Malfuzat – Volume III — Page 89
89 write in those requests that if such and such prayer is not accepted in their favour, they will consider me to be false. Alas! How uninformed these people are of the etiquette of prayer. Such people are unaware of the requirements that fall upon one who prays and the one who makes a request for prayer. Such people fall prey to ill thinking even before the prayer is made and act as if they do a favour upon me by accepting me and threaten to reject and deny me. I am able to perceive the stench of such letters and I believe that it would have been better if such people had not written a request for prayer at all. I have spoken on this issue many a time and briefly advise that Allah the Exalted desires to maintain with His servants a relationship of friends. The relationship between two friends is one of give and take. A similar relationship exists between Allah the Exalted and His servant. What is a relationship of give and take in the estimation of Allah Almighty? God fulfills and accepts the many thousands of prayers made by His servant, cov- ers his flaws, and showers divine grace and mercy upon him, despite his being a most lowly and worthless creature. In the same manner, God also deserves, by way of right, that His servant accepts His will as well. In other words, if a servant is unsuccessful in attaining the objective that he seeks in a certain prayer, as per his own will, he should not think ill of God. On the contrary, such a one ought to ascribe their failure to some mistake of their own and accept the will of Allah Almighty with open-heartedness, believing that this is what their Lord desires. The Trials of Believers This is the very concept to which Allah the Exalted alludes in the following verse: 1 ِ ٍ مِّنَ الْخَوْفِ وَالْجُوْعِ وَ نَقْصٍ مِّنَ الْاَمْوَالِ وَ الْاَنْفُسِ وَ الثَّمَرٰت ء ْ وَ لَنَبْلُوَنَّكُمْ بِشَي And We will try you with something of fear and hun- ger, and loss of wealth and lives, and fruits. The word fear (khawf ) in this context refers to an empty fear and implies that the final outcome is destined to be a positive one. This alone becomes an atonement for one’s sins. Then, the word hunger (al-ju) refers to straitened circumstances such as hunger or poverty. Sometimes when a person’s shirt becomes torn, they do not have the ability to buy a new one. The Arabic word ju has been used here 1 al-Baqarah , 2:156 p. 78