By Samar Yahya
The term ‘obey’ means to submit to the orders and influence of someone. It also means to comply with regulations, rules, and law.
Linguistically, obedience means agreement and submission to comply with what someone in authority orders.
From a religious point of view, it is abiding by the orders of Allah and avoiding His prohibitions.
In our lives, obedience starts with parents, elder relatives, and grandparents, then our teachers and tutors when we start going to school.
We learn obedience at an early age from our elders because we are confident that they know more than we do. This is the first step in our obedience to Allah. Obeying parents is part of obeying Allah. When we obey Allah and His Messenger (peace be upon him) there will be no inner struggle and conflict within ourselves.
As for the obedience of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), it is part of the obedience of Allah. This obedience means adherence to the prophet’s tradition, sunnah, and all what he established.
Obedience of Allah means to act on what Allah enjoins all of us to do in the Holy Qur’an and what His Prophet, Muhammad (peace be upon him), encouraged us to do in his sunnah.
In the Holy Qur’an obedience of the Prophet peace be upon him) is considered as the same as obedience to Allah. Muslims are told to take the Holy Qur’an and sunnah as their guides.
{He who obeys the Messenger has obeyed Allah; but those who turn away - We have not sent you over them as a guardian.} (Chapter 4, verse 80)
Have you noticed that nowadays the majority of kids do not obey their parents? Children keep negotiating with their parents over every single order or demand they get from their parents or elders. Among the new generation, disobedience has become so common and it becomes even worse with teenagers.
If we start with obedience of family members and relatives in an early age, obeying Allah’s orders comes smoothly.
Islam builds a family in which the children’s obedience of the parents is expected. Children show respect to parents, and in return the parents must show caring, kindness, and mercy towards the children. Parents and children are bound together by love and mutual obligations. The Qur’an has made it compulsory for the child to obey parents and treat parents with goodness and kindness.
Parents are to be treated well at all times. The respect we ought to pay our parents has been emphasized in the Holy Qur’an.
{And your Lord has decreed that you not worship except Him, and to parents, good treatment. Whether one or both of them reach old age [while] with you, say not to them [so much as], "uff," and do not repel them but speak to them a noble word.} (Chapter 17, verse 23)
It is each Muslim’s responsibility to do their best to obey the orders of Allah set forth in the Holy Qur’an and the teachings of the Prophet (peace be upon him).
Obedience of Allah brings provision and on the contrary, sin brings poverty. A person may be deprived of provision because of sins that he commits. Nothing brings provision like doing acts of obedience and avoiding sins. Nothing has been commanded by Allah or forbidden by Allah except that there is good and benefit in it for us, whether we understand the wisdom behind it or not.
With the advances in science, scientists have proven that all the regulations and orders given to us in regards to slaughtering animas for the meat we eat, for example, is the best way for our health. The ban on drinking alcohol has its benefits on our health, especially the liver. Waking up for Fajr prayers prevents from heart strokes or clots. There are hundreds of examples and we are still discovering medical and psychological benefits of so many things we are asked to do as Muslims.
In the early days of Islam, by obeying Allah’s orders, Muslims became healthier and more advanced than non-Muslims, and they went through a golden age. The Muslim community was brilliant; Muslims were on top of the fields of science, math, geography, astronomy, medicine, and more.
Our lives are determined by our choices; the best of these choices is the choice to obey Allah. When we submit to Allah, we are not going to have our rights abused; we are not going to lose out in any. We will be tested, but with patience and perseverance we will get through tests and tribulations.
By obeying and submitting to Allah, we stand to gain in ways that we will not expect nor foresee and the most important thing is to realize that the greatest success is to be granted Allah’s blessings in all aspects and throughout our lives.
