Website: www.aaiil.uk
Calling
on Allah, by which name? (1)
Friday
Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz,
for Lahore
Ahmadiyya UK, 9 September 2022
First,
a message on the death of Queen Elizabeth II
کُلُّ
مَنۡ عَلَیۡہَا
فَانٍ ﴿ۚۖ۲۶﴾ وَّ یَبۡقٰی
وَجۡہُ
رَبِّکَ ذُو
الۡجَلٰلِ وَ
الۡاِکۡرَامِ
﴿ۚ۲۷﴾
“Everyone on it (i.e., on earth) passes away — and
there endures forever the person of your Lord, the Lord of glory and honour.”
(55:26–27)
Before my originally-prepared khutba
for this week, I wish to say a few words about the passing away of Queen
Elizabeth of the United Kingdom which took place yesterday. There is a hadith مَنْ لاَ
يَشْكُرِ
النَّاسَ لاَ
يَشْكُرِ اللَّهَ
— meaning: “He who does not
thank people does not thank Allah” (Tirmidhi, hadith 1954). So it is our duty
as Muslims to express gratitude, now to the relatives of the Queen, as she has
passed away, on her service to this country and to the Commonwealth, among
whose populations are a large number of Muslims.
In my khutba on 10 June this
year, on the occasion of her platinum (70th) jubilee, I mentioned that the
Quran frequently emphasises the importance of fulfilling any pledge or promise
that you make, and I said that Queen Elizabeth has fulfilled her pledge to
serve this country to the best of her ability for 70 years now. She had no
political power to make laws or rule the country like monarchs of old. But what
she could do was to set an example of the best human behaviour to people and to
encourage them to do good deeds. In this she achieved enormous success.
Like us Muslims, the Queen believed
in God and believed that after death a human being returns to God Who holds him
or her to account. The Queen did believe in the statement which we often quote
from the Quran: اِنَّا
لِلّٰہِ وَ
اِنَّاۤ اِلَیۡہِ
رٰجِعُوۡنَ (2:156) — “Surely we belong to God, and to Him
we shall return”. In the life after death, God judges a person by his or her
inner beliefs and the intentions behind his or her deeds. No other human can
know another’s inner beliefs or intentions. But the Quran does tell us:
فَاَمَّا
مَنۡ ثَقُلَتۡ
مَوَازِیۡنُہٗ
فَہُوَ فِیۡ
عِیۡشَۃٍ
رَّاضِیَۃٍ — “Then as for him whose good deeds are
heavy, he will live a pleasant life (in the Hereafter)” (101:6–7).
What a person was doing in the
closing part of his or her life is also highly significant. The very last photo
of the Queen, taken on Tuesday morning, shows her smiling, having performed
what turned out to be her last duty to the people of this country.
The Quran also tells us that the
reward or punishment of the next life will not be “according to your
vain desires nor the vain desires of the People of the Book” (4:123). Vain
desires means your wishful thinking and imagining good things about yourself,
whether it is the vain desires of people of the religions before Islam or of
Muslims.
It then says that whoever does wrong
will meet his just punishment. Then it adds: “And whoever does good deeds, whether
male or female, and is a believer — these will enter the Garden, and they
will not be dealt with unjustly in the least” (4:124). It doesn’t say here
believer in what, it just says: “and is a believer”. It doesn’t only mean
Muslim. It could mean a believer in God, or a believer in the doing of good
deeds, who does good deeds not for any show or reward from anyone, but because
he or she believes in doing them. As I have already said, only God knows who is
a believer.
I end this message from Ahmadiyya
Anjuman Ishaat Islam Lahore (UK) by extending our deepest sympathies and
condolences to the relatives of the late Queen and to all the bereaved citizens
of the United Kingdom. May Allah bring them comfort and solace of mind, and
enable them to make the right decisions about the future, ameen.
First part of my originally intended khutba is as below.
|
“Say: Call on Allah or call on the Beneficent. By
whatever (name) you call on Him, He has the best names. And do not be loud in
your prayer nor be silent in it, and seek a way between these.” — ch. 17, v.
110 |
قُلِ ادۡعُوا
اللّٰہَ اَوِ ادۡعُوا
الرَّحۡمٰنَ
ؕ اَیًّامَّا
تَدۡعُوۡا
فَلَہُ
الۡاَسۡمَآءُ الۡحُسۡنٰی
ۚ وَ
لَا تَجۡہَرۡ
بِصَلَاتِکَ
وَ لَا
تُخَافِتۡ
بِہَا وَ ابۡتَغِ
بَیۡنَ ذٰلِکَ
سَبِیۡلًا ﴿۱۱۰﴾ |
|
“And Allah’s are the best names, so call on Him
thereby and leave alone those who violate the sanctity of His names.
They will be recompensed for what they do.” — ch. 7, v. 180 |
وَ لِلّٰہِ
الۡاَسۡمَآءُ
الۡحُسۡنٰی
فَادۡعُوۡہُ
بِہَا ۪ وَ
ذَرُوا
الَّذِیۡنَ یُلۡحِدُوۡنَ
فِیۡۤ اَسۡمَآئِہٖ
ؕ سَیُجۡزَوۡنَ
مَا کَانُوۡا
یَعۡمَلُوۡنَ
﴿۱۸۰﴾ |
These verses clearly allow us to call
upon Allah by any of His names which befit His attributes and dignity. In the
last, perhaps forty years, some Muslims have been arguing that a Muslim must
only call Allah by the name Allah, and that non-Arab Muslims should not call
Allah by the names in their own languages, such as Khuda in Urdu and
Persian or God in English, but that they must call Him Allah. For example, it
used to be common practice among Urdu-speaking Muslims to say Khuda hafiz
for Goodbye, which means “may God be your protecter”. By the way, Goodbye means
“God be with you”. In the past few years the common practice among
Urdu-speaking Muslims has changed from saying Khuda hafiz to Allah
hafiz. But the question is, when those Muslims said Khuda hafiz,
what concept of Khuda did they have in mind? Did they mean some idol of
stone, some heavenly body, or some other thing which should not be worshipped?
Did they mean some being who has sons and daughters? No, of course not. The
concept in their minds was that very being whom the Quran has presented as
Allah, about whom it says la ilaha ill-Allah, that nothing except him
should be worshipped.
It was not only the ordinary people,
but it was also the greatest and the most eminent of Muslim writers and
scholars of the Indian subcontinent who, in their Urdu religious writings, used
the word Khuda to mean Allah. To test this, I opened at random pages
from four scholarly Islamic Urdu works by four different, famous writers of the
highest repute, and quickly came across the word Khuda. There is an Urdu
commentary of the Quran, distributed free officially in Saudi Arabia, by
Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani. He was a renowned Islamic scholar of Deoband and
played an important role in the creation and early establishment of Pakistan,
although he died in 1949. He bears the title Shaikh-ul-Islam of
Pakistan. Opening his commentary at random, I came across the footnote on
9:111. He quotes the words fī sabīli-llāh and translates
them as “Khuda ki rah mein” (“In the way of God”). In the same footnote
he goes on to use the word Khuda twice: “Khuda ta‘āla has
emphasised…”, and “can anyone else be as true to his promise as Khuda?”.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (d. 1958) was
a most famous Muslim theologian and author in India, who became a government
minister after the independence of India. His book Tazkira is written in
very high calibre Urdu, heavily
interspersed with Arabic and Persian terms. It deals with the work and the
thought of many Muslim saints and mujaddids. At one point he discusses
the ploys and subterfuges (the technique known as use of ḥīlah)
which some Muslims use in order to avoid acting on some Islamic duty, such as
avoiding having to pay Zakat. He writes that to use such ploys is to try to
deceive God: “Khuda ko dhooka daina hai” (p. 85). He also uses the words
“Khuda ki shariat” (p. 85), i.e., the Shariah of God. He also writes:
“they think that Khuda can also be deceived like a man can be deceived.”
In his book he uses Khuda and Allah interchangeably.
So
may Allah save us from gimmicks and superficial thinking, and turns our minds
towards the real substance of our religion — Ameen.
The
rest of my khutba originally intended for 9 September will follow next
week.
Website: www.aaiil.uk