Does God Need to be Worshipped?

Does God Need to be Worshipped?

Worship is the essential aspect of man’s relationship with God, and is not merely an obligation or a means to attain reward or avoid punishment. It is an acknowledgement of God’s Perfection and the actualised recognition of the absolute and perpetual dependency of the limited, created upon the Unlimited, Uncreated. It is akin to the dependency of the reflection on the reflected and the shadow on the object.

Worship is, moreover, the connection between the transient creation and the Eternal Creator – the contact between man and his Creator. Hence, it is the sustenance of man’s immortal soul, endowing it with the return to the eternal abode that he seeks, thereby fulfilling that, otherwise unsatiable need.

The spiritual man is often told that he is controlled and fails to recognise his entrapment in ‘blind faith’. He finds himself contending with the secular paradigm’s claim to have broken ‘free’ from the constraints of religion and worship, how man is now ‘liberated’ and lives without restrictive directives or theocratic regulation.

The answer to this claim is that servitude to a force of influence is an inescapable reality. Man cannot but deify and worship, so long as within his cognition is the ability to discriminate between what is worthy and worthier, whether his Creator, another thing idolised, be it wealth or material, or his own impulsive whim. While Godly people’s demeanour,

thoughts and actions are regulated by God, ungodly people are regulated by anything else.

In fact, the word "worship" has its etymological roots in the Old English language and can be traced back to the combination of two Old English words, ‘weorthscipe’ and ‘worthscipe.’

The first part, ‘weorth’ or ‘worth,’ means worth or value, and indicates the importance and significance placed on the object or being of worship. The second part, ‘scipe,’ denotes quality, state, or condition, implying an act or state of showing reverence, honour, or devotion.

Therefore, when combined, ‘weorthscipe’ or ‘worthscipe’ conveys the idea of attributing worth or value to something or someone and demonstrating reverence or devotion accordingly. By such a definition, every man worships (is ‘enslaved’ to) whatever he attributes the most worth and value to. The Prophet ﷺ said:

"May he be miserable, the worshipper of the dinar and dirham (the ‘pound’ and the ‘penny’), and the worshipper of the striped silk cloak. If he is given anything, he is satisfied; but if not, he is unsatisfied."23

This may explain why the Qur’ān more often deals with the question of idolatry, worshipping an entity besides God, rather than that of ‘Atheism’, since ‘Atheists’ are in fact idolators, as we will expound on later.

In modern man’s futility of evading society’s guiding force, he is left to live life on a personal whim, following his appetites wherever they take him. Each whim is then an idol, an ‘ism’, forging as many ‘gods’ as there are whims, and each emerging to undermine the other. If it commands him to eat, he eats, to sleep, he sleeps, to procreate, he procreates, like cattle, with whatever is in front of him.

“Have you seen (O Prophet) the one who has taken their own whims as their god? Will you then be a keeper over them? Or do you think that most of them listen or understand? They are only like cattle, no, more than that, they are astray from the (Right) Way!”24

But unlike cattle, who do these things instinctively, he does them blindly, as he has otherwise been imbued with axioms, rationale and intelligence, as God says:

“Have you seen (O Prophet) those who have taken their own desires as their god? (And so) Allāh left them to stray knowingly,

sealed their hearing and hearts, and placed a cover on their sight. Who then can guide them after Allāh? Will you (all) not then be mindful?”25

And yet, when sober and candid, he remains acutely aware of his endless, limitations and frailty. He knows, more than anyone that he is the least worthy of such deification. Thus, egotism and self-idolisation, is in fact self-abuse, that rather than liberates, restrains and enslaves man to what he knows to be inadequate and futile.

And as ‘worship’ is a universal reality, as will be elaborated, it follows that the more perfect the entity which one worships or submits to, the more perfect is one’s emancipation. And thus, to submit (istislām) to the Greatest, above Whom there is none and the Perfect (al-Salām), not marred by the limitations of man becomes the fullest form of emancipation. Complete submission to the Unlimited, Infinite, Perfect Creator provides Man with true freedom and liberation from the finite transient realm.

The Spiritual Man is True to Himself

The fitrah, that inherent God-conscious nature within man, compels him to recognise his role as a slave of the Creator. Worship, like tasbīh mentioned earlier, is as much a choice as

it is a universal inevitability. The Muslim is thus he who willingly submits to Allāh's Will – istislām. But such choice, he embraces the divinely legislated forms and methods of worship, as taught to man by His Creator, through His prophets and messengers. By such, man willingly aligns himself with Divine Commandments.26

The submitter recognises that his submission is in fact, an admission of what is obvious. He is an imperfect and very needy creature living within the domain of the Creator. As such, he chooses to harmonise his choices with this universal reality, for everything, willingly or unwillingly, submits to Allāh. He sees everything, from the atom to the cosmos, each obeying a governed order, functioning on total reliance and within precise and consistent laws. Likewise, he sees that he must breathe, eat, move, procreate and ultimately fit within His inescapable Divine Order, far beyond his control, influence or ability to defy.27

His position as a creature within this symbiotic, harmonious and precise order means he is an inevitable slave to it, at the mercy of its Originator, Owner and Governor. Rationally, he is a slave of His, the Omnipotent Creator. He lives in a cosmos that worships Allāh and heads into an afterlife that worships Allāh.

“To Allāh (alone) bow down (in submission) all those in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly, as do their shadows, morning and evening.” 28

Everything in creation, in fact, is by its ‘state’ or circumstantially (al-hāl) perpetually in that state of lowered prostration, known in Arabic as sujūd, humility, khudū’ and submission, istislām to His Power whether man admits to this reality or deludes himself otherwise.

Through the daily prayers, the Muslim conducts the physical sujūd at least 34 times a day, placing his forehead on the floor solely to His Creator. This marks his exclusive submission to the Almighty. It is, crucially, his refusal to submit to the ephemeral -anything besides the Greatest- and is thus man’s greatest ennoblement. In the prophetic statement:

"The closest that the slave comes to his Lord is when he is prostrating, so invoke Allāh much (in prostration)."29

As such, Islām emphatically forbids lowering one’s head to anyone or anything besides God, even if that be a messenger or angel. For their utmost ennoblement is not to call them gods

or children of god, but submitters to God and His servants. The Messenger ﷺ would tell his companions:

“Do not exaggerate in praising me as the Christians praised the son of Mary, for I am only a slave. So, call me the Slave of Allāh and His Apostle."30

The companions of the Prophet ﷺ loved him, held him in the highest esteem and revered his teachings. In the nascent days of Islām, witnessing how the People of the Book bowed to their bishops and patriarchs, some companions, reasoning that the Prophet ﷺ is worthier of such reverence and honour wanted to do the same. However, he unequivocally forbade them from prostrating to him.

Significantly, such exclusive sujūd harmonises the believer with the surrounding universe which, itself does the same, as Allāh informs:

“Do you not see that everyone in the heavens and everyone on the earth prostrates to Allāh, and the sun and moon and stars and the mountains, trees and beasts and many of mankind?” 31

The prostrating, spiritual man is part of the universal, harmonious symphony of creation the Creator intended, joining the heavens, earth, sun and moon who also accede to this normality and prostrate willingly. Therefore, the spiritual man is no aberration or actual ‘stranger’ but in fact part of the norm, a majority and totality.

Likewise, the spiritual man is not of a trivial, anomalous ‘minority’ as modern societies suppose, often treating worship as a superfluous privilege or a sanctimonious provision to ‘People of Faith’ in the workplace, given out of the ‘grace’ of an organisational overlord or absurdly prevented altogether. In fact, the real exception to is the ungrateful man, who in a universal sense constitutes the scornful minority as the final part of the verse implies:

“And many (not all) of mankind…” 32

In the story of Sulaymān (Solomon), the hoopoe bird was startled to see how man could defy that universal symphony of submission to God. When Sulaymān (‘alayhi al-salām) assembled his formidable army, consisting of men, Jinnkind, and birds, he was surprised by the absence of the hoopoe bird. Such an unpermitted absence was unacceptable to Sulaymān, the Prophet-King, unless the hoopoe had a compelling excuse. Soon enough, the hoopoe arrived, not

detained by circumstance, but by the absurd spectacle, in his unpolluted paradigm, of a people bowing their heads towards the sun rather than God. This scene was so startling that the hoopoe momentarily forgot Sulaymān’s (‘alayhi al-salām) strictness and the grave risk of arriving late.

Despite his regal and prophetic authority, he was also a humble servant of the King of Kings. Upon hearing the hoopoe’s explanation, Sulaymān (‘alayhi al-salām) noticed the distress in the bird’s voice and the intense focus on the spectacle's absurdity. This was not a plea for forgiveness for tardiness but an urgent report of an abominable act, a group reduced to worshipping what ought not to be worshipped. It was a denunciation of their idolatry and clear irrationality, urging the Prophet of God to address their deviation. The hoopoe explains, as related in the Qur’ān:

“I found her and her people prostrating to the sun instead of Allāh. For Satan has made their deeds appealing to them, hindering them from the (Right) Way and leaving them unguided, so they do not prostrate to Allāh, Who brings forth what is hidden in the heavens and the earth, and knows what you (all) conceal and what you reveal. (He is)

Allāh! There is no god (worthy of worship) except Him, the Lord of the Mighty Throne.” 33

In a similar fashion, when the virtuous man recites at least 17 times a day:

“All praise is for Allāh, Lord of all worlds. The Most Compassionate, Most Merciful. Owner (or king) of the Day of Judgement. You (alone) we worship and You (alone) we ask for help.”34

He is declaring a universal imperative, that since you, God, are the Lord of the Worlds, King and Owner, it becomes obvious, by choice or inevitability that, “You alone we worship and you alone we ask for help.”

Knowing that he is part of a universal system that inevitably submits to Allāh, the Muslim matches that reality with choice. His visible, ritualistic practices are but expressions of that submission. At the same time, his choices bring him closer to his Creator in this existence and the next.

When man claims to have liberated himself from religion, he merely confines himself to a narrower circle—bounded by the limits of his own vision and finite desires. The edge of that circle marks the point at which he concedes his weakness and, in

other words, submits. The more fleeting and trivial his ambitions, the tighter the bounds of his so-called freedom. In truth, submitting to the Greatest is, contrary to modern illusions, the most liberating and expansive path a soul can take.

As such, man inherently desires submission to God, Islām, as much as he desires freedom, truth and consistency. With Islām, his choices are true. He is content, reassured and relieved to have chosen what satisfies his firmest, inherent inclination.

“…Those who follow My guidance will not go astray and will not be miserable.” 35

Worshipping the Almighty is not merely a human sentiment, but his link to, contact with and sustenance from the Creator and the foundation of existence. It is the integral basis of Creation, having been created to worship, or witness the Creator. It is the natural confession of creation towards the Creator, expressing total reliance on, acceptance of and contentment with God.

The Denier of God is Lying to Himself

The denier also inescapably submits to God, and finds himself bound by His laws and the confines of His creation. But his wilful choices and statements contradict this reality. He thereby lives in a delusive, contradictory state. This state is not

a valid opinion, as it is, at its core a profound lie. The consequences of such denial are reflected in his overwhelming spiritual turmoil and existential discontentment, as Allāh says:

“But if anyone turns away from My reminder, his life will be a dark and narrow one and on the Day of Rising We will gather him blind.”36

The tension existing between his stray choice of denying the Creator within an ecosystem and universe that recognises Him perilously suffocates him. He is exhausted and constricted, while existentially void and in despair, consumed by a nihilistic worldview. He looks into an abyss that looks back at him as admitted in the words of Nihilist, Friedrich Nietzsche:

“When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”37

Though his life is futile, depressing and meaningless, death is still his detested cataclysm. He therefore neither contentedly lives nor contentedly dies.

“Whoever Allāh wills to guide, He opens their heart to Islām. But whoever He wills to

leave astray, He makes their chest tight and constricted as if they were climbing up into the sky. This is how Allāh dooms those who disbelieve.”38

With the above in mind, it follows that there are no sincere deniers of God since sincerity and denial of the Divine are inherently contradictory. According to the Oxford Dictionary, sincerity is “the quality of being free from pretence, deceit, or hypocrisy.” The active rejection of what is universally self- evident can only arise from some form of self-deception.

Thus, when the spiritual man calls others to Islām, he is not inviting them to adopt a foreign, external, or eastern culture among many. Rather, he is calling them to return to their own essence, to be honest with themselves, to reconnect with the innate truth already inscribed within, and to finally confront the inner conflict and denial that veils it.

A Universal Reality

Consider Ibrahīm’s (‘alayhi al-salām) challenge to the Nimrod, the king of lower Mesopotamia at the time who claimed godhood. Ibrahīm invited him to change a universal reality the imposter, himself, experiences and is overcome by on a daily basis, the coming of the night and day:

“Abraham said, ‘My Lord is the One Who has power to give life and cause death.’ He argued, ‘I too have the power to give life and cause death.’ Abraham challenged (him), ‘Allāh causes the sun to rise from the east. So make it rise from the west.’ And so the disbeliever was dumbstruck. And Allāh does not guide the wrongdoing people.” 39

If you, the Nimrod are God as you claim, or if, in contemporary language, man is really the ‘measure of all things’ or the ‘owner of his destiny’, then attempt to change the sun’s course. Like the Nimrod, his inability not only proves that he is, in fact, a subject, overpowered by the Almighty, but shows that he recognises this reality about as much as he recognises the sun’s normal course, rising in the east and setting in the west.

Modern man will often assert that he has (or ought to have) unrestricted liberty, and unrestrained licence over his (or her) body and conduct. He declares that nothing is beyond his realm. And yet, can this deluded individual prove his claim to absolute choice by conquering the indominable and unsolicited challenge of death, for instance, when death is the complete absence of life, let alone a restriction of it?

“Wherever you may be, death will overcome you, even if you were in fortified towers…”40

He claims limitless access to resource and wealth, and that he is the owner of capital which subjugates the world to him. In his expression, ‘money makes the world go round’, and thus he implies that its owner possesses some sort of cosmic control. And yet, he is helpless when deprived of something as basic as water, and a feeble dependent when droughts sweep across the world.

He holds his ancestors in derision and contempt for their inexperience of small technological endeavours, when only a few days of no rainfall can reveal an etched stone hidden in the river Elbe carved with a warning from 1616 that reads: “If you see me, weep”:41 A fitting retort from the same ancestors he ridicules. The Qur’ān states:

“Say, ‘Consider this: if your water were to sink ˹into the earth ˺, then who (else) could bring you flowing water?’” 42

Small scientific discoveries and blue-sky technologies have not humbled him before the vast unknown, but instead inflated

his delusion of global domination. And yet, he is challenged to bring about what are of the world’s most consistent phenomena, the night and day, if either were deprived:

“Ask (them, O Prophet), ‘Imagine if Allāh were to make the night perpetual for you until the Day of Judgement, which god other than Allāh could bring you sunlight? Will you not then listen?’” 43

Ask (them also), ‘Imagine if Allāh were to make the day perpetual for you until the Day of Judgement, which god other than Allāh could bring you night to rest in? Will you not then see?’”44

And in another instance, he is even challenged to create something as abundant and as insignificant as a fly:

“O humanity! A lesson is set forth, so listen to it (carefully), those you invoke besides Allāh can never create (so much as) a fly, even if they (all) were to come together for that. And if a fly were to snatch anything away from them, they cannot (even) retrieve

it from the fly. How powerless are those who invoke and those invoked!” 45

The Sustainability of the Universe or its Annihilation

The universe was created in wilful submission to its Creator, harmonising with the spiritual man, the wilful submitter to his Creator.

“Then He turned towards the heaven when it was (still like) smoke, saying to it and to the earth, ‘Submit, willingly or unwillingly.’ They both responded, ‘We submit willingly.’” 46

In the clash between the path that one chooses to follow, the ‘chosen realm’ (shar'ī) and the universal realm (kawnī), the denier of Allāh emerges as a destructive force. His contradictory presence leads to the ultimate demise of the heavens and the earth. The denier of God stands as the universe’s unwanted, parasitic, leech-like, harbinger of destruction. Had he lived on earth alone, remaining unchecked by truth, he would have long rendered the universe unsustainable.

“…And if it were not for Allāh checking (some) people by means of others, the earth would have been corrupted, but Allāh is full of bounty to the worlds."47

Thus, the finality of the heavens and earth and their ultimate demise comes when there remains only those who deny Allāh on earth. In the Hadīth:

“The hour will not be established except upon the evillest.”48

And:

"The Hour (Resurrection) will not occur until 'Allāh, Allāh' is not said on earth."49

When the denial of God becomes manifest and widespread, even with remnants of righteousness, it brings of its destructive effects in ways proportional to its abundance. On hearing about the approaching apocalyptic evils towards the end of times, Zaynab bint Jahsh, the Prophet’s ﷺ wife enquired:

“’Allāh's Messenger, would we be perished in spite of the fact that there would be good

people amongst us?’ He replied, ‘Of course, but only when the evil predominates.’” 50

Instead, the spiritual man represents Allāh's mercy to creation, the purpose of creation, and the sustainability of the heavens and earth. He embodies its fresh air, its radiant warming sun, its bountiful rain and its flowing rivers.

In stark contrast, the denier of Allāh embodies its fatal venom, its thick smog, its scorching desert, its freezing blizzards, its tumultuous storms, and its turbulent seas, wreaking havoc upon the world.

“And (remember) when they prayed, ‘O Allāh! If this is indeed the truth from You, then rain down stones upon us from the sky or overcome us with a painful punishment.’ But Allāh would never punish them while you (O Prophet) were in their midst. Nor would He ever punish them if they prayed for forgiveness.”51