Website: www.aaiil.uk

How believers should support and assist the cause of faith

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 11 July 2025

“O you who believe, why do you say things which you do not do? It is most hateful in the sight of Allah that you say things which you do not do. Surely Allah loves those who fight in His way in ranks, as if they were a solid wall.” — ch. 61, Al-Ṣaff, v. 2–4

یٰۤاَیُّہَا الَّذِیۡنَ اٰمَنُوۡا لِمَ تَقُوۡلُوۡنَ مَا لَا تَفۡعَلُوۡنَ ﴿۲﴾ کَبُرَ مَقۡتًا عِنۡدَ اللّٰہِ اَنۡ تَقُوۡلُوۡا مَا لَا تَفۡعَلُوۡنَ ﴿۳﴾ اِنَّ اللّٰہَ یُحِبُّ الَّذِیۡنَ یُقَاتِلُوۡنَ فِیۡ سَبِیۡلِہٖ صَفًّا کَاَنَّہُمۡ بُنۡیَانٌ مَّرۡصُوۡصٌ ﴿۴﴾

This is a most important principle not only of religion, but also life in general, that merely announcing high moral teachings, saying what a good and great religion we follow, or asking people to make sacrifices in a good cause, but not yourself acting on what you are telling others to do, can never achieve anything. More than that, the Quran here calls this behaviour hateful in the sight of Allah. This is not only done by leaders, in particular religious leaders, of not doing what they tell others to do, but ordinary people show the same behaviour. They complain about various wrongs and social evils, for example, that there shouldn’t be dishonesty, cheating or bribery, but they do it themselves. They make excuses such as that others do it, so how can we not do it, or why doesn’t the government or society take measures to stop it, and until then we can’t stop either. There are Muslims who declare that, for the sake of Islam, they will make this or that sacrifice, but when faced with having to do it, they back out.

In the verse that I recited, the believers, or Muslims are addressed. It is not addressing non-Muslims. Now in the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, there were some Muslims who claimed to be believers, but whenever they had to undergo some hardship or make some sacrifice for the sake of their belief, they were reluctant to put their belief into practice. However, this was not how the majority of Muslim behaved. So when Allah here addresses believers in general, as if believers in general are not doing what they are preaching, it is the Muslims of later times who are meant.

Having mentioned that Allah considers this behaviour hateful, we are then told what it is that Allah likes:

“Surely Allah loves those who fight in His way in ranks, as if they were a solid wall.”

This is only an example of the people whom Allah likes. It does not mean that Allah only likes you if you fight in a battle. It is pointing out that there were Muslims so true to their profession of faith, and to their words, that when they were required to fight in the way of Allah, for the defence of the Muslim community, they did so. As to forming a solid wall, at the battle of Uhud the Companions of the Holy Prophet, when they saw that the enemy knew where he was located, from where he was calling out to the Muslim army, they formed a solid wall around him to protect him from the enemy’s arrows. Also, note that a solid wall is used for defence. This shows that those Muslims, who are described here as the ones whom Allah loves, were fighting in self-defence. One commentator of the Quran writes that “solid wall” means that their actions supported and matched their statements and beliefs. Those people who fail to put into practice what they say are like a hollow wall, which cannot withstand any attack. Their verbal claims are not fortified by their actions.

The next verse, after the verses I recited above, is as follows:

“And when Moses said to his people: My people, why do you hurt me, when you know that I am Allah’s messenger to you? But when they deviated, Allah made their hearts deviate. And Allah does not guide the transgressing people” (61:5).

Moses is mentioned here because his people repeatedly annoyed and disobeyed him. This is in their own scriptures in detail as well as briefly in the Quran. They constantly complained to Moses after they had successfully departed from the Pharaoh’s Egypt that they were missing the food and comforts they had in Egypt even as slaves. They even set up a golden calf and started worshipping it. They refused to bear hardship or make sacrifices. They refused to fight their enemies when they were asked by God to do so, and they told Moses:

“You and your Lord go and fight, we will sit here” (5:26).

Allah is presenting these incidents as an example to Muslims of how the followers of a great prophet can go wrong, to the disappointment of that prophet.

Sorry to say that Muslims in general do hurt the Holy Prophet Muhammad by presenting him in a wrong light, although they foolishly think it is a good light. They tell the world that the Holy Prophet taught that “Whoever changes his religion, kill him”. They even give misplaced examples to claim that the Holy Prophet acted in this way, of killing those who left Islam or those who abused him. Around the year 1980 a British convert to Islam, who was very impressively scholarly and learned in Islam and Arabic, and follower of a Sufi movement, by the name of Martin Lings, wrote a biography of the Holy Prophet Muhammad entitled Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Many Muslims have praised it highly and in 1983 the Government of Pakistan gave it the “National Seerah Award”. Yet what Martin Lings has collected together in his book contains baseless incidents which support the worst allegations made against the Holy Prophet in the West about his wars and his marriages. In 1983 I wrote and published a detailed review of this book.

There are such biographies of the Holy Prophet’s life by Muslims who, for example, represent the Holy Prophet as keeping certain women in his household for marital relations but without marrying them, or portray him in a violent light, no doubt malign and hurt the Holy Prophet’s image; and the fact that these books, like that of Martin Lings, are written by followers of the Holy Prophet, and not his opponents, makes it even worse.

In the next verse, the subject changes from Moses to Jesus and we are told that Jesus prophesied to his followers the coming of a messenger after him, having the name Ahmad. But when that Ahmad came, i.e., the Holy Prophet Muhammad, the followers of Jesus, who were then present, rejected him despite Jesus having given instructions that this man, when he comes, should be followed. They rejected him because their own previous wrongdoings had made them incapable of recognising the truth of the Holy Prophet. They not only rejected him, but sought to extinguish his mission. The chapter goes on to say:

“They desire to put out the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah will perfect His light, though the disbelievers may be averse.”

You can put out a candle by blowing air from your mouth. To put out “the light of Allah”, meaning the religion of Islam, with their mouths, is done by them by their words and criticism against Islam, spoken and printed and distributed. When this verse was revealed the threat faced by Islam and the Muslims from their opponents was largely by physical persecution and force of arms. The threat to Islam by word, spoken and written, from the followers of Jesus began long after the death of the Holy Prophet. It remained at a low level, without much impact, for many centuries, but in the 1800s, in the time of the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement, this impact reached a peak and became widespread like a torrent. The promise is given here that the result will be the opposite of what those who desire to put out the light of Allah with their mouths want to achieve. The light will be perfected like never before.

This reminds me of a statement by Hazrat Maulana Nur-ud-Din that whenever he had to answer an objection against Islam, and he pondered over it and looked up books, starting with the Quran, to work out a reply, he always discovered not just the answer to the objection but also further knowledge of the matter which showed the truth of Islam. The light of Islam, instead of being dimmed or put out by an objection shines even more brightly than before. But that is only possible if we undertake to answer criticism of Islam, as was done by the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement and after him by the Lahore Ahmadiyya scholars. Those Muslims who demand that any book written against Islam should be banned, or worse still, those who threaten the authors of such books with physical violence, can never make the light of Islam to shine in the face to attempts to extinguish it.

What we see in these two examples in this chapter is that the followers of Moses disobeyed and annoyed their own prophet and the followers of Jesus rejected and opposed a righteous man whom Jesus had asked them to believe in. This is a warning to Muslims not to become like either group. They should not portray a picture of the Holy Prophet which is only in line with their own wrong desires. There are many leaders of Islamic political parties in Muslim countries who claim that the Holy Prophet before Hijrah was looking forward all the time to when he would acquire political power, so that as soon as he obtained that power he would impose Islam on people. They claim that the reason why the Holy Prophet did not fight back against his enemies at Makkah before Hijrah was only that he was not in a position to do so, he had no choice, and it wasn’t that he was showing the great quality of patience. This is a reflection of their own mentality, and projecting it on the Holy Prophet’s life.

How Muslims should behave as followers of their own Prophet is stated at the end of this chapter in its last verse:

“O you who believe, be helpers (in the cause) of Allah, as Jesus, son of Mary, said to the disciples: Who are my helpers in the cause of Allah? The disciples said: We are helpers (in the cause) of Allah. So a party of the Children of Israel believed and another party disbelieved; then We aided those who believed against their enemy, and they became predominant” (61:14).

Jesus never asked his followers to help him to fight in any battle. He asked them to stand by his cause and to preach it in the world. This verse indicates that a time would come when Muslims would be asked to help in the cause of Allah by propagating the message of Islam in the world, and they must respond by becoming those helpers. The chapter indicated at the beginning that Muslims need to fight their enemy in battle unitedly, and it gives the example of the followers of Moses refusing to do so and hurting the mission of Moses. At the end it instructs Muslims to help the cause of the faith in the way that Jesus appealed to his followers to do. This shows that the fighting by Muslims which was necessarily required at the beginning of the history of Islam, in order to save Islam, would at the end of the history of Islam be replaced by the necessity of the propagation of Islam by peaceful means, and that Muslims of those later times should assist in that work.

So may Allah enable us to serve Islam and spread its light in the sense required in the present age — ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk