Let Us Be Muslims by Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi

Author:Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi [Mawdudi, Sayyid Abul A'la]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kube Publishing Ltd
Published: 2016-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

God-consciousness

Third, consciousness of God – being in His presence, His love and His fear, strength to avoid whatever may displease Him – needs to be kept alive constantly in our hearts. You cannot practise Islam unless you believe that God is seeing you all the time and everywhere, that God is aware of all your actions, that God sees you even in darkness, and that God is with you even when you are alone. It is possible to hide from the world but not from God, to escape from the punishments of the world, but not from His punishments. It is this awareness, this feeling, this belief, which restrains man from disobeying God and which motivates him to observe all the limits Allah has laid down for his life. Without this awareness you cannot live like a true Muslim lives. Allah has enjoined upon you praying five times a day precisely to help strengthen this awareness in the hearts of the faithful. He has Himself thus described this blessing: ‘Surely the Prayer restrains from all that is shameful and wrong’ (al-‘Ankabūt 29: 45).

This awareness becomes deeply embedded in you through the Prayer. For instance, you may perform the Prayer only when you are clean and have done the ablution (wuḍū’). But who is to know if you have not washed, or if your clothes are unclean, or if you are just pretending to have done wuḍū’? No one. But you never do such a thing because you are sure that your actions will not be hidden from God. Similarly, no one will know if you do not in fact recite at all those parts of the Prayer which are supposed to be said in a low voice. But you do not ‘cheat’ in this way. Why? Because you believe that God hears everything; He is closer to you than your jugular vein. And, you perform the Prayer even when you are alone – although there would be nobody to know that you had not performed it – because you fully realize that it is impossible to hide any crime from Him.

That is how the Prayer evokes and sustains in the heart of man fear of God and the belief that he lives in His presence. How can you worship and serve God and remain loyal to Him throughout the twenty-four hours of the day and night unless this fear and this awareness are revived continuously in your hearts? Devoid of this feeling, how can you embrace goodness and avoid evil in your daily lives for the sake of God alone?

Making you ever-conscious of God is the third blessing of the Prayer.

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