By: Mohammad A Rahman

The Holy Qur'an has repeated commanded the believers to surrender to Allah in its totality, sometime plainly asking them to submit entirely, sometime telling them why they should submit to Him, sometimes threatening them with punishment if they do not so that humans beings have no reason to be able to say at the Day of Judgment that they did not know:

O ye who believe! Enter into Islam whole-heartedly; and follow not the footsteps of the evil one; for he is to you an avowed enemy.  (Holy Qur'an 2:208)

And obey Allah and obey the messenger and be cautious; but if you turn back, then know that only a clear deliverance of the message is (incumbent) on Our messenger (Holy Qur'an 5:93)

O ye who believe! Obey Allah and obey the messenger, and render not your actions vain (Holy Qur'an 47:33)

Do you then believe in a part of the Book and disbelieve in the other? What then is the re ward of such among you as do this but disgrace in the life of this world, and on the day of resurrection they shall be sent back to the most grievous chastisement, and Allah is not at all heedless of what you do. (Holy Qur'an 2:85)

O you who believe! what is the matter with you, that, when you are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, you cling heavily to the earth? Do you prefer the life of this world to the Hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the Hereafter.  Unless you go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For Allah hath power over all things.  (Holy Qur'an 9:38-39)

And in many other similar verses. None of the above mentioned verses talk about how to submit to Him or what are the obstacles in the way of submitting to Him. However, we know that it is one of the features of the Holy Qur'an that whenever additional clarifications are needed, Allah invariably gives them in some other places in the Qur'an. Throughout the Holy Qur'an, Allah has scattered verses in a way that seem to refer some verses to other verses and in turn to many other verses in such a way that the reader is always made to think over and over on the subject matters of the Qur'an and the reader's thirst for knowledge grows stronger as he ponders on the Qur'an. If we try to find the hindrances to submission to Allah in the Qur'an, we see that there are primarily three: Pursuit of Base Desires, Customs of the forefathers,and Blind Submission to the Great and Powerful ones. These three can be viewed as 'lords' over human beings instead of the True Lord. Unless these 'lords' are completely identified and thoroughly destroyed, one can never truly submit to Allah. These three 'lords' occupy their share of worship in the hearts of men when the human heart is meant to be the sanctuary of Allah alone:

Imam Sadiq said: "The heart is the sanctuary of Allah, therefore, do not settle therein anything but Allah (The sacred place of the heart belongs to and Him alone. Therefore, keep the love of the world out of it.)  (Bihar-ul-Anwar)

My earth and My heaven do not encompass Me, but the heart of My servant who has faith does encompass Me (Hadith Qudsi mentioned many times in the works of Ibn Arabi and other spiritual works)

As a man slowly takes those three 'lords' as his master, his heart is slowly rusted and eventually it becomes completely dark:

When Our communications are recited to him, he says: Stories of those of the ancients. Nay! rather, what they used to do has become like rust  upon their hearts. (Holy Qur'an 83:13-14)

Now we will discuss each 'lord' separately:

Pursuit of Base Desires:

When a man pronounces the Shahdatayn (Two witnesses: There is no god but Allah and Muhammad (SAW) is His Messenger), he denounces all forms of lordship over him except that of Allah. Nearest to him among all lords is his own self or base desire, lust. The desire of the self is always with man and always whispers to him. The base desire, lust and self-interest obstructs correct judgment and finding the truth. Probably that is why Allah has mentioned this in the Qur'an so many times in so many different ways about it:

And Allah desires that He should turn to you (mercifully), and those who follow (their) lusts desire that you should deviate (with) a great deviation (Holy Qur'an 4:27)

Therefore do not follow (your) low desires, lest you deviate; and if you swerve or turn aside, then surely Allah is aware of what you do. (Holy Qur'an 4:135)

And most surely many would lead (people) astray by their low desires out of ignorance; surely your Lord-- He best knows those who exceed the limits (Holy Qur'an 6:119)

But there came after them an evil generation, who neglected prayers and followed and sensual desires, so they will meet perdition (Holy Qur'an 19:59)

Therefore let not him who believes not in it and follows his low desires turn you away from it so that you should perish (Qur'an 20:16)

But if they do not answer you, then know that they only follow their low desires; and who is more erring than he who follows his low desires without any guidance from Allah? Surely Allah does not guide the unjust people (Holy Qur'an 20:50)

Nay! those who are unjust follow their low desires without any knowledge; so who can guide him whom Allah makes err? And they shall have no helpers (Holy Qur'an 30:29)

What! is he who has a clear argument from his Lord like him to whom the evil of his work is made fair-seeming: and they follow their low desires (Holy Qur'an 47:14)

And they call (it) a lie, and follow their low desires; and every affair has its appointed term (Holy Qur'an 54:3)

Therefore, it becomes abundantly clear that our own desire prevents us from fully submitting to Allah and as the desire is part of us, we must try to be cautious about it all the time. Allah has enjoined us to be on guard on ourselves:

O ye who believe! Guard your own souls: If ye follow (right) guidance, no hurt can come to you from those who stray (Holy Qur'an 5:105)

This is the enemy within and we have to keep it under our watch all the time.

Customs of the Forefathers:

This is even more dangerous that the first one. Once man gets accustomed to doing something or exposed to something, it becomes his second nature. He keeps following it even when there is no rationale behind it. These type of people are common even among highly educated classes. Once people get used to a custom that is wrong, they continue to defend it thinking that they are on truth:

And most surely they turn them away from the path, and they think that they are guided aright (Holy Qur'an 43:37)

Evidently, Islam does not approve of this attitude. We see in the Holy Qur'an that whenever a Messenger of Allah came with the truth, his people came up with the excuse that they had been following their forefathers and would like to continue on it:

We did not send before you any warner in a town, but those who led easy lives in it said: Surely we found our fathers on a course, and surely we are followers of their footsteps (Holy Qur'an 43:23)

And when it is said to them, Follow what Allah has revealed, they say: Nay! we follow what we found our fathers upon. What! and though their fathers had no sense at all, nor did they follow the right way (Holy Qur'an 2:170)

And when it is said to them, Come to what Allah has revealed and to the Messenger, they say: That on which we found our fathers is sufficient for us. What! even though their fathers knew nothing and did not follow the right way (Holy Qur'an 5:104)

And when they commit an indecency they say: We found our fathers doing this, and Allah has enjoined it on us. Say: Surely Allah does not enjoin indecency; do you say against Allah what you do not know? (Holy Qur'an 7:28) 

They said: Have you come to us that we may serve Allah alone and give up what our fathers used to serve? Then bring to us what you threaten us with, if you are of the truthful ones. (Holy Qur'an 7:70)

And many other similar verses like these. Probably gravest admonition to people against following the customs of forefathers or relatives is the verse from Surah Tauba:

Say: If your fathers and your sons and your brethren and your mates and your kinsfolk and property which you have acquired, and the slackness of trade which you fear and dwellings which you like, are dearer to you than Allah and His Messenger and striving in His way, then wait till Allah brings about His command: and Allah does not guide the transgressing people (Holy Qur'an 9:24)

From the Qur'anic point of view it is the duty of man that irrespective of the ideas imparted to him by his parents or acquired by him from his environment, he should exercise his intellect and reasoning to look carefully at himself till he arrives at a definitive conclusion based solely on the guidance of Allah.

Blind Submission to the Great and Powerful ones:

Inferiority complex so bewitches a man and overwhelms his thinking that he ceases to think for himself and blindly follows the thoughts, ways and habits of big powers or even advanced countries. Such a man sees with the eyes of others, hears with the ears of others and thinks with the brain of others. The Holy Qur'an denounces this and gives an example of what such people will face at the Day of Resurrection:

On the day when their faces shall be turned back into the fire, they shall say: O would that we had obeyed Allah and obeyed the Messenger! And they shall say: O our Lord! surely we obeyed our leaders and our great men, so they led us astray from the path (Holy Qur'an 33:66-67)

In the formula, "There is no god except Allah" - There is no god - takes place in the heart of men in the form of uprooting all the influences of base desires, customs of forefathers and influence of powerful men or nations. When this accomplished, the pure heart is ready to accept Allah alone and he is able to submit to the Almighty Allah alone and is able to do the second part of the formula - except Allah. We would like to conclude this section by referring to some of the sayings of the Prophet of Allah (SAW):

Hearts rust like iron, and their polishing is through remembrance of God and recitation of the Qur'an.

Were it not for the excess of your talking and the turmoil in your hearts, you would see what I see and hear what I hear!

O Transformer of hearts, keep my heart firm in Your Religion.

My eyes are sleeping, but my heart is awake.

(True spiritual) Knowledge is a light that God projects into the heart of the Knower.