The Right of God over His Servants and Theirs over Him

Occasion: A transcription of a lecture delivered on October 6, 2017, in which Dr. Ahmed Abouseif returned to the discussion of the ḥadīth after some brothers asked him to explain it in detailSource: A transcription of a video lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

After praising Allah and invoking blessings on His Prophet ﷺ, the lecturer prayed that Allah gather those present in His house upon obedience to Him, then gather them in Paradise, that He write their time in the scales of their good deeds, make their deeds sincerely for His sake, prepare for them right guidance in their affair, and preserve for them the soundness of their hearts, the security of their souls and the safety of their chests.

Then he said: We had spoken some days ago, at a gathering of condolence, about the ḥadīth of the Prophet ﷺ on the right of Allah over the servants and the right of the servants over Allah, and some brothers asked that we return to it, so I wanted to go into some detail on it on this blessed night.

The Ḥadīth in Its Narrations

The ḥadīth in its origin has two narrations. The first narration is from Muʿādh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: «كنتُ رِدْفَ رسول الله ﷺ على حمارٍ يقال له عُفَير، فقال: يا معاذ، أتدري ما حقّ الله على العباد وما حقّ العباد على الله؟ قلتُ: الله ورسوله أعلم. قال: فإنّ حقّ الله على العباد أن يعبدوه ولا يشركوا به شيئًا، وحقّ العباد على الله ألّا يعذّب من لا يشرك به شيئًا. قلتُ: يا رسول الله، أفلا أُبشّر الناس؟ قال: لا تبشّرهم فيتّكلوا» (“I was riding behind the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on a donkey called ʿUfayr, and he said: O Muʿādh, do you know what the right of Allah over the servants is and what the right of the servants over Allah is? I said: Allah and His Messenger know best. He said: The right of Allah over the servants is that they worship Him and associate nothing with Him, and the right of the servants over Allah is that He not punish whoever associates nothing with Him. I said: O Messenger of Allah, shall I not give people the glad tidings? He said: Do not give them the glad tidings, lest they rely on it”).^[1]

The meaning of “ridf” or “radīf” is that he was riding behind the Prophet ﷺ on his mount; they would ride a donkey or a mule and one of them would be the “radīf” of the other, that is, he rides behind him. So our master Muʿādh says: I was riding with the Prophet ﷺ on a donkey, and the donkey's name is “ʿUfayr.”

And the second narration is from the ḥadīth of Anas (may Allah be pleased with him): that the Prophet ﷺ said: «ما من عبدٍ يشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وأن محمدًا عبده ورسوله إلا حرّمه الله على النار» (“There is no servant who bears witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His servant and messenger except that Allah forbids him to the Fire”). Muʿādh said: O Messenger of Allah, shall I not inform people of it so they may rejoice? So he ﷺ said: «إذًا يتّكلوا» (“Then they will rely on it”). So Muʿādh did not relate it except at his death, out of fear of sin.^[2] And the meaning of “out of fear of sin” is that he feared he would be sinful by concealing knowledge; so he kept the covenant of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ until the last moment of his life, and when he was about to die he related the knowledge he had, fearing that he would die with some knowledge in his soul or heart or mind that he had not conveyed to people.

And in another narration the Prophet ﷺ called Muʿādh and said: «يا معاذ بن جبل» (“O Muʿādh ibn Jabal”), he said: so I said: “Labbayka wa saʿdayk, O Messenger of Allah.” The meaning of “labbayk”: I am at your command, and the meaning of “saʿdayk”: I will do what makes you happy, O Messenger of Allah; you will find me as you expect, just command me. Then he ﷺ was silent for a while, then called: «يا معاذ بن جبل», and I said: “Labbayka wa saʿdayk, O Messenger of Allah,” then he was silent for a while, then called a third time: «يا معاذ بن جبل», and I said: “Labbayka wa saʿdayk, O Messenger of Allah.” So he said to him: «أتدري ما حقّ الله على العباد وما حقّ العباد على الله؟» (“Do you know what the right of Allah over the servants is and what the right of the servants over Allah is?”) and then went on with the ḥadīth.

A Man of the Anṣār: The Kinship of Faith

And we begin step by step with Muʿādh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him). He is a man of the Anṣār. And if the Prophet ﷺ wanted to take someone up behind him, the natural thing would be to take one of his relatives and family, but he took up a man of the Anṣār, of those whom he had come to know recently. And in that is an indication that the kinship between us is not the kinship of blood so much as the kinship of faith and religion; so the tie of religion in Islam takes precedence over the tie of wombs or bellies. We deal with Muslims as though we were a solid structure, as though we were brothers with no differences separating us from people, but the bond between us all is faith. So dealing among Muslims is in its origin dealing in utmost clarity and purity, built on sincere love and untouched by anything, by Allah's permission.

And this Muʿādh witnessed the Second ʿAqaba, and pledged in it to the Prophet ﷺ that he would support him if he went to Madīna, and he witnessed with him the battle of Badr and what came after. A man of the trustworthy, and the Prophet ﷺ made brothers of him and ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd (may Allah be pleased with him).

And ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd, merely for the matter of peers, is reported in some narrations to have been the sixth of six who entered Islam. And the Prophet ﷺ taught his Companions that he is one of those who are asked about the Qur'an; when people differ among themselves and the Prophet ﷺ is not present, who is asked about the Qur'an? One of four, among them ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd and Zayd ibn Thābit and others. So you can imagine the Prophet ﷺ making brothers of Muʿādh and Ibn Masʿūd! Then we continue the discussion of Muʿādh and see that he is one of the most knowledgeable of the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ; he ﷺ says: «أعلمُهم بالحلال والحرام معاذ بن جبل» (“The most knowledgeable of them in the lawful and the unlawful is Muʿādh ibn Jabal”).

Knowledge Is Food That Needs a Vessel

So the Prophet ﷺ used to choose the places in which he put knowledge. And knowledge, my brothers, is not water to be scattered on the ground, but food that needs a vessel to take it in. So if we want to teach knowledge, there must be someone who wants it.

And we have heard many stories about students of knowledge who used to show courtesy before their teachers, for nothing but to obtain a sentence or a ḥadīth from the Prophet ﷺ. Indeed it is reported that one of them used to tie a fierce dog at his door, and when the students approached the Shaykh's house the dog was about to maul them and they would go back, and they kept devising ways around it until they silenced it or fed it or it calmed down, and they would slip inside to ask for a ḥadīth or to learn a portion. So when they entered the Shaykh would call out to them: how did you reach me? And they would say: we coaxed the dog until... He says: now you deserve to be students.

But today knowledge is spread to people by every possible means, and yet many people do not turn to it. Indeed we find it, sadly, as a commodity in circulation whose speakers are many and whose students are few; no one turns to the matter of knowledge anymore. And today if you say to someone: this imam or shaykh or teacher sits in this gathering and takes some of the right of his time, people turn away from him; they want it for free! But if they are called to a sweet or a meal in a restaurant you find them rushing to it and paying whatever Allah wills they pay. Indeed what is worse and more bitter is that if they are invited to a singer or an actor or those they call artists, you see them pushing one another to reach the front. But the inheritance of the Prophet ﷺ and the interpretation of the Book of Allah, Blessed and Exalted, we see people's disinterest in it, and by Allah this is nothing but an ill omen for the state of the Muslims, and we ask Allah for well-being and safety.

The Leader of a Society on the Back of a Donkey

The Prophet ﷺ takes someone up with him on a mount. Imagine: the leader of this society, the natural thing is that he ride alone and drive alone and enjoy comfort, and perhaps we “pamper” a bit and say: a Mercedes S550! But the narrations say: “I was riding behind the Prophet ﷺ on a donkey.” We are speaking about a donkey, not a mule nor a horse, and it had a name: ʿUfayr. So imagine such companionship, we walk and talk and pray together and pat our mount: this is “our ʿUfayr.” And this intimate relationship between a human and a beast is because when Allah placed mercy in our hearts He did not make it only for our children or only for our fathers and mothers, but placed in the hearts of servants mercy for all of Allah's creatures.

And we have many, many ḥadīths with great detail about how you slaughter if you want to slaughter a sheep: how you conceal the knife from it, how you feed it and give it water, how you do not make it feel terror or pain, and how you reassure it before that. And naming Allah, Mighty and Majestic, over the slaughtered animal is not only to make the blood lawful, but to calm that heart and soothe the nerves before your knife reaches it.

The Art of Calling: To Take Hold of the Mind of the One You Address

«فقال النبي ﷺ: يا معاذ بن جبل، فقلتُ: لبّيك وسعديك» (“So the Prophet ﷺ said: O Muʿādh ibn Jabal, and I said: Labbayka wa saʿdayk”). Let us suppose that I am calling “Muhammad” now while he is focused with me, so I say: O Muhammad, go up and bring such-and-such. So he gets up and goes running: right away, sir, and he runs up, but after he goes up he says: what exactly did he tell me to do? He forgot. Why did he forget? Because you took him by surprise with the command, so the mind did not take it in fully. And if he was not attentive, playing with the children for example, and you said to him: O Muhammad, do such-and-such, then he forgot, it is because he was not attentive.

But if you called Muhammad and he said: yes, and you fell silent, then here begins a mental dialogue in the mind of the one called: what does he want from me? Did I do something wrong? Did I say something unsuitable? Did some unbecoming action issue from me? Or does he want to assign me something, so what is it, I wonder? So the mind begins to turn away from its first original thought. Imagine yourself riding in a car beside the driver, watching the greenery and the people and those coming and going, and your head is not here, and he calls you and you say: huh, what do you want? And your mind is still outside. Then he falls silent, he said nothing, called and fell silent. Fine. Then he calls a second time, and this time the heedlessness has gone, at least partly. And at the third: Labbayka wa saʿdayk, O Messenger of Allah, all my mind is before you.

And this is one of the educational methods that are taught now: how you prepare the one before you, if you want to give him information, so that he takes in from you what you want to deposit in his mind. Then the Prophet ﷺ says to him: «أتدري ما حقّ الله على العباد وما حقّ العباد على الله؟» (“Do you know what the right of Allah over the servants is and what the right of the servants over Allah is?”)

And we may imagine, and Allah knows best, that the Prophet ﷺ could have delivered the phrase in a purely declarative language, saying: O Muʿādh, the right of Allah over the servants is such-and-such, and the right of the servants over Allah is such-and-such, so it would be a declarative sentence. But he replaced it with an interrogative sentence: Do you know? So the addressee answers within himself: no, I do not know. And the moment I am asked about something I do not grasp or grasp part of, I empty my mind completely to take in the rest; in it there is more alerting of this soul to receive that knowledge.

“Allah and His Messenger Know Best”

He said: I said: Allah and His Messenger know best. And here comes a matter that the scholars of theology discuss, they say: how can he associate the Prophet with the Lord of Might? How does he say: “Allah and His Messenger know best,” as though the Messenger knows like our Lord? So how did this speech come about? And you have what one might object with, for one of the Companions said to the Prophet ﷺ: “What Allah wills and you will, O Messenger of Allah.” So the Prophet ﷺ said: «أجعلتني لله ندًّا؟ فإذا قلتَ ذلك فقل: ما شاء الله وحده» (“Have you made me a rival to Allah? If you say that, then say: What Allah alone wills”).^[3] But he said to him: do not do that again. So how do we reconcile the two? What do you think?

The answer: we must understand that there is a sharing in what is received from Allah by the Prophet, and it is the matter of knowledge; what does Allah know and teach His Messenger? From where did the Messenger of Allah ﷺ get knowledge? From Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted. As for will, no one in the whole world has a will alongside the Lord of the Worlds, but rather we say: what Allah, Mighty and Majestic, alone wills.

The Right of Allah over the Servants: Two Pillars

So what is the right of Allah over the servants? «أن يعبدوه ولا يشركوا به شيئًا» (“That they worship Him and associate nothing with Him”). We have two requirements.

The first requirement is worship, and it is movement; prayer and fasting and zakāh and pilgrimage and dutifulness to parents and help for people. And the second requirement: «ألّا يشركوا به شيئًا» (“that they associate nothing with Him”). And is this a work of the body or a work of the heart or a work of the mind? It is the work of everything inward, the matter of faith that you take in within your heart. And how can the two differ? If we imagine, as we mentioned before, that I stood in the qibla: Allāhu akbar, and began to recite the Qur'an, and afterwards said to myself: look at the people behind me, how happy they are! This recitation reached the maqām “Sika” according to you! Or: did you see how I matched this Ḥijāz maqām to the other? So I became one who looks at whom? I turn to the back and do not look to the front, and do not pray to Allah, though I am moving within the basis of worship. This is ostentation, this is a deed with which no monotheism was joined, a deed in which you associated someone else with Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted.

So if faith is present, I believe in Allah and I do not show off to anyone, but I did not pray at all; so one of them is realized without the other, and the matter is not yet complete. And if the deed is realized, so I went out to give charity and then said to the people: come, watch me! Or said: look, this is five, this is new, focus with me! Then I started announcing my name before the people: by the way, my name is such-and-such, write it down, and raised my hand; and you know my name and it is preserved with you since you are the mosque attendees, but I want my name to be written, and this is a check for five... and so on. So this is the matter of the servant showing off to someone alongside Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted, and if the deed is realized, the world is incomplete, because the second half was not completed.

Worship Is Wider than We Think

«أن يعبدوه ولا يشركوا به شيئًا» (“That they worship Him and associate nothing with Him”). The word worship in our lives, what does it include? If we asked: when you pray, is this worship? When you fast Ramadan? When you fast Mondays and Thursdays? And when you go to visit your mother because she said to you: my son, I have not seen you for a while, or pick up the phone to talk to her: peace be upon you, Hajja, how are you? Is this worship or not? And your wife rang you a number of times and you picked up the phone and said to her: what do you want? Is this worship or not? And you bought something for your child to make him happy, is this worship? And you went out to relax with your children somewhere, is it worship? So everything that a servant engages in during his life that is not forbidden, if joined with intention, becomes obedience to Allah, Mighty and Majestic. Once more: everything a servant does that is not forbidden, if joined with intention, is worship of Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted; and you driving your car in the morning to your work, opening your shop, buying and selling, teaching students, examining the patient, treating and healing, everything in life turns into worship of Allah, Blessed and Exalted. Do we agree on this?

And What Is the Right of the Servants over Allah?

Before we say what came in the ḥadīth: do we do anything that deserves that we take recompense for it from our Lord? Think about our dealings with people. I work in a place, I attend a number of days, and at the end of the month I say to them: please, I have two extra hours; if I work extra I take extra. That is how we reckon in this world.

So imagine that the Lord of the Worlds, glory be to Him, gave you what He gave you in return for worship. The question remains: in return for what? Do we worship our Lord in return for what He gave us, or does our Lord give us in return for our worshipping Him? Work out the calculation in your head and see how you answer. On either possibility you will not be able to reckon it. Why?

If you worshipped because He gave you the blessing of air, He did not give you air only, but gave you the nose that you use to breathe in the air. He gave you the air and gave you the nose that works on it to bring the air in. And this air goes where? To the windpipe, and works inside, so the oxygen is taken from here, and rises to the brain, and goes down to the heart, and in the blood there is a great deal of work. And did we pray the five prayers for a bit of air? So how about what happens inside? What do we do in return for that also? What is left for us to do?

And let us talk about a sip of water. He did not give you water only, but gave you what you take in water with, and the water runs through the whole body then exits by one means or another. Do you not remember the story of the prince, or the king, who said to the shaykh or scholar: counsel me? So he said to him: do... then he drank a sip of water, so the scholar said to him: wait, if this cup of water were withheld from you, with what would you buy it? And the cup was near, so he looked at it and said: by Allah, I would buy it with half my kingdom. He said: fine, in the name of Allah. So he drank. And after he drank he said to him: and what do you think if this water were held in you, for how much would you let it out? He said: for the other half. So he said to him: what is the value of a kingdom that is sold for a cup of water? So reflect, to understand the whole story: the world with all that is in it does not equal this sip of water (and the rest of the phrase in the transcript is garbled). Did we understand the matter or is the matter still not pictured?

And your being upright, back raised, walking on your feet, may Allah honor you, do not forget to count how many steps you walked, for Allah enabled you to walk, and notice that you did not say: oh, my cartilage! And at the same time you were able to raise your head, do not forget that you looked at the people and saw colors, this one's shirt and that one's appearance, so you compared and distinguished between people, and you recognized so-and-so from so-and-so from so-and-so, and you knew, looking at this one, whether he was happy or upset, and you said to him: how are you? Or: How are you man? Or other than that, so you knew the distinction between languages and between faces and between smiles and between intentions. So with what exactly do you worship our Lord, in return for what exactly, man?

And when you sleep, sometimes you are sleepless at night and cannot sleep, the world is upside down for you, you cannot surrender yourself to your bed. So what do you need to bring down upon yourself a bit of sleep? You can imagine: you put your head down and sleep! So for how much do you buy that? How many rakʿas do you pray for it? How many days do you fast for it? And if we imagine one of the people who cannot sleep four or five days in a row, who has a condition of insomnia and anxiety and cannot lay his head down, so you buy this business of sleep for how much, and for how many rakʿas, for example?

“The Right of the Servants over Allah”: A Right He Decreed upon Himself

So the Prophet ﷺ says: the right of the servants over Allah. So we have a logic by which we say that we have rights with our Lord. Yes, but in what sense? By what our Lord, the Lord of the Worlds, glory be to Him, told us, He says: He has decreed mercy upon Himself. It is He who decreed it upon Himself, not we who decreed it upon Him.

And this is as though you have a large warehouse in which you appoint employees; you, with your financial size and your enormous economic capacities, brought one who works for eight dollars an hour, and from your point of view he is worth nothing and could leave tomorrow morning. But when you sat and made a contract with him, you raised his value to your level, he became able to sue you. Right or not? So did he acquire this right of his from himself, or did he acquire it from your empowering him when you made the contract with him? So the Lord of the Worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted, as though Mighty and Majestic He raises our standing so that we would be at the level of dealing with Him, glory be to Him, exalted on high, when we ask Him, Mighty and Majestic, to accept our worship from us, to reward us for it, and to admit us to Paradise for what was in our hands. Even though He is the one who guided us to Islam, and He is the one who guided us to understand the requirements of faith, and He is the one who enabled us to these deeds, and He is the one who brought you to the mosque now; and you could be somewhere else, and who knows, perhaps a place of disobedience, and we ask Allah for safety.

Have you seen the words of the Lord of the Worlds, glory be to Him, exalted on high: ﴿وَلَوْ أَرَادُوا الْخُرُوجَ لَأَعَدُّوا لَهُ عُدَّةً وَلَٰكِن كَرِهَ اللَّهُ انبِعَاثَهُمْ فَثَبَّطَهُمْ﴾ (“And if they had intended to go forth, they would have prepared for it some preparation. But Allah disliked their being sent, so He kept them back”).^[4] What prevented them? Imagine what prevented them: ﴿كَرِهَ اللَّهُ انبِعَاثَهُمْ فَثَبَّطَهُمْ﴾ (“Allah disliked their being sent, so He kept them back”), Allāhu akbar! Our Lord did not want them. So can you imagine yourself one day being at home at the time of ʿishāʾ, and the people praying in the mosque and you sitting, and the reason is that our Lord does not like your presence among the worshippers? Can you imagine this matter? Do you take it in? By Allah, besides whom there is no god, if a Muslim grasped this concept he would not neglect any kind of obedience throughout his life.

But we, sadly, count laziness as rest. We understand the matter this way: we rest. And imagine that you get tired when you sit, but when you move... ^[5] Then you come on the Day of Resurrection and our Lord reviews with you, glory be to Him, Allah is exalted above comparison, but just so that we understand: He reviews with you the prayers you prayed, then says to you: this ʿishāʾ, yes I know it, I did not like for you to be present at all. We ask Allah, Blessed and Exalted, for safety.

“Do Not Give Them the Glad Tidings, Lest They Rely”

There are very many lessons in this ḥadīth that the people of knowledge discuss, but it is enough for us to see that the Prophet ﷺ commanded his Companion (may Allah be pleased with him) not to tell people. Why? Because people take things lightly and become lazy; for fear that they would “rely.” And the meaning of “rely” is that they cast the matter on our Lord; he says to you: that's it, we said there is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and our Lord, glory be to Him, the Exalted...

And we have, with great sadness, a group of Islamic sects, or those who call themselves Islamic, among them for example “the Murjiʾa.” They said that the word of monotheism guarantees the servant Paradise, so the servant, merely by saying there is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, has entered Paradise, and let him do what he wills after that. And these remind me of someone who was recently here with us at the mosque, who came visiting, and said to me words about the Messiah having paid the price on our behalf.^[6] So I said to him: do you know what the meaning of this speech you are saying is? He said: what is its meaning? I said: its meaning is that you can now set fire to the mosque we are sitting in and walk out of here to Paradise! For if the man says that Jesus paid the price on behalf of all our mistakes, it means that one goes up to Paradise whatever he does. Then he starts, and I am used to this, to move out of the topic into another topic, but after a little I bring him back to the first topic until he understands it.

Witness the example: when I say that I have this key with me, does that mean I have entered, or not yet? We give the car key to Muhammad and say: O Muhammad, take the car, the key is with you, go. So he takes the key and stands before the car door, and says to it: where do I eat you from, little duck? How do I deal with you? Do these people know that the word of monotheism is the key to Paradise, and the key has teeth? These teeth are what enter the door to begin the opening. So without deeds and without fear of Allah, the one who said there is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, would have the right to roam the earth in corruption and then say: Paradise is guaranteed for me! Is this reasonable? Rather the Lord of the Worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted, brought texts that show the state of one who did an evil deed and the state of one who did a good deed, what happens to this one and what happens to that one.

And this is not the end of the discussion of the ḥadīth, but rather a shortening for the sake of time. And we ask Allah, Exalted, for blessing for us and for you. I ask Allah, Mighty and Majestic, to make us among those who worship Him as He deserves to be worshipped, and to inspire us with sincerity in what we worship Him with, Mighty and Majestic, and to guide us to the straight path, He is the guardian of that and able to do it. May Allah keep your night safe, and bless you, and reward you with good, and the peace of Allah be upon you and His mercy and blessings.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The ḥadīth is in the two Ṣaḥīḥs from the ḥadīth of Muʿādh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him). And in the transcript “we say again” appears when the lecturer repeated the Prophet's statement ﷺ to Muʿādh, and it is from his style of delivery, not from the text of the ḥadīth. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Anas's narration from Muʿādh is also in the two Ṣaḥīḥs. The transcript has his words “fa-yastir,” which is garbled, and what is given is “fa-yastabshirū” according to the text of the well-known ḥadīth; the wording was not heard clearly. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: The lecturer reported the story by meaning, and the transcript has “mid-an li-llāh,” and the likelier is that it is “nidd-an li-llāh”; the lecturer did not name a narrator or the Companion. What is given is a correction of the hearing. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: The verse is from Sūrat al-Tawba (9:46), and the location is from the editor, not the lecturer, and the lecturer cited the verse up to his words “fa-thabbaṭahum,” and it is given to the extent he mentioned. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: The lecturer's comment here (“we gain, and laziness… you get tired when you sit but when you move”) is garbled in the transcript, and it was not entirely clear how he connected rest and tiredness, so what is established was retained. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: The transcript here is garbled in identifying this visitor and the context of the dialogue (including the phrase “coming for a visit al-Sīsī”), and what is established from it is that he said that the Messiah paid the price on our behalf, and the lecturer's reply to him.