1987-June-12

Muslim Journal

If You Love God, You Should Follow Prophet Muhammad: Part 1

Imam Warith Deen Muhammad

Praise be to Allah, The Guardian Evolver, The Cherisher, The Sustainer of All the Worlds. We seek assistance in Him, we worship Him and ask Him for forgiveness; there is nothing worthy of worship except the one Lord, Allah, alone. I bear witness that there is nothing to be worshipped except Him alone, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His Servant and His Messenger.

Allah Most High, says to us in Qur'an, of Prophet Muhammad, 'peace and blessings be upon him: "Say: To the people, if you love Allah, (that is, if you love God), then follow me, and Allah will love you, and He will forgive you your sins, for Allah is Oft-Forgiving, and Merciful."

Dear Beloved Muslims, we are Muslims. If we are Muslims, we are Muslims indeed. And Muslims are believers in Allah, Muslims are worshippers of Allah; Muslims are religious people, their Deen is Al-Islam, their religion is Al-Islam, and Muslims love everything that Allah has created for them of good, and everything that He has created is good, it's only our ignorance and misuse of what He has done, that brings harm to ourselves.

Muhammad: The Best Of Allah's Creation

We love Allah's Creation; what is the best of Allah's Creation? The best that He created was Muhammad, peace and blessings be on the Messenger of God. Now, if you love money, women, or young, handsome men, whatever you love, if you love those things, how much more, if you're a Muslim, should you love Allah? The best that He created was Muhammad, and how much more should you love Muhammad? You should love Allah much more, because He created all that for you, and you should love Muhammad because he is the best of what He has created for you. He created Muhammad for us, as a mercy, and a guide, a caller to all that is good, and he did that, he fulfilled his obligations to his Lord, Allah.

He called the people to all that was good, and he didn't compromise, he didn't sell the agreement He had with God; he fulfilled that agreement, and it meant braving the opposition of forces much greater than he is, it seemed; armies, men that outnumbered him and his following so many times over.

Hostile people of his homeland that didn't like what he was teaching, simply because it required a change on their part; not that it was wrong, it was right and the best for all of them, but it required a change on their part, and they hated him for it, so they made a lot of mischief, devilish things, little petty, devilish things they did, to disturb his peace, to keep him with some problem, and to hold back the progress for Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.

Muhammad The Victorious

But Allah made him triumph; Allah protected his work, and gave him victory over those ignorant, petty oppressors, petty troublemakers. He made him victorious over them, and his victory was the victory for slaves, like Bilal, for oppressed people who were oppressed by the dictatorships, the empires, Romans, Greeks, Persians; oppressive empires that oppressed human beings, held down human beings and denied them their rights. It was Prophet Muhammad inspired by God who led the fight for human freedom, human dignity and justice for the common man, and overthrew the heavy yoke that those empires had put upon the common people. It was him, so why shouldn't we love him? All freedom-loving people who know the history, love Prophet Muhammad, whether they are Muslims or non-Muslims, love Muhammad, and Muslims should love him.

Allah says in Qur'an: "He is dearer to you than your relatives," than your wives or children and he should be more beloved .to you. We say, 'I love God,' but have you thought; do you really love God? If you really love God, then you will love God's greatest favor to you, and God's greatest favor to you is the gift of guidance that saves you from error, from confusion, and from corruption. So if you really love God, you will love His gift, and His gift is the Qur'an which came by way of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), who gave this Qur'an to us; from his mouth the words came into the ears of human beings.

Muhammad The Courageous

We didn't see it until the words came from his mouth into the ears of human beings; we didn't see the Qur'an, we didn't have Qur'an. Prophet Muhammad was the one who had faith in Allah, and had strength of character, the decency and the purity of heart to brave the anger, the wrath, and reprisals of people who wanted to keep life down and miserable for the common people. He was the one who braved that; he was the one who took up that challenge. He was the first one to be attacked. He took the battle to the enemy, he met them on the battlefield for our sake; now why shouldn't we love him?

What kind of hypocrites are we in this community, to think that we can just come and make prayers, go through the show like Muslims do throughout the world, have Qur'ans in our houses, say "As-Salaam-Alaikum," "Wa-Alaikum as-Salaam," but really don't love Prophet Muhammad? We are nothing but hypocrites.

To be continued