Ep 6 — Productive Faith Accompanied by Practical Commitments

Session 4: Productive Faith Accompanied by Practical Commitments. delivered Sunday, 31 Shahrivar 1353 / 5 Ramadan al-Mubarak 1394 Surat al-Hajj (22:77-78). …And strive for God with the striving due to Him. He has chosen you and has not laid upon you in religion any hardship — the faith of your father Abraham. It is He who named you Muslims before and in this [Revelation], that the Messenger may be a witness over you and that you may be witnesses over mankind. So establish prayer and give zakat and hold fast to God. He is your Protector — and excellent is the Protector, and excellent is the Helper. The matter is simply this: faith, according to the undeniable culture of the Qur'an, is not merely an affair of the heart. True, faith means belief, and belief is a matter of the heart. But the Qur'an does not count every belief as valid. Abstract faith — a faith confined to a dry and empty heart, a faith whose radiance never shows in the believer's limbs and organs — such faith, in the view of Islam, is worthless. The very first to have faith in God was Satan. For years before the boastful servants of the Lord and the proud, pampered children of Adam came to this dusty earth, Iblis worshipped God Almighty, and his heart was a center of the knowledge of God. But at the decisive juncture — at the very moment when faith is supposed to come into play, the moment of choice, when one's final path is determined — this faith was of no use to Iblis; it remained right there in the heart. I say that a faith which only remains in the heart will rot and dry up. You may object, "No, it endures." Then let us grant the objection its full strength and say that faith does remain in the depths of the heart. Even so, a faith that stays in the heart and never reaches the hands and feet, the eyes and ears and brain — the whole life and energies of a person — that faith, from the standpoint of Qur'anic culture, is worthless. We have summarized this point in a single heading, the very heading written at the top of the sheet in your hands: productive faith. A faith that, like an overflowing spring, gives birth to action; a faith accompanied by commitment; a faith that places a burden upon the believer's shoulders; a faith with action alongside it. I set out to count the verses in the Qur'an that read inna'lladhina amanu wa 'amilu's-salihat — "those who believed and did righteous deeds." I found that in this very wording, faith joined with righteous action appears in dozens of instances. Faith without commitment — a faith unaccompanied by any sense of responsibility — is good neither for this world nor for the Hereafter. This is the logic of the Qur'an. Some people supposed that faith belongs to the region of a person's heart — that a person can still count among the believers even when he is not bound to the requisites and commitments of faith. They imagined that belief alone, held without action, without effort, without striving, would win a person God's promises to the believers. They thought Paradise is granted in exchange for an affair of the heart; that government over the earth, too, is granted for an affair of the heart and not for action; that if we strip away action, something of faith still remains. These people ought to reflect carefully upon these verses, and upon the dozens of other instances throughout the entire Qur'an, so that they may see the truth: the only faith Islam values is the faith accompanied by action, by responsibility, by duty, by commitment. If you have felt no commitment, then doubt whether you are a believer at all. A society that does not act upon the commitments of faith should not call itself a believing society. Consider those who have heard from the Qur'an wa la tahinu wa la tahzanu wa antum al-a'lawna in kuntum mu'minin — "Do not weaken, do not grieve; if you are believers you are the highest of all." They heard this astonishing summons from the Qur'an, and then they looked at the realities and saw that the believers in the Qur'an are not above everyone; they are in debt to everyone. So they are amazed: where, then, is this promise of the Qur'an? And when they find no fulfilling of this promise, they sit waiting for the appearance of the Wali of the Age (may the blessings of God be upon him). To these people, too, it must be said: yes, the divine promise is true — both at the appearance of the Promised Mahdi (may the blessings of God be upon him) and wherever faith takes form. But it is the faith that the Qur'an regards as accompanied by action, the faith it does not consider separate from commitment. Faith is not merely an affair of the heart. If mere assent and acceptance of the truth of the word were enough for faith, then I say the first to have faith in the Prophet was Abu Lahab or al-Walid ibn al-Mughira al-Makhzumi. Those shrewd Arabs understood very well that the Messenger of God did not lie; they understood that he spoke the truth. Do you want proof? The proof is that they would sit with their drinking companions and resolve to disgrace the Prophet. They would say, "Let us go and listen, let us see what he says, and find fault with him." Then they would go and sit; and the next night they would come back and say, "No, this is not the speech of a human being; this is the word of the God of mankind." So they accepted; they affirmed that he spoke from God. Yet you, fourteen centuries later, do not regard him as a believer. I say: if he is not a believer — on the grounds that this faith of his, this acceptance of his, this assent of his, was not accompanied by the appropriate commitments — then are we believers? Our own assent, too, is not accompanied by the appropriate commitments. What do you say? If mere recognition and heart-felt faith were enough, then 'Amr ibn al-'As would have to be the first Shi'a in the world. 'Amr ibn al-'As, who either saw the affair of Ghadir Khumm with his own eyes or heard of it from those who saw it with their own eyes — whereas you and I, after thirteen-odd centuries, merely read of this affair in books. 'Amr ibn al-'As, who composes poetry about Imam 'Ali (peace be upon him); 'Amr ibn al-'As, who at the moment of death, in those most critical moments that present themselves to a human mind, expresses remorse, saying, "I sold my religion for Mu'awiya's world; I fought against 'Ali, whom I knew to be the truth." So 'Amr ibn al-'As, it seems to me, grasped and affirmed the immediate succession (wilayat-i bila-fasl) of the Commander of the Faithful more deeply and more knowledgeably than a Shi'a of the fourteenth century after the Hijra. But is he a Shi'a? You say no. Why is he not a Shi'a? Because belief in the Imamate of the Commander of the Faithful brings certain commitments, and its very first commitment is not to pledge allegiance to Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan. 'Amr ibn al-'As is not a Shi'a, because he becomes complicit with Mu'awiya and fights against this very 'Ali — that is, he does not remain bound to the commitments of Shi'ism, to the duties that this belief places on a person. This statement is correct. And because it is correct, I turn the discourse back upon ourselves once again, and I say: by this very reasoning, can you and I believe and be certain that we are Shi'a? Are we acting upon the commitments of being a Shi'a? Are we bound by them? And the word of the Qur'an on this matter is clear and unambiguous. It explicitly denies faith to those who are utterly unbound by the commitments of their faith. Therefore, the faith that is valid in Islam — and these are among the doctrinal principles of Islam and of Shi'ism — is productive, commitment-creating faith. It is the faith that is accompanied by practical commitments; and if it is not so accompanied, then do not wait for its fruits either, do not wait for victory in this world, do not wait for security in this world. Dozens of other verses bear witness to the point. The Qur'an says: Those who believed and did not clothe their faith in wrongdoing — for them is security, and they are rightly guided. Faith accompanied by oppression does not procure security. Faith with no commitment alongside it does not grant the believer victory; it does not guarantee his triumph; it does not bring him the help of God and the help of the very particles of nature and creation; it does not give him the happiness of this world — in a word, it does not give him the paradise of this world and the next. The vain fancies that arise from love of ease whisper to us the very opposite. There is a trait in us that always seeks the easier course, a pull toward taking the path of least resistance. Give a person the choice between two tasks, and whichever is easier — whichever requires less effort and less expense — is the one he chooses. This is human nature; usually people are like this. The trait tells us to accept the easier, less costly, more effortless path. Religious faith, on the other hand, says: your Paradise is lost. So that the ease-seeking may stay in place and Paradise may not be lost, we are compelled to sit down and devise formulas — formulas that send the idle, lazy man to Paradise. We stand by them, we cling to them stubbornly, and to the very end we never understand; only when we have failed to reach Paradise do we understand that the formulas were wrong. I say: let us reconsider now, let us see whether these formulas are really correct. The Qur'an is our definitive, flawless text, and there are hundreds of sound, well-attested narrations. In a narration to this effect, the Imam (peace be upon him) says that our intercession does not reach a person, or a person does not attain to our intercession, except through striving and serious effort. Yet with laziness, with embracing the knee of grief, with eating the grief of the past and the grief of the future in a spineless, listless way — grieving is good, but a grieving that is not accompanied by spinelessness — we sit in this negative, base, fruitless state, waiting in the hope of intercession. The Imam himself (peace be upon him), according to this narration, says that our intercession reaches those who have serious effort and striving — precisely the opposite of what is in our minds. And narrations of this kind are beyond counting. Imam al-Sajjad (peace be upon him), in that middle of the night, is engaged in worship in the mosque, weeping and lamenting. That man, whose whole life — rightly understood — is an effort in the path of bringing right and truth to power, is in the middle of the night also wholly an effort in the path of servitude and humility before God. He sheds tears, he weeps, he supplicates — astonishing supplications, which there is no occasion now for me to relate — in an astonishing state. Then a simple-hearted, good-natured man says to him: "O son of the Prophet! You? You, with that father, that mother, that grandfather — all of whom are God's chosen servants — leave the weeping to us. You, who are the son of the Prophet, the son of 'Ali, the son of Husayn, the son of Fatima al-Zahra, why do you weep?" At that, Imam al-Sajjad (the blessings of God be upon him), while defending this thesis — the thesis of humility and reverence and weeping and worship and supplication before the Lord, for the polishing of the soul, for becoming ever more resolute, for relying ever more upon God, and not for benumbing oneself — also draws this error out of the mind of this ordinary Shi'a while reinforcing the thesis. He says: "What are you saying? Da' 'an hadithi abi wa ummi wa jaddi — cast aside the talk of father and mother and grandfather, that you are the son of so-and-so — al-jannatu li'l-muti'in — Paradise belongs to the obedient." This is the Islamic thesis and the Shi'i thesis in the matter of faith and action. Why do I emphasize this matter? Because for long years — indeed for many centuries — work has been done upon the minds of Muslims to convince them that action is not necessary for being a Muslim, that a pure heart alone, not a pure deed, is enough to make a believer. Aiding these treacherous, hireling hands has been our own love of ease, our own pretensions — for we would like God's Paradise handed to us in exchange for some small task. And this mistaken understanding has been aided too by the ignorance of those with no ulterior motive; they had no motive other than that they were ignorant. From soon after the Prophet, this idea arose and was promoted. Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan is a striking case. Do you know of anyone more irreligious than Mu'awiya, anyone worse than Mu'awiya? Who else, in that history, at the very dawn of Islamic history, could you find worse than these people? One day they saw Mu'awiya making a bequest to his intimates: "Yes — when I am dead, there are one or two small bundles; bring them from such-and-such a place and place them in my shroud." They said, "What are these?" He said, "One of them is a piece of the Prophet's garment. One day the Prophet of God was trimming his hair and face, or paring his nails, and I gathered up a few of those particles of hair and the discarded nail-clippings of the Prophet; place these in my shroud, that God may forgive me." How pure of soul! Mu'awiya too sets out and works in the hope of the Prophet's intercession — but on what path? On the path of acquiring a few strands of the hair of the Prophet's mustache and face and head. Well, bravo! As far as it is easy, as far as it costs nothing, he lends an ear to the Qur'an too, he shows respect to the Qur'an too — but only as far as it is profitable to himself. In any case, for years — and for long years — they have been working upon minds, so as to say: Islam minus action, faith without action; in the heart, love and belief — and not in action, in movement and effect. For years they have wanted to make us believe this. And the Qur'an, all the while, raises its call, alive and fresh: and those are not the believers. Those who do not have these works (whose recitation we shall see either today or tomorrow) are not believers; they have no faith. Those are believers, those are with you, those are encompassed by the grace of God and by brotherhood and Muslim fellowship, who move in the path of God, in accordance with faith, in a committed manner — who strive, who work, who labor. This is the logic of the Qur'an. O you who have believed — bow, prostrate, humble yourselves before God; render servitude and worship to your Lord; do good; that perhaps you may succeed, may be saved. If you do these works, there is felicity and salvation and success and triumph. But if it were only ya ayyuha'lladhina amanu — "O you who have believed" — and there were no irka'u wa'sjudu wa'budu rabbakum waf'alu'l-khayr — bow, prostrate, worship your Lord, and do good — would there be felicity and salvation? The answer is up to you. And strive for God with the striving due to Him. Strive in the path of God in the manner that striving deserves. For a single day's income, from sunrise to sunrise, what do you do, how much do you toil? How much do you strive? In that same proportion, see how much you must strive for God. Everything is in the main text, while the work of God is in the margin. The general layout of our lives is like this: all the works are in the main text — teaching, learning, earning money, toiling, exercising, and so on — all of it is the main text of life; and in those margins, that work of God either is there or is not. But look correctly, and you'll see that the effort you must make for God and in the path of God — its volume, its quality, its depth, its tirelessness and steadfastness — ought to be, in proportion to the greatness and majesty of God Himself, greater than all other efforts, more enduring, more tireless, more indefatigable. …strive for God with the striving due to Him. He has chosen you. O community of Islam! What does "He has chosen you" mean? Does it mean He has set you aside as pampered, precious pearls, a breed apart — that you have sinned too, erred too, acted against Our command too, yet Paradise stands in your name? The Jews made exactly this claim about themselves. They were mistaken, and any Muslim who thinks this way is mistaken too. Against the Jews — who imagined they were the beloved and the intimates, indeed the children of God — the Qur'an declares, in a tone of severe and stinging reproach, that all this love and closeness hinges on one thing: that you act according to God's command. "We chose you" — that is true; "but We had chosen the Children of Israel before too." God selected the Ummah of Islam, but before Islam He had selected the Children of Israel too. Both selections are of one kind: choosing the most prepared individual for the greatest task. Look among ten of you and pick out the one whose face is most resolute, whose body is most ready, whose complexion is most vigorous, whose fist is strongest, whose arms and chest are broadest and firmest. You say, "Sir, this heavy load — you must lift it; I chose you for this task." And this one steps forward. If he lifts it, if he is able to do this task — that is, if he wills it, for the capacity was undoubtedly in him — if he resolves and lifts this load, then he rises above the level of his peers and becomes a select, distinguished individual. And if he does not lift it? Then he becomes more downtrodden and more wretched than the others. They say to him, "Poor wretch! The others could not, and We did not ask them; but We asked you, and you did not do it." The selection of the Ummah of Islam is of this kind, like the selection of the Ummah of the Children of Israel. The Children of Israel in their time, and the Muslims in their time, were the worthiest of communities and individuals to bear the trust of Islam, the leadership and guidance of mankind; that is why this trust was given to them. Did they bear it or not? If they bore it — if they delivered this trust to its destination — then of course they are the best, the most select, and the worthiest of Muslims. But if not, then what? If they did not bear it, they earn the very condition the Jews earned as a result of not bearing the trust: And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them, and they incurred the wrath of God. This is for their world; ma'wahum jahannam — "their abode is Hell" — and that is for their Hereafter. He has chosen you. He has chosen you, He has selected you to bear this load. wa ma ja'ala 'alaykum fi'd-dini min haraj — "and He has not laid upon you in religion any hardship": in religion He has placed upon you no hardship, no pressure, no difficulty; there is no constraint. This load is not so very heavy; bearing it is no such torment; it is bearable. wa ma ja'ala 'alaykum fi'd-dini min haraj — He has laid upon you in the matter of religion no constraint, no difficulty, no pressure. millata abikum Ibrahim — this is the very creed of your father Abraham. huwa sammakumu'l-muslimina min qablu wa fi hadha — He has named you, in the past and in this present time, Muslims and submitters, surrendered to God — wa min dhurriyyatina ummatan muslimatan lak (this is in the prayer of Abraham in Surat al-Baqarah, a reference to that) — huwa sammakumu'l-muslimina min qablu wa fi hadha: We gave you this load, We carried out this selection regarding you. And for what? So that you may do what and reach where? …that the Messenger may be a witness over you and that you may be witnesses over mankind. Your direct overseer is the Prophet, and you are responsible for all humanity — so that the Prophet may be a watchman over you, and you may be watchmen over humanity. You are the rulers of mankind, you are the administrators of humanity, you are the watchmen of this caravan. O leaders of the caravan, do not remain asleep! li-yakuna'r-rasulu shahidan 'alaykum — that the Prophet may be a watchman over you; wa takunu shuhada'a 'ala'n-nas — and that you may be the watchmen and overseers over the people, over the nations and the masses. Now that this is so, now that your responsibility is heavy, now that you are being dispatched on a difficult mission on behalf of the Lord — fa-aqimu's-salat — then establish prayer. Once again duty, once again commitment — dry and empty faith?! fa-aqimu's-salat — establish the prayer; wa atu'z-zakat — and give the zakat. (aqimu's-salat I explained on one of the past days.) and hold fast to God. And cling to God and to the divine creed; take refuge in God, rely upon Him; fear no one else, no other power. When the ways close before you, do not despair of God's grace and aid. huwa mawlakum — God is your master, your guardian, your protector, the one on your front line. (The meaning of mawla — guardianship (wilayat) and expressions of this sort — I must, God willing, set forth in a detailed and independent discussion. Allahu waliyyu'lladhina amanu — what does it mean? huwa mawlakum — what does it mean? 'Ali is the mawla of the believers — what does it mean? The believers must hold the wilayat of 'Ali — what does it mean? This wilayat, this word, is an astonishingly meaning-laden, pith-filled word. One day, God willing, I will explain it using Qur'anic expressions.) fa-ni'ma'l-mawla wa ni'ma'n-nasir — what an excellent master, what an excellent helper is the Lord. We have several more verses, from the end of Surat al-Anfal. These are the social commitments. The commitments of faith of the kind of zakat, of prayer, of holding fast to God — that is one kind, the kind those earlier verses at the end of Surat al-Hajj repeated. These verses raise another kind of commitment, seen from another angle. Indeed those who believed — and emigrated. What does it mean to emigrate? Does it mean, firstly, that they went from Mashhad to Tehran, for example, and stayed — that they migrated from one city to another, and that was all? No. Emigration means washing one's hands of everything, all at once, for the sake of a goal: for the sake of joining the Islamic society, of accepting commitment within the organized structure of the Islamic community. When you rose up and came out of Mecca, your shop full of goods no longer existed for you there — that shop with its established goodwill, as today's people would call it, with its loyal clientele and the reputation that earned you honor. Your shop with its two or three bays was confiscated and your property looted, all to the benefit of the bloodthirsty, marauding plunderers of Mecca. If you had come from Mecca alone, and your wife had not become a Muslim, then you had to write off every memory of your past married life to the wind — it was over, you had to tear your heart away. If you came from Mecca to Medina, and your father or your son had stayed behind there, the dearest of your dear ones had turned into your blood-enemy. This is what emigration means. Those who emigrated accepted all these deprivations and failures into their souls. From another angle, emigration means carrying a single brick for the building of the mighty palace of the Islamic society. Consider: a building is to be constructed. Suppose that a hundred pieces of timber, or thousands of bricks, are to be placed here one upon another. If every child carries even one and brings it here, then it is built. If every person lays a single stone, a magnificent palace comes into being. The Islamic society that had risen in Medina needed believing, active, capable, seasoned elements — people who understood Islam, who loved and believed in this path, whose hearts brimmed with faith. The one who emigrated from Mecca passed up familiarity and affection and memory and ease and merriment, and came to Medina. In coming from Mecca to Medina, this person had in truth taken a great step, by his own measure, toward building such a society; and so he had worth, he was decisive. So see what these verses say. Indeed those who believed — and also emigrated — and strove with their wealth and their lives in the path of God — and those who gave shelter, to these homeless, helpless ones uprooted from their houses — and aided them — all of these: these are some of them the allies of others. These are bound together, joined on one front. They are all one element — the bricks and mortar of one wall and one roof. Mathalu'l-mu'mini ka-mathali'l-bunyani yashuddu ba'duhu ba'da — "The likeness of the believer is the likeness of a building: one part of it reinforces another." Have you seen how the bricks interlock in a vaulted ceiling? Each brick is a believer; each believer is a brick, interlocked, holding dozens of other bricks in place. Pull out a single brick with effort, and ten around it fall — this one had held those ten, just as those ten in turn, each for its part, had held this one. ba'duhum awliya'u ba'd — some of them are the allies of others. and those who believed — pay attention here — but those who believed, who have the heart-faith too, yet wa lam yuhajiru — they did not tear themselves away from the comfortable, tree-shaded private home to emigrate — (and even if there was no tree-shaded home there, then the houses of that place) — wa lam yuhajiru — they did not emigrate; they believed, but did not act on this commitment of faith. And what does He say of such people? ma lakum min walayatihim min shay'in hatta yuhajiru — you have nothing to do with their guardianship until they emigrate. These are not joined to you, not part of you; between you and them there is no guardianship. Until when? hatta yuhajiru — until they act on the commitment of faith. Dry and empty faith yields no effect even in this world, brother; even in the Islamic society it becomes no source of effect; and in the Hereafter, that goes without saying. Ma lakum min walayatihim min shay'in hatta yuhajiru. A few verses on, there is again a sentence that serves our purpose much better — very apt as testimony for our point. I will read it to you now. One, two, three verses later He says: And those who believed and emigrated and strove in the path of God — and those who gave shelter and aided — these are the true believers. The true believer is this one. And who is the one who is not? The false believer. This is the import of the verse.