Living The Quran
From Issue: 1026 [Read full issue]
The Enemy Inside
Al-Rad (The Thunder) - Chapter 13: Verses 11 (partial)
"Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they first change what is in themselves."
When a body is in a deep, deep slumber - a coma - it is only out of Allah's infinite mercy that He sends us a wakeup call. It is only from His infinite mercy that He sends to us life where there was once only death. We were heedless, so He sent us a sign. We were asleep, so he woke us up.
The enemy is inside of us. All external enemies are only manifestations of our own diseases. And so if we want to conquer those enemies, we must first conquer the enemy inside ourselves. We must first conquer greed, selfishness, shirk, ultimate fear, love, hope and dependence on anything other than Allah. We must conquer hubbad-dunya (love of the world) — the root of all our diseases, and all our oppression. Before we can defeat the Pharaohs in our lives, we must defeat the Pharaoh inside ourselves.
When you are free inside, you will never allow anyone to take away your freedom. And when you have inner freedom, you can look through tyrants and thugs to the Lord of the tyrants and thugs. When you are free inside, you become unenslaveable, because you can only enslave a person with attachments. You can only threaten a person who is afraid of loss. You only have power over someone when they need or want something that you have the ability to take away. But there is only one thing which no person has the power to take away from you: God.
Compiled From:
"Reclaim Your Heart" - Yasmin Mogahed