"Sometimes those working for Allah may wonder why we have to keep doing the same thing over and over again.
Why, they may ask themselves, do we keep working so hard and see such minimal results.
Why do we all follow the same old style of doing things, they may say?
Why do we, they could ask themselves, for example:
- Keep on preparing and distributing literature the way we do;
- Keep on producing the same old-fashioned audio and video and computer material;
- Keep on designing and populating the websites the same old-fashioned way;
- And keep on doing everything as it was done over 1000 years ago?
And why do we, they could say for example, keep on trying to:
- Reach out to people;
- Invite them to Allah;
- Give them the message of Islam;
- Answer the same old questions over and over;
- Show them the miracles of the Qur’an;
- And try to share with them the joy, beauty and practicality of the teachings of Islam?
And it is perfectly normal and natural for them to feel and wonder about things in this way and to ask these questions of themselves and others.
After all, they are human beings – are they not? – even though they have chosen to be in the special category of those who have dedicated their lives to work for Allah and to serve his creation without asking for anything in return.
As for results, regardless of whether those results are a lot or a little, I will leave that question for another day. But I do want to make clear the role of seemingly dull and redundant routine activity in Islam and in nature.
Sheer repetitivity.
While in many ways things in the world change and evolve, by and large the universe is a giant amalgam of mini and mega structures and processes that pretty much perform the same routine functions repetitively, over and over, billions of times.
I wish someone would tell me how many times a human heart pumps blood during the course of a 60-year life span – all the same way.
Or how many times the sun rises and sets the same way in a 1000-year period.
And how I wish some learned scholar of Islam will explain to me how the way of doing prayers (Salaat) has changed in Islam over the past 1400 years, because it has not.
Not even an iota.
Because even today Salaat or Islamic Prayer is the same old process of:
- Making intention;
- Facing Ka’abah in Makkah;
- Standing upright;
- Making intention;
- Reciting from the Qur’an;
- Bending from the waist;
- Prostrating halfway;
- Sitting on bended knees;
- Chanting all the prayers and chants;
- And turning left and right to say to the whole world on each side:
- “God Bless You!”
- “God Bless You!”
Isn’t that how the Salaat or Prayer has gone on since the time of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, 14 long centuries ago?
Isn’t that how it has been repeated, day after day, night after night, and in place after place, in what is perhaps the greatest ongoing and living miracle of all time, for all these one thousand four hundred years – the way Muslims perform their daily prayers called Salaat?
Isn’t that in itself a most amazing miracle that anyone can see with their own eyes anywhere, anytime?
So why should those working for Allah, at any time or in any place, complain or feel bad about the constancy of their method, or the invariance of their message, or the redundancy of what they do in the path of Allah?
For, their message is eternal and immortal.
And it is simplicity itself: God is one and Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, is God’s messenger and prophet.
That message never changes.
That is how it has been and that is how it shall be – till the end of time.
And repeating it is what keep the world going.
And their method is the best that anyone can devise: purity of motives and intentions on the one hand and, on the other hand, utilization of means and methods that are the best and finest and noblest in the entire world.
That approach to the choice of methods does not change either.
So, why should a message and a method like that ever change?
Or how can those with a message and a methodology like that ever fail or falter?
For their message and method has the same constancy and durability as the rising of the sun in the sky and the leaping and splashing of the waves in the ocean.
And their success also is just as assured as the rising of the sun in the sky and the soaring of the waves in the ocean and the blowing of the winds between heaven and earth.”
Wa Lan Tajida Lisunnatillahi Tabdeela, says God Almighty in the Qur’an.
Paraphrase: You shall not find Allah’s way changing or faltering." (Dr. Pasha)
