Fulfilling the Rights of Our Creator
Syed Mustafa Ahmad
It is an undeniable truth that most of us have not fully honored the right of our Creator. We have constantly enjoyed His blessings, yet we have largely failed to offer the gratitude that was incumbent upon us. Here, the word “incumbent” pertains to the duty we owe.
All our lives, we have revelled in His bounties, but deliberately ignored our true Lord, lost in the chaos of the world—never presenting solid evidence of servitude at His door. We have been disloyal to the Being without whom we have no existence. Yet the adornment of this world has wrapped around us such a cloak of negligence that we have neither awareness of ourselves nor of that Being who moulded our humble existence from a drop of fluid and clothed us as the best of creation.
Why Do We Forget?
The sole reason is that the race of this world has consumed us. Wealth, status, lust, and self-righteousness have rusted our hearts. Satan has whispered that we can do everything ourselves. Our preoccupations have entangled us so much that concern for the Hereafter has faded.
We stopped including prayer, supplication, and gratitude in our daily routines, and those routines themselves became walls. These walls have grown so deep that tearing them down is no easy task.
We have sunk so deep in the disease of ego that the echo of “I” floats in the air everywhere. We become so pleased with false praise that, crossing every limit of flattery, we have offered solid proof of our disloyalty.
This forgetfulness did not happen in a single day. It is a toxic accumulation of years of forgetfulness. Gradually, we convinced ourselves that we would repent tomorrow. The illusion of “tomorrow” became our greatest enemy. We thought we are still young; we will worship when we grow old.
Then, when we grew old, we told ourselves: we are still breathing; we will recite the creed at the last moment. But we forgot that death never announces itself. It is an uninvited guest. We gave beautiful names to our mistakes. But the truth is that we made our desires our god, then bowed before that idol all our lives, until finally this idol grew so large that it swallowed us.
The Consequence of This Disloyalty
The result is that our hearts have died. The hearts that should have held the light of Allah have instead become fertile ground for baseless suspicions. We all continue to receive blessings, but their pleasure has vanished. Inner peace is destroyed.
A person feels emptiness everywhere because the soul’s connection with the Creator is severed. Then the inevitable happens: every problem seems huge, every grief makes us restless. Every evil appears as a great mountain, and the lesson hidden within that evil becomes invisible to our eyes.
Moreover, the fear of the grave and the Hereafter leaves the heart. Worldly life and its colours seem to be everything—and this is the real loss.
What Should We Do Now?
The solution is simply to return to Allah. A few steps can be taken in this direction, briefly mentioned below:
- Repent: The first thing to do is to acknowledge our disloyalty, as done in this writing, and resolve to abandon it. The door of repentance is open; it is essential to benefit from it as long as it remains open.
- Daily Remembrance and Gratitude: Make it a habit to recite praises morning and evening and thank Allah for every blessing. Thank God, openly and privately, for every blessing, small or large.
- Recognise the Reality of Prayer: It is not merely a habit—develop humility in it. Offer such prayer that brings genuine refinement to the one who prays. False and ostentatious prayer is counted as hypocrisy. Performing such showy prayer brings a person under reproach.
- Limits Regarding the World: Do not let wealth and lust enslaves you; instead, use them as much as you can in Allah’s way. Try to spend the numbered days of your life with an eye to pleasing Allah. Wealth, children, and worldly adornment are counted among trials. Getting lost in their colours is a losing bargain. Also, keep company with righteous people, because staying alone in vain isolation allows whispers to attack more. Speak openly about your sins; do not hide them.
When we tell someone our weakness, a veil of shame is torn, and the path to sincere reform opens. Additionally, take just a few minutes each day to reflect: “What blessing did I take today, and what ingratitude did I commit?” These few minutes of thought can transform an entire life. Remember, Allah forgives even our major mistakes, provided we learn to value small blessings. Otherwise, we will remain just as we have been so far.
The Final Word
This is a long story. To write it would require a thousand ages. Where could I get such a lifespan, that I might weep bitterly before my Lord, confess my crime of disloyalty, and take my last breath? Where to begin, and where to end? Someone wrote beautifully: “What a strange story—where does it start, where does it end? Which stages are these—neither could they understand, nor we.” That singer may be forgiven for his ignorance, but all of us have all the tales of disloyalty memorised like parrots. So what will be our reckoning? With what face will we go before Him when it is clearer than the sun that we kept erring all our lives—dust was on our faces, and we kept polishing the mirror?
Now the time has come that before polishing the mirror, we resolve to remove the dust. Allah is most merciful. Just one sincere repentance, one tear, and one firm, truthful return—He will take care of the rest. Otherwise, this very story will bear witness against us on the Day of Resurrection.
So decide today: enough, no more. The time has come to bring down the heaps of disloyalty I have piled at every moment. Now, reform will come within us—a reform solely for Allah’s sake. A transformation in which there are no filthy insects of hypocrisy.
