January 9, 2020

Surah Al Fatihah Ayah 4

In the first half of the Fatiha Allah is talking

Now in the second half of the Fatiha we are talking

It is a direct conversation with Allah we have in our salah daily

No one is between you and Allah

You must must have your own relationship with Allah

The Prophet tells his own daughter to fear Allah because Prophet will have no control over her on Day of Judgment.

Each and every person stands on its own before Allah

Prophets came to connect Allah with the people

Every person in the world is being honored because Allah who is the most important being is talking to you and we are talking to Him, What an Honor!

Iyyaka Na’budu

It is only to You (Allah) that we willingly give ourselves in slavery and worship
Allah gave us a mind and a heart
We make decisions based on our thinking
We make decisions because our heart is compelled towards them
There are parts of our life that only have to do with our emotions
There are parts of our life that only have to do with our thinking
Alhamdulillah is a statement of information and emotion
We thought about who Allah is
We give it serious consideration
But as we think about it our emotion were also rattled
We were shaken in our minds and our hearts
So we reached a conclusion with our heart and mind that we will enlave ourselves to Allah
Fatiha is like starting again with Allah
Why we are a slave of Allah
This is the fundamental truth that we must visit over and over again
We have to understand Why we are Muslim? And think
Fatihah is screaming that people refresh their commitment with Allah
In salah we make a promise to Allah to be a slave
We remind ourselves every few hours
It is a hard commitment
But we do not have the ability to be the best slave
So we need help

Wa Iyya ka Nastain

Allah’s help is already with you
We just need to ask Allah
We know Allah as
- Alhamdulillahi Rabb ul Alameen
- Ar Rahman Ar Raheem
- Maliki Yomi Deen
We are a slave anyway so it is better to be a slave of Allah
No one will be as loving and caring as Allah is
Now that we are Allah’s slave, we are worthy of His help
Allah mentioned slavery first then help
We fulfilled our purpose then Allah gave His help
First you do the job then you get the benefits

The First Half of Fatiha is for Allah and second half is for us

Iyyaka Nastain

Only Your help do we seek
Example 1
- Your are driving your car and you have a flat tire
- You are sitting on the side of the road
- Somebody drives by and stops there car
- You ask for help
- You sit in the driver seat and then watch them fix the tire
Example 2
- You had a flat tire
- You are sitting on side of the road
- Someone drives by and stops
- You ask for help as you are trying to fix it your self
In example 1 the guy asked for help without putting effort in
In example 2 the guy asked for help after exhausting himself in effort
Nastain is help after exhausting yourself in effort
You start the effort
If you do not put in the effort then you are not worthy of the help from Allah

Who gets the help of Allah?

There are two extremes
One extreme is that
- Allah does everything and I do nothing
- Blame everything on Allah
Another extreme is I do everything and Allah did nothing
- I did the all the work
These two extremes are wrong
There are two parts Efforts and Results
Allah is asking us for our best efforts
Results will always be in the hands of Allah
Allah will not give results to those who don’t show any effort
Because you gave effort, the results will come from Allah

We ask for help