLAH increase us in HIS love and the love of those HE loves too.

Ameen.