IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING ALLAH
I was reading a portion from my course book of aqeedah by Dr Bilal Philips and i want to share some lines from it with you all. Before i write that, i want to tell wat aqeedah is as many people get confused with this term. Basically aqeedah is a set of beliefs which we hold about Allah. It has many branches but the most important is about Allah Almighty. Today most of us are ignorant and away from religion because we do not have a sound aqeedah. Our understanding about Allah Almighty is not at all sound. What we know about Allah is either something told by our parents, or watched in some movies, or read in some poetry or read in some quotes or made up by our minds. This is a pitiable condition. Because we do not even know fully and accurately about the One whom we claim to worship.
The first thing we need to understand in this regard is that, Allah Almighty has Himself described Himself and told about Himself in His Books and through His Messengers. So to understand Him, we should be turning to His revealed Book. Also we should be turning to how Prophet (s.a.w) and his companions described and understood Allah Almighty. Dr. Bilal philips writes a very heart touching and amazing truth to identify the importance of having sound aqeedah about who is Allah. He writes:
"Allah mercifully took it upon Himself to reveal to man some of His attributes, in order that mankind may not confuse the attributes of created things with those of Allah. When Allah's attributes are confused with those of creation, man ends up defying creation and rejecting Allah."
Subhan Allah! This is such a great truth. Imagine. All the problems in our lives are because of not having a sound aqeedah. Most of us do not know who Allah is and how Great He is. We go to others for help and we rely on others. In our culture we have peers and astrologers. Indian movies show the girl and ishq as god and hollywood shows the desires and money as god. And those with weak aqeedah get trapped because they do not know how Great their Lord is. They have never studied about Allah Almighty and end up either denying Allah or getting doubtful about Allah. Such a condition Allah Almighty describes in the Quran:
"And among mankind is he who worships Allah as it were, upon the very edge (i.e. in doubt)." (22:11)
Brothers and sisters we need to know about how great Allah is. Allah said about the jews:
"They made not a just estimate of Allah such as is due to Him. " (39:67)
And today we muslims are doing the same by not turning to the main sources to understand Allah i-e the Quran and Sayings of Rasul Allah (s.a.w). We define Allah according to our own minds and things heard from here and there and end up being dubious about His Greatness and not relying on Him but on His creation and hence deifying (worshipping) His creation.
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