Mahzarnama (The Memorandum) — Page 21
Mahzarnama 21 Doctrinally, in the sense that he really believes the raison d’etre of his whole being to be cognizance of God, obedience to Him, and attainment of His love, His affection, and His pleasure. Practically in the sense that he must perform, exclusively for the sake of Allah, genuine good deeds which flow from exercising every internal and external faculty and prowess which God has endowed him with. But he must do so with happy eagerness which indicates as if he is witnessing the countenance of the Being he worships, in the mirror of his total obedience. . . . Now every person of sound mind can understand, in the light of the aforementioned verses of the Holy Quran, that the essence of Islam can take root in someone only when his being, with all its objective and subjective faculties, is fully devoted to God and in His path. And whatever faculties God has endowed him with, in the nature of a trust, he must reciprocate (their full and exclusive use back) to (God Who is) the True Endower. This must be done not just in terms of belief only, but additionally, he must cause the complete picture of his Islam and its complete essence to be reflected in the mirror of his deeds. That is to say, a person who claims to be a Muslim must demonstrate that his hands and feet, heart and mind, reason and perception, his anger and compassion, his forbearance and his knowledge, all his spiritual as well as physical faculties, his sense of self-respect, his wealth, his leisure and enjoyment, and whatever he possesses— objectively or subjectively—from the hair on his head down to his toe-nails, even his motives and concerns in the recesses of his heart, as well as all desires of his self, have become just as totally subservient to God as a person's own limbs are subject to his control. In other words he must demonstrably prove that the purity of his actions has reached a point where whatever he has is no longer "his" but has come to be devoted to God, and all his limbs and faculties are so completely immersed in the service of God as if they are God's own instruments. Pondering over these verses also makes it plainly obvious that devoting one's life in the way of God, which is the essence of