Summary of Allah introduction to Himself

The first three ayahs are Allah's Introduction to Himself, This is all a human needs to know about Allah.. Allah gave us Knowledge about himself.

Knowledge leads to results and action... Islam is all about knowledge and Action...

The natural consequence and result of this knowledge about Allah is captured in the next Ayah.

All of this knowledge lead to one thing... Ayah 4 is the natural result of this knowledge..

Ayah 4

Iyyaka naAAbudu wa-iyyaka nastaAAeenu

Usually translated as:
Thee do we wor ship, and Thine aid we seek (Yusuf Ali), (4) Thee (alone) we worship; Thee (alone) we ask for help. (Picktall)

As usual, Translations do not capture the depth of the conversation here. We split the discussion into two parts :

i. Iyyaka naAAbudu

ii. iyyaka nastaAAeenu

Iyyaka naAAbudu

Allah gave us knowledge himself

1. Alhamdu lillahi
2. Rabbil alameen
3. Ar rahman
4. Ar Rahim
5. Maliki yawmi alddeeni

A natural consequence of knowledge is action, so we make a declaration: We declare we are going to enslave ourselves to Allah

Why?
We enslave ourselves to you because sincere praise and gratitude always belongs to Allah (Alhamdu lillahi)

We enslave ourselves to you because you are the master, owner, caretaker, gift giver, and life sustainer of all nations of people, worlds of people and generations of people (Men, jinn and whatever else) (Rabbil alameen)

We enslave ourself because you are the one being unimaginably merciful right now…. (Ar rahman)

We enslave ourselves because you are permanently merciful (Ar Rahim)

And If that is not enough, We enslave ourselves because you are the king and owner of the day when precise, accurate account of deeds will be taken. (Maliki yawmi alddeeni)

Ya Allah, you have given me enough reasons to enslave myself to you.

A proper translation of Iyyaka naAAbudu (using Nouman’s translation) : It is only to you we give ourselves totally and absolutely in slavery and worship…

Allah does not command us in this ayah. He told us what we should be saying as a result… If we understand the meaning of the first three ayahs, you know he is listening.

Allah told us about himself first and a natural result of this is We talking to him and declaring our dependence on him. We are talking to Allah in the Fatiha.

This is a declaration of slavery, a declaration of dependence on Allah.

The only time we can truly be free is when we declare our slavery to Allah. This means

- You are not enslaved to fashion
- You are not enslaved to entertainment
- You are not enslaved to money
- You are not enslaved to culture
- You are not enslaved to friends
- You are not enslaved to false ideology
- You don’t have to talk like anybody else
- You don’t have to dress like anybody
- You do not care whether you are too short or too thin or too fat or too t
- You are not trying to fit in

You are not in need of any of that because the only one, you have to impress is Allah.

This is the real declaration of independence; It is independence from everything else… It is independence from money, independence from the praise of people and everything else.

It is a combination of slavery and worship… It is possible to worship Allah without enslaving yourself to Him. It is only when we worship Allah and enslave ourselves to him that we can truly be independent…

A slave is one who does not do what he wants but what his master wants… The only time a slave does what he wants is when it is approved by the master. A master gives rules and sets limits, a slave follows these rules…

Many times in the Quran, the word Rabb (master) comes in close proximity with the word huda (guidance)…… Master and guidance are close to each other in the Quran.

Ex: (rough translation) : Such people are following their masters’s guidance and it is they who will prosper. (Surah 2:5)

…..Now clear evidence, guidance, and mercy have come to you from your master. Who could be more wrong than someone who rejects God’s revelations and turns away from them? (Surah 6:157)

So what is the relationship between master and guidance?

A master gives instruction to a slave, that instruction is guidance… If we accept that Allah is master then the first thing you need is guidance from the master. Therefore after declaring our dependence on Allah, the first thing, we ask for is guidance…

The two things are logically tied to each other, without instruction from the master, how do you want to be a slave? You can’t be a slave without guidance.

Revelation is the guidance for us, it is the guidance we asked for…

Ayah 4 (Cont'd)

wa-iyyaka nastaAAeenu

This roughly means: 'It is only your 'help' that we need' but there is a lot more to it though

nastaAAeenu is a bit more detailed in Arabic than just ‘help’.. It means help in matters you are already struggling with..

EX: You have a flat tire on third mainland bridge, you stay in your car listening to news and you call someone on the road to help you change the tire while you stay in your car listening to the news…. This is not nasstaaeen

If you are already struggling to fix the tire and you call for help… That is nasstaaeen…

By using that word nastaaeen, we are telling Allah that we are already struggling, trying our best and we are seeking help because we cannot do it on our own..

In other words if we are not making any effort, we have no right to ask Allah for help.

- What is Allah saying? Don’t you dare ask for help unless you are making struggling already… This is a model for our lives..
-you cannot play around and then ask for help in an exam without studying…

This is the formula throughout the Quran, first you struggle then Allah’s help comes… First the Muslims go into the battle of badr, then the angels come down… First, Ibrahim is thrown in the fire then the fire is cooled….

When we ask Allah for help, we are claiming that ‘ya Allah, i am already trying’… You better not be lying to Allah..

If you stand in salah saying iyyaka nastaAAeenu and you are not making any struggles than you are not just lying to yourself, you are lying to Allah… watch it!

You stand before Allah and say ‘ i submit myself totally to you and i need your help to make myself better because i am already putting in effort myself’ and immediately after salat… you turn on the inappropriate movie or music.. Is that not lying to Allah? Is that not insulting? Is that submission? Watch it!!

Salah (prayer) is not a joke, It is not hit and run…. It is supposed to transform your personality…

We recite the shortest surahs and rush through the prayer… for instance: We recite “ wal asr” to quickly finish the prayer and the surah is telling you that “by declining time, all of mankind is in loss”… The whole surah is telling you are in trouble because you don’t have any time and you are reciting it to quickly finish the prayer… SubhanAllah..

Ayah 4 (cont'd)

Why sequence?

Iyyaka naAAbudu wa-iyyaka nastaAAeenu – It is only to you we give ourselves totally and absolutely in slavery and worship and it is from you alone we seek help from after putting in efforts ourselves..

So why did Allah use this sequence? There are a couple of beautiful benefits..

1. Our primary purpose of life is to worship Allah and to enslave ourselves to Him, We need help to help us to that. The primary task is mentioned first before the secondary task. Iyyaka naAAbudu first then iyyaka nastaAAeenu.

2. When we worship it is for the sake of Allah, when we ask for help, it is for our own selves… (Keep this in mind)… What you owe Allah should be mentioned first out of respect and what you want for yourself should be mentioned last… You are secondary… What Allah wants is primary….

What Allah wants comes first, What you want comes second…

Are you making haram money and asking Allah for help? Are you cheating people and asking Allah for help? Allah comes first. Satisfy that first..

Don’t come to Allah on the 27th of Ramadan when you have not fulfilled what Allah asked of you the entire year….

You have to be doing your job first before you have the guts to stand before Allah and say Iyyaka naAAbudu and make sure you are doing your best before asking for help iyyaka nastaAAeenu …

If we really honestly do that, then we are beginning to understand what fatiha is and what fatiha is supposed to do for us as muslims..

Why iyyaka nastaAAeenu?

We asked Allah for help but help with what? There are several benefits of this

i. Allah already knows what we need help with..

ii. The list is very long… we need help with finances, health, family, business, job, salat etc… We need help with everything… The list would have been too long so we just say help…

iii. Imagine you are hanging on a cliff; about to fall; what do you scream? Help, no time to add anything else.. The third implication of just using help is that it is call of desperation

iv. The principle of proximity, we just said that we are going to enslave ourselves absolutely to Allah, this is not an easy thing to do so we seek Allah’s help to achieve that…

The first thing to ask for help for is how to worship and enslave ourselves to Allah. Of all our needs this is the most important one.

To fulfill this duty, we need instructions and this is why we ask for instructions next… This instruction is the most specific kind of help, all the other things we need Allah will cover… Allah gave us this one thing to ask for because if we get this one thing right all our problems will be taken care of… The one thing we ask Allah is that guidance… This leads us to Ayah 5….

End of Ayah 4