Raise Your Duas
Chapter 31
Ask for it. Then act for it.
Dua can change what might seem logically impossible.
Along each day’s route, Islam designated five gracious pauses for Allah, distributed at specific times throughout the day, during which mankind is directed to meet their Lord, open their hearts, and speak their minds to Him. These regular intervals enable the Muslim to take stock, review and prioritise what is important and what isn’t.
Prayer helps us to put into words exactly what is troubling us. It is almost impossible to deal with a problem while it remains vague and nebulous. Sometimes our worries are so intimate that we cannot discuss them even with our closest relatives or friends. Prayer is the answer. If a person makes a dua with proper presence of mind and sincerity of intention, whilst striving to achieve it, Allah will grant them what they have prayed for.
A feeling of hopelessness and despair can hit even the most optimistic of us at some point in our lives. Sometimes the reason why we don’t make du`a’ — or an intense du`a’ — is because we fear disappointment. Subconsciously, we feel that the odds are too great. But remember that Allahu Akbar — He is Greater!
The sincere person whose dua’s are answered has to be completely honest with Allah in the way he strives to rid himself of bad characteristics and to acquire good ones. If you want proof of this, it is to be found in the hadeeth of the Prophet ﷺ : “Whoever seeks to be patient, Allah will give him patience.” (Bukhaari). He ﷺ also said: “Knowledge comes by learning and patience comes by making oneself be patient.”
Having an Attentive Heart
Most people pray with their tongues and less so with their hearts. One of the greatest barriers between us and an accepted Du’ā is an unattentive heart.
Know that Allah responds to the duas of the desperate because it is sincere. So beg Allah like that of a drowning man. The Prophet said ﷺ “Call upon Allāh when you are certain of a response, and remember that Allāh will not answer a Du’ā that comes from a heedless and distracted heart.” (Tirmidhi)
This means we should pray while believing that Allah has already answered us in the best manner and affirming that what is asked will occur.
Brokenness and Humility
When the Prophet ﷺ approached the tribe of Saqeef (the inhabitants of the city of Taif), he asked to meet the chief of the town, and the chiefs of the town were in fact three brothers (Their father was once the chief of the city, but once he died, the brothers decided to share the power among each other). So the three chiefs agreed to meet the Prophet ﷺ as they didn’t know why he (S.A.W) wanted to meet them.
When the Prophet ﷺ introduced him as the Messenger of Allah, told them about Islam, about worshipping only one God, and leaving idol worshipping, the three brothers ridiculed and insulted him in the worst possible manner.
One of them said, ‘If you are a Prophet, I might as well destroy the Kaabah’ (meaning what’s the point), another said, ‘Did Allah not found any one better than you to send? You are the one He has chosen?’, the third one said, ‘If you are a Prophet, then you are too Holy for me to speak to, and if you are not a prophet (i.e. if you are a liar), then you are too ignoble for me (a noble man) to speak to’ (i.e. either way, you are somebody I cannot speak to.)
But this wasn’t the end of it, the three brothers then commanded their slaves and the youth to ridicule the Prophet ﷺ and make fun of him. Also, to physically harm him by throwing stones at him, by pelting him as he was leaving the city. So, the Prophet ﷺ was forced to leave the city while the people are ridiculing him, insulting him, and throwing stones at him, so much so that the blood began to pour from his body and that his shoes became soaked with his own blood.
As he ran outside the city, he himself narrates to Aishaa, ‘that I could not remember where I was going’. He was in such a state of shock that he did not know where he was until he reached a garden a few kilometers outside of Taif. The people of Taif had stopped chasing him, and he sat down, tired and bleeding, being tortured and humiliated by the people of Taif, all alone under a tree. There he ﷺ made a dua (call) to Allah and said:
“O Allah! I complain to You of my weakness, my scarcity of resources and the humiliation I have been subjected to by the people. O Most Merciful of those who are merciful. O Lord of the weak and my Lord too. To whom have you entrusted me? To a distant person who receives me with hostility? Or to an enemy to whom you have granted authority over my affair? So long as You are not angry with me, I do not care. Your favor is of a more expansive relief to me. I seek refuge in the light of Your Face by which all darkness is dispelled and every affair of this world and the next is set right, lest Your anger or Your displeasure descends upon me. I desire Your pleasure and satisfaction until You are pleased. There is no power and no might except by You.”
At this point, the Prophet ﷺ said ‘I saw a cloud hovering above me, and lo and behold, I saw Jibreel (Angel Gabriel) came down from that cloud, and besides him was an angel that I had never seen before.’ And Jibreel said to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, ‘O Muhammad, your Lord has seen how your people have responded to you, your Lord has seen what they have said to you, so he has sent me with the angel of the mountains to place at your disposal.’
The angel said, ‘O Muhammad, if you want, command me and I will cause the two mountains of Taif to collapse upon them.’ (For those of you who don’t know, Taif is situated on some type of plateau, and the city is in between these two mountains, and the angel asked the Prophet ﷺ if he should just squash the people between the same mountains whose pebbles they used to stone the him with.)
The Prophet ﷺ, still bleeding and his shoes still wet with blood says, ‘No! Rather, I pray that Allah blesses their children to be Muslims and worship Allah alone. Even if they have rejected Islam, I pray that Allah blesses their progeny to be Muslim.’ — To this day, Taif is a city of Islam.
Therefore in order for our du`a’ to be truly meaningful, we must accompany that du`a’ with a certain brokenness in the heart. This brokenness is the feeling of utter need, submission and surrender to Allah, and realising that truly it is only He who can get us out of our state.
When you express your vulnerability to Allah, you begin to develop this unwavering conviction, that no matter what happens, Allah will be enough for you.
Having Good Expectations
Remind you dreams about who Allah is.
The basic etiquette of Dua is that you should first believe that Allah will accept it from you.
The next step is to ask Him for the best outcome for there is no end to what he can bless you with.
The real secret of prayer, though, is that we will get good from Allah to the measure that we expect good from him.
The Prophet said “Allah the Exalted says: I am as my servant expects me and I am with him as he remembers me.” (Bukhari) and in another narration “ Allah says: If he thinks good of me, he will have it. And if he thinks evil of me, he will have it.” (Ahmad)
May Allah revive our hearts and bless us with genuine tears in our moments of solitude.
The One Who Responds
Why wish upon a star when you can pray to the one who created it.
“And when My servants ask you concerning Me, then surely I am very near; I answer the prayer of the suppliant when he calls on Me, so they should answer My call and believe in Me that they may walk in the right way.” (2:186)
One of thes Names of Allah that we seem to forget is al-Mujeeb: the One who Responds; and Allah shows us throughout the Qur’an the manifestation of this Name with those who ask Him. We should never think that Allah will not answer, because by feeling so, we are denying this attribute (siffat) of Allah.
The Prophet ﷺ said, “Verily your Lord is Generous and Shy. If His servant raises his hands to Him (in supplication) He becomes shy to return them empty.” (Ahmad, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi)
Sufyaan ibn Uyaynah said “Let none of you think that his dua will not be answered because of (the sins) that he knows of himself. Indeed, Allah responded to the dua of the worst of the creation, Iblis (the devil), may Allah curse him, when “He said, ‘My Lord, then reprieve me until the Day they are resurrected.’ (Allah) said, ‘So indeed, you are of those reprieved.’” (15:36–37)
If Iblis’ dua can be answered, surely the dua of a sinner has more precedence than his!
While we should not lose hope, we should not be negligent either. Ibn Qayyim writes “Du’aa is like a weapon, and a weapon is only as good as the person using it; it is not merely the matter of how sharp it is. If the weapon is perfect and free of faults, and the arm of the person using it is strong, and there is nothing stopping him, then he can lay to waste the enemy. But if any of these three features is lacking, then the effect will be lacking accordingly.”
Delay is Not Denial
We all say we believe Allah is the Al-Mujeeb when everything lands at our feet, but what about when we don’t immediately see the fruits of our du`a’?
Ibn al Jawzi mentions “The planning of The Almighty is better for you than your own planning, and He could deprive you from what you ask to test your patience. So let Him see from you a determined patience and you will soon see from Him what will give you joy. And when you have cleaned the paths of answering [of supplication] from the stains of sin [i.e have repented] and were patient about what He has chosen for you, then everything that happens to you is better for you whether you were given or deprived of what you have requested.”
We sometimes forget that du`a’, calling on Allah sincerely, is one of the greatest means. Sometimes it is the only means. Zachariah asked Allah for an heir even though he was old and his wife infertile. But it was when he saw the amazing things Allah had given Mariam — at that moment, at the height of his conviction, he makes the du`a’: “At that, Zechariah called upon his Lord, saying, “My Lord, grant me from Yourself a good offspring. Indeed, You are the Hearer of supplication,” (3:38)
And it was indeed miraculous — Allah gave him exactly what he asked for. Zachariah himself was shocked: “He said, “My Lord, how will I have a boy when I have reached old age and my wife is barren?” The angel said, “Such is Allah; He does what He wills,” (3:40).
When you ask Allah, it means you know Him. Knowing He responds means knowing that He is All-Seeing (As-Baseer), All-Knowing (Al-`Aleem), All-Hearing (Al-Samee`), that He is the Most-Affectionate (al-Wadud), that He gives us even if we don’t deserve it (al-Wahhab), that He is not in need of anyone or anything but we are in need of Him (al-Ghaniyy).
However we do not put a time-limit on when Allah can respond. While He is al-Mujeeb, He is also al-Hakeem (the wise). Perhaps you hate a thing and Allah puts good in it, and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you.
Part of the test is when a believer supplicates and receives no immediate response, he should realise that this is a test and needs patience. There may be an interest to be served by the delay, and haste may be harmful.
Allah is al-Mu´àkhir — The Delayer. He delays certain things out of His mercy for us, but out of our ignorance we become impatient. Instead of having a good opinion of Him, a deeper certainty in His Power, and more trust in His Ways, we instead become anxious, resentful, and unhappy. Our Imaan (faith) then takes a dip because we`ve failed to understand. But He is al- Mu´àkhir. He delays out of goodness. Does He not delay punishing the creation for their sins, so that they can come to repent?
The fundamental matter here is that the person uses knowledge to engender an awareness of his Lord. When this actually exists, a special relationship develops between the two so that when he asks, He grants, and when he supplicates, He answers.
Say, “What would my Lord care for you if not for your supplication?” (25:77)
In other words: Who would we be were it not for our duʿā’, in both of its forms; (1) The Duʿā’ of worship and (2) The Duʿā’ of requests? In the absence of them, Allāh has no interest in man. People measure their worth using an array of different benchmarks. As for you, as a Muslim, measure your worth in light of this āyah.
Putting aside whether your duʿā’ is answered immediately or delayed, or whether you see the effects of your duʿā’ today or not, the fact that Allāh has inspired you to raise your hands and call upon Him means that He has inspired you to put forward one of the dearest acts of worship in existence. And Allāh will never leave the hands of the supplicant empty.
The Prophet ﷺ said: “Verily your Lord is generous and shy. If His servant raises his hands to Him, He becomes shy to return them empty.” [Ahmad]
If somebody knocks on your door and begs persistently whilst you are able to give, most of those with a gram’s worth of decency would be too embarrassed to withhold. To Allāh belongs the greatest example, for “if His servant raises his hands to Him, He becomes shy to return them empty”, a shyness that befits His Majesty and Glory, a shyness of limitless generosity, a shyness of fearless spending.
As such, the people of duʿā’ have qualified for a win-win situation, benefitting from that which has occurred and that which has yet to occur!
Allah will never disappoint the sincere caller. Even when you think He hasn’t answered you, He plans in your favour.
What you think is falling apart is actually being rearranged by Allah to give you what you ultimately want. Ultimately — not today, not even this week or a month but for a lifetime. Hang in there just a little longer…
