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The
value of supplication and its meaning in Islam*
In His Glorious Book, Allah, the most Exalted, says: {When
My servants ask thee concerning Me, I am indeed close (to them): I
listen to the prayer of every suppliant when he calls on Me: Let them
also, with a will, Listen to My call, and believe in Me: That they may
walk in the right way.} (2: 186) In another verse,
He says: {and your Lord says: "Call
on Me; I will answer your (Prayer): but those who are too arrogant to
serve Me will surely find themselves in Hell - in humiliation!"}
(40: 60) . Based on these two verses and all the other verses treating
the issue of supplication in the Glorious Qur'an, we conclude the
importance of supplication in the relationship between God and the
human being and its relation to the question of Faith and beliefs.
The divine care
In the first verse, we find an approach of compassion, benevolence and
mercy that tenderly touches the heart making the human being feel the
innocence and purity of a child crawling towards his heart as he
piously and humbly stands in front of his God. Amidst this spiritual
kindness, the human being feels the divine care touching his soul and
conscience, calling him to open his heart with all its worries and
pains, to reveal his life with all its problems and obstacles, and to
raise his voice up with all his needs and goals; and there he finds
God very close to him, listening to his call, understanding his wants,
managing his affairs, and taking care of his sadness. At this point,
the human being’s burdens and afflictions loosen securing his way to
tranquility and peace.
The separating line
In the second verse, we face a very firm approach that makes the
question of the human being’s prayer a question of admitting or
rebelling against the fact that worship is only for Allah, the most
Exalted . This verse, moreover, implies that praying is the separating
line between belief and unbelief, between heaven and hell.
Verily, while by supplication the human being’s finds an echo for
his feelings and a satisfaction for his needs; by choosing to rebel
against Allah, the most Exalted, he acquires nothing but being
deprived of Allah’s grace and bounty in this world, and being
inflicted with punishment in the afterworld.
The importance of supplication
Indeed, the great importance of supplication might be clearly seen in
the following Glorious Qur'anic verse: {Say (to
the Rejecters): "My Lord is not uneasy because of you if ye call
not on Him}( 25: 77) that determines God’s care of His
believers in accordance with their communication with Him through
supplication.
And here we ask ourselves: what is the secret behind all of this?
And how can the practice or the non-practice of a certain religious
ceremony or service rise to the level of determining the relationship
between the human being and his God?
But it appears that the issue - and we are trying to answer the above
stated questions - is not simply about certain worshipping rituals or
formal religious traditions. Indeed, supplication is the living
expression of the human being’s everlasting need for Allah in all
his life affairs. It is the human being’s submissive recognition of
his dependence on Allah, the most Exalted, embodied in the feeling of
being deeply attached to Him to the extent of uniting with Him in a
way that the person no longer feels his existence or entity.
Verily, the living and true faith cannot be realized but through this
feeling because believing in God becomes meaningless if it does not
involve the acknowledgment of His supernatural and unstoppable
creating force as well as His absolute and endless power against the
helplessness and weakness of the human being who cannot do himself any
harm or good but through the help of God.
Accordingly, our need to supplication lies in our need to express our
faith in God making sure that it lasts active and powerful inside our
souls. So, supplications renew the faith of the human being and
consolidate his confidence in God.
By the same token, one of the traditions mentioned “supplication is
the brain of worship” because it is the living expression of the
meaning of servitude, submission and piety which are represented in
the act of worship; verily, without supplication, worshipping Allah,
the most Exalted, becomes a body without a soul.
Similarly , supplication ceases to be a traditional ritual practiced
by the human being as a regular habit without any idea of what it is
really about.
This is the meaning of supplication according to religions which have
all agreed on sanctifying supplication giving it a great importance
when they all met on emphasizing the Faith in Allah, the most Exalted,
. All the more so, the Glorious Qur'an speaks about the supplications
of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Zachariah and others when they faced
critical and difficult times. Actually, they resorted to invocation
and supplication as a practical way to teach people the importance of
this worship in the relationship between the human being and his God;
an importance that is deeply rooted in the conception of faith, even
in the lives of prophets who are the exemplars in their closeness to
Allah, the most Exalted .
The value of supplication in Islam
The Glorious Qur'an embarked then on calling for this worship during
all the states and situations that face the human being so that the
relationship between the latter and his God won’t be governed by
interest and benefit. That’s why we find that while it urges the
human being to call for God in a request for help or in an expression
of fear, it urges him in other verses to invoke God in an expression
of devotion, such as in the prayer of devotion and the pure belief in
the one and only God. Some of the Glorious Quranic verses point to
examples of people who resort to supplication only during hardships
and difficulties so that when Allah, the most Exalted, relieves them
and satisfies their request, they forget Him: {When
some trouble touches man, he cries unto his Lord, turning to Him in
repentance: but when He bestows a favor upon him as from Himself,
(man) does forget what he cried and prayed for before} (39: 8)
Consequently, we infer that supplication should not be based on the
human being’s temporal and limited needs that face him every now and
then. Invoking Allah, the most Exalted, should rather set from the
feeling of the profound spiritual connection that relates the human
being to his God in love and reassurance.
That is why we find that the Glorious Prophetic tradition and the
sayings of the Imams of the Members of the Household have given
supplication an essential role in the life of the human being. Some of
the traditions called people not to supplicate Allah, the most
Exalted, asking Him to grant their needs and requests only; but to
remember their brothers in their prayer asking Allah, the most
Exalted, to grant the latter’s wishes and desires the same way they
do for themselves. Hence, we deduce a hidden meaning implying the
necessity to acknowledge the feeling of brotherhood that links people
to each other so that when a person supplicates Allah , he remembers
his brother’s need or request before his own.
Sometimes this
meaning reaches the absolute altruism that makes the human being shows
a deep concern for the welfare of others; a concern deep enough to
exceed his concern for his own welfare. Imam Al-Hassan Bin ‘Ali
(a.s.) was reported to have said about his mother Fatima Al-Zahraa’
(a.s.): she used to spend the night worshipping and supplicating Allah
, praying for believers, men and women, and not for herself. He asked
her: why don’t you pray for yourself? She said: O son! Neighbors
come first.
The supplications of Ahlul-Bait and their relation to life
In their supplications, the Members of the Household of the Prophet(p.)
have dealt with more practical experiences that might face a human
being, especially in the supplications of Zein El-‘Abiddin (a.s.) in
Al-Sahifa As-Sajadiah . His supplications were opened to life in all
its events, situations, worries and problems; not to mention that they
were related to the problems of the human beings’ life; issues and
causes such as justice and oppression, right and wrong, peace and war,
poverty and wealth, love and hate, and so on and so forth…
The aim of Ahlul-Bait was indeed to turn supplications into a school
that connects human beings to life and connects life to Allah, the
most Exalted . They, moreover, attempted at confirming the Islamic
conception that refuses to give the human life a material and soulless
meaning insisting on finding a live combination of soul and substance
in a wonderful unity that goes in harmony with the connection between
the spiritual and material side in the human being’s entity.
Those supplications refused that the human being surrenders to defeat
and withdraws from society in a negative attempt to escape reality
under the pretext of devoting himself to Allah, the most Exalted, in
prayer, distancing oneself from the world of substance. Nay, they
wanted the human being to look at his relation with Allah, the most
Exalted, as a positive incentive pushing him to work towards
implementing the will of Allah, the most Exalted, in building life in
a better way.
An example on this is the supplication of Imam Zein El-‘Abiddin
(a.s.) each morning and evening where we find, in the beginning of his
invocation, the human being’s feeling of unity that brings him
together with other creatures as worshipping Allah, giving in to His
will, yielding to His laws and orders: “In the morning we and all
things, every one, rise for Thee, the heaven and the earth and what
Thou has scattered in each, the still and the moving, the resident and
the journeying, what towers up in the air and what hides under the
ground.”
Then, he feels as if time is watching him, observing all his steps,
recording and counting his actions, so that it will tell God about
them all after departing the human being with praise or blame: “This
is a fresh, new day, over us a ready witness.
If we do good, it will take leave from us with praise, and if we do
evil, it will part from us in blame.”
And then we notice that he tries to urge the human being to plan his
quotidian work with awareness defining the human being’s path, goals
and starting points; and he summarizes this idea as follows: “O God,
bless Muhammad and his Household and give us success in this day of
ours, this night of ours, and in all our days, to employ the good,
stay away from the evil, give thanks for favors, follow the Sunna's
norms,
avoid innovations, enjoin good behavior, forbid the disapproved,
defend Islam, diminish falsehood and abase it, help the truth and
exalt it, guide the misguided, assist the weak, and reach out to the
troubled!”
In this supplication, we find an inclination towards the best in the
human being’s movement through time: “And make this the most
fortunate day we have known, the most excellent companion we have
accompanied, and the best time in which we have lingered!”
Moreover, we find in this supplication an attempt to determine the
criteria of evaluation and assessment in the scale of Islam as the
Imam(a.s.) teaches us how to regard and deal with different kinds of
people: “Preserve me from imagining any meanness in someone who is
destitute or imagining any superiority in someone who possesses
wealth, for the noble is he whom obedience to Thee has ennobled and
the exalted is he whom worship of Thee has exalted!”
In some supplications, we find an attempt to make from the negative
attitude adopted with regard to oppressors and the non-support of the
wronged, a reason to ask for pardon, such as the positive aspect of
supporting oppressors: “O God, I ask pardon from Thee for the person
wronged in my presence whom I did not help”. Similarly , we see that
supplications turn into an educational and guiding element that
arouses the human being’s awareness of values, principles and the
universe’s good meanings. And the human being’s responsibility
towards all of this is indeed embodied in his work towards actualizing
these meanings, values and feelings and in his behavior or attitude
that directs life through its best ways and towards its finest levels.
All of this is achieved by individually invoking Allah, the most
Exalted, so that the meaning of invocation would find its way to his
feelings and emotions with simplicity and spontaneity; the same
simplicity of light and spontaneity of life.
Educationally speaking, the value of this approach lies in the fact
that the human being does not easily accept to be preached or advised
by others; their words prove to be heavy on his heart such as any
other thing coming from outside. However, during supplications, the
human being finds himself directly addressing Allah, the most Exalted,
in a tranquil invocation where he defines his attitudes, puts his life
on the right track of values, and offers himself to Allah for
accountability in hope and faith.
In view of what has been stated above, we deduce that when studying
the educational means as to the spiritual aspects related to Faith, we
must look deeply into the Islamic supplications, especially those of
Al-Sahifa As-Sajjadiyya knowing that they embody the relation between
the spiritual aspect and life, and that they put an end to any
misconception looking at the soul as an opposite element to substance
where they never fall together in one balance. By doing so, you will
acquire an objective and ample comprehension of the question of Faith
and life and the human being’s attitude regarding both of them in
theory and application.
Supplication does not mean nonchalant dependence
Finally, we must
discuss a very important aspect of supplication. That is, the idea of
supplication does not mean being nonchalant in depending on God
resorting to Him asking for help in one’s affairs and problems
without individually making serious steps towards resolving these
problems and handling these pending issues. Verily, supplicating God
does not mean leaving one’s needs to be directly fulfilled by Him
while the human being is able to embark on satisfying his needs but he
simply refuses to take any step to help himself waiting for a miracle
to fall from heaven.
Actually, the right conception of supplication says that human beings
must refer to God when they find themselves facing situations that
have deviated from the track of causality that Allah, the most
Exalted, had endowed everything with; a principle asserting that
everything that happens must have a cause, whether in life and death,
in health and sickness, in poverty and wealth, in victory and defeat
…etc. Allah, the most Exalted, invited human beings to believe in
these causes and to resort to Him after reaching a dead end or after
facing a blockage down the road. In this case, human beings are
allowed to address Allah, the most Exalted, in supplication. Here, we
find the wise answer that saves the human being from his feeling of
weakness in front of the hidden powers of the unknown.
Many traditions have spoken about the fact that the supplications of
those who do not take the ordinary path in pursuing their goals - such
as working to acquire sustenance, taking medicine to be healed from
sickness, and employing strengths and powers to accomplish victory -
won’t be answered.
By tackling the subject of supplications in Islam, trying to cover all
its aspects, we endeavored to reveal the positive aspect of
supplication that stimulates the Muslim’s spirit of faith, that
shows him the nature of work and exertion, and that sows in him the
spirit of optimism as he faces hardships. This positive aspect
encourages the Muslim not to fall into depression when surrounding
circumstances turn gloomy and intolerable; and makes him believe that
Allah, the most Exalted, is behind everything and can fulfill
anything; He can open for him ways that he didn’t know of, and find
him sustenance in places he didn’t expect.
The
Religious authority Sayyed Muhammad Hussein fadlullah*
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