To Be Genuine

The believers who have attained to faith believe that God has created human beings in the best form, as God says: “Verily We have created human being in the best stature” (95:4), that is in the best physical and moral stature.  The human being is also given special faculties and capabilities to live in this world above and in power over all other creation. This predilection toward human over others among God’s creation, is given in compensation for a difficult trial that he is subjected to. And God will take all individuals' deeds to be held in pledge, and reckoning them for judgment in the Hereafter. God will reward those who succeed with a best reward, and punish the unjust with an adequate punishment.

To live in empowerment over other creation is a great responsibility and requires hard labor. Therefore, we see this life full of toil, misery, sorrow, pain and worry, and mixed with some rare moments of true happiness and satisfaction. God describes all that as follows: “O men! Verily, you are laboring toward Your Lord laboriously, and you will encounter him” (84:6). In Arabic: “Innaka kadihun ila Rabbika kadehan “.  “kadeh” (= to labor) means: to deal certain work, or to treat it persistently. All believers are commanded to worship God: “I have not created the jinn and mankind except that they may worship Me” (51:56). And to worship God is not only to do prayers, fasting, giving zakat (alms) and performing hajj, it is more than that: “’ibadah” (= worshiping God) means obeying God’s ordinances while practicing all that  “hard labor” in all domains of life. The good worshiper of God should become genuine in his position for which God created him; as God is watching him and will confront him, question him and judge him. God says: “And do not follow that of which you have no knowledge. Indeed the hearing and the sight and the heart – all of them – will be called to account for it (on Judgment Day)” (17:36).

A genuine believer does not follow his whim or Satan who is always trying to deceive human beings. To follow one’s whim is very dangerous, because it always grows his desires that may cause his ruin. God says: “O you who have attained to faith, be upright in justice, witnesses for God, even though it be against yourselves or parents and kinsmen, whether the person is rich or poor, God is better caretaker of both. So do not follow any whim, lest you swerve, for if you twist, or refrain, surely God is ever aware of what you do”  (4:135). And if one is following his whim, then naturally, God makes his heart oblivious to the remembrance of God: “… and do not obey him whose heart We have made oblivious to Our remembrance, and who follows his own whim, and whose conduct is (mere) prodigality” (18:28).

And to follow Satan is not a path for a believing Muslim, as God says: “O you who have attained to faith, do not follow in the steps of Satan; for whoever follows in the steps of Satan, assuredly he enjoins indecency and what is reprehensible. And were it not for God’s bounty to you and His mercy, not one of you would ever have grown pure, but God purifies whom He will, and God is Hearer, Knower”  (24:21).   

And because God has no favorable bias in dealing with His servants, then surely He will purify only those who deserve such grant from Him. God answered Iblis: “He (God) said: get out from it, degraded and banished: as for those of them, who follow you I shall assuredly fill Hell with all of you”  (7:18). And God also has told us that Satan is the evident enemy of human beings. In the Qur’an Iblis (the leader of devils/satans) said to God; “…and now that You have led me astray, I will certainly sit for them (in ambush) on Your Straight Path, then I will come upon them from before them and from behind them, and from their right and from their left, and You will not find most of them thankful” (7:16-17).

A genuine believer is strong enough to face Satan’s influence, so that Satan cannot thwart him, nor deceive him. He is always mindful of God’s advice: “And if any insinuation from Satan should provoke you, seek refuge in God, surely He is all-Hearing, all-Knowing” (7:200).

Satan is the insinuating force against human beings; most of them are from the jinn (invisible being), but even some human beings too. For that we are advised by God to be steadfast in our worshiping of God and to be mindful not to follow in the steps of Satan or his insinuation. God says: “Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of mankind, the King of mankind, the God of mankind, from the evil of the slinking whisperer, who whisper in the breast of mankind, of the jinn and mankind” (Surah 114, An-Nass).

A genuine believer’s position should always be as God wants him to say: “Say: My prayer and my rituals, and my living, and my dying, are all for God, the Lord of the Worlds. No associate has He. And to this, I have been commanded, and I shall (always) be the foremost of those who submit (to Him)” (6:161-163). Foremost, in accomplishing his duty as the vicegerent on Earth, being assigned by the Lord of the Worlds to live above other beings, in submitting to God completely.

Imam Tirmidzi reported in his Collection of Hadith what was related by the companion of the Prophet, Hudhaifah bin Al-Yaman, the saying of the Prophet (God’s blessings upon him): “Do not be among those who follow a position without awareness. Do not say if people do good, I do good, and if they treat unjustly I treat unjustly. But you have to take an accurate position, so that if people do good, you do good, and if they treat badly you should not treat unjustly”. 

So, the Prophet (god’s blessings upon him), as the leader of Muslims, and their Guide, was very keen that his followers be genuine themselves, not following others blindly. They have to learn and to take lessons from whoever is superior to them in certain special skills, in technical knowhow, but not in their divergent moral or religious thoughts. Because God says in the Qur’an: “Say: This is my way: I call (people) to God with full perception, I and my followers. So Glory be to God, and I am not of those who associate partners with God!” (12:108).