2 min read
I love the shari’ah.
I’m obsessed with it. I study it, think about it, brainstorm with it, and absolutely marvel at it. The i’jaz (inimitability) of the sharī’ah is pure artistry. I mean shari’ah in the general sense, as the directives revealed from God. This doesn’t merely include ahkam (laws), but also implicit directives in the parables, stories and histories God relates and His Messenger explored.
If the sharī’ah were a museum, I’d spend all day wondering through its galleries, soaking in the beauty of its exhibits, enchanted by its artifacts. As I explore the cosmos of hikam (wisdoms) in even the smallest things God addresses, I appreciate God’s directives as pieces in a mosaic that comes together to produce a fascinating whole, that speaks profoundly to every aspect of human existence, no matter how mundane or seemingly insignificant.
The sharī’ah tells us something about God, His order in the universe, and His expectations of humans. It is a cultivating force evident in its achievements: to bring an illiterate people with godly resolve out of the desert to become the world’s greatest civilisational influence.
Anyone who has mastered anything knows that the most important aspect of that thing is its basics. And mastery begins with identifying profundity in the simple. This goes for subservience to God as well. As I’ve put it many a time, if believers were merely to explore the five pillars: what they tell us about God’s expectations on earth, what their purpose is, and consequently what proper functionalisation looks like, it’d suffice a person’s lifetime! It has occupied me for the past 15 years and I’ve barely scratched the surface – every year I come to realise I knew nothing the year before! And if this goes for the five pillars on which the edifice of subservience to God (islam) is built, what for the edifice itself?!
But as my mind runs through what is clearly an unending and inspirational journey I realise that the people must start somewhere. So on the #QuestForMeaning, let us turn down the noise; do away with distractions and tangentials that lead to irrelevance. We want to go back to basics and take people through the meaningful substance, radically examining everything from the sharī’ah’s first principles. Let us stand, at the base looking upwards, in awe of it together!
May God grant us all to good fortune, happiness and contentment, and guide us to celebrate His Holiness. And I pray for steadfastedness with all of our challenges ahead, and that He make me unflinchingly committed to the cause of righteousness and an unswerving agent of His will.
