All praise is due to Allah, the Most Merciful, the One who guides whom He wills. We ask Him to send peace and blessings upon the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, the best of creation, the one who perfected faith, character, and submission to Allah.
We, as an Ummah, need to do something about our mindset, especially the way we think, the way we reason, and the way we make decisions when it comes to our religion. I’m tired, truly tired, of the excuses. Why don’t we learn? There is reward in both listening to the Qur’an and in gaining knowledge for the sake of Allah. Both are acts of worship. But what good is listening when the heart is closed? What good is learning when we lack the foundation of faith?
Today I watched a lecture by Sheikh Hashim Abu Yusuf, may Allah be pleased with him, and he said something so powerful. He said, “Learn iman, learn faith, and then learn the Qur’an.” And this is exactly what the Prophet ﷺ did. He would teach the Sahaba about iman before the Qur’an. He taught them to know their Lord first. And then, through that, they were able to understand and live the Qur’an.
They didn’t neglect the pillars of Islam. They didn’t overlook them. They lived them. But they also knew what iman was. They knew Who Allah is. And through this knowledge of their Lord, they developed fear, love, trust, and awe.
So what is iman? It is taqwa, consciousness of Allah. And it is tawakkul, complete reliance upon Him. These are not just pretty words. They are a way of life. They are the lens through which we make choices, seek help, and react to hardship.
But today… today we speak to Allah the way we would speak to a stranger we stop on the road, only when we need help, only when we are lost. “Excuse me, can you tell me where to go?” we say, and as soon as we’re back on track, we walk away and never turn back. We speak to Allah like that. We call upon Him in hardship but live the rest of our lives as if we’ve never met Him. And this is killing us. This mindset, this modern disease of hyper-independence, it is severing our bond with the One who created us. It is building a wall between our ruh and our Rabb.
This dunya is eating us alive, and worse, it’s dulling our souls. We chase what the eyes can see and forget that the heart was made to see what the eyes cannot. We indulge in arrogance, in ignorance, and in comfort, and then wonder why our hearts feel dead.
And I say this because I’ve witnessed it. I've seen it in people I know, people who once were upon guidance. People who once reminded me of Allah. But now, they laugh when the decree of Allah is mentioned. I said to someone recently, “Don’t giggle when you speak of Qadr. Since when was the power of Allah a joke?” And all they said was, “Yeah yeah, for sure, for sure.”
It broke my heart. This was a person who once taught me how to pray. And I don’t claim to know their hearts, only Allah knows that, but I fear for them. Because I can see how far they’ve fallen. They speak of self-awareness, but they’re unaware of their ruh. They are boastful in their ‘growth’ but disconnected from the soul.
So I say this with sincerity: Protect your ruh. That is your connection with Allah. That is the part of you that longs to return to Him. Allah loves us , and He loves when we come back to Him.
As Allah says in Surah Al-Ahzab:
“Indeed, We offered the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they declined to bear it and feared it; but man [undertook to] bear it. Indeed, he was unjust and ignorant.” [33:72]
The tafsir of this ayah explains, the "Trust" (al-amānah) refers to the responsibilities of free will, to obey or disobey, to carry the burden of accountability and religious obligation. The heavens, the earth, and the mountains recognized the enormity of this responsibility and refused it out of fear, not weakness. But mankind accepted it, not out of bravery, but out of ignorance and injustice to his own soul.
And in the very next verse, Allah explains why He allowed this:
“[It was] so that Allah may punish the hypocrite men and hypocrite women, and the men and women who associate others with Him, and that Allah may accept repentance from the believing men and believing women. And Allah is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” [33:73]
So fear Allah. Take your religion seriously. This is not a game. This life is not random. The trust we carry is not light. We are not here to mock the reminders, or shrug off the truth, or laugh when Allah is mentioned.
No one, no one, can protect you from the decree of Allah except Allah. And wallahi, if we do not return to Him , who will save us?
