Is it to lead a rabbinic and monastic life? Is it prolonged solitary meditation? Is it to lock ourselves inside a mosque, church, synagogue, or temple and destine ourselves to seclusion and prayer for the rest of our lives? To a certain extent, the conventional meaning of “worship” has become exotic, hostile, or even extinct in the postmodern world.
The meaning of worship is an endless spectrum of implications if we intend to interpret it from all possible theological views. Every religion has its own definition of worship. Nonetheless, all theological views cannot, at the same time, represent irrefutable truth even if we were asked to accept this under the arbitrary and misleading pretext of ideological liberty.
The definition of worship in Islam encompasses many things. Based on abundant evidence in the Quran and Sunnah, the Islamic scholar Ibn-Taimiyyah suggests a definition approved by the majority of scholars. He defines worship as “a comprehensive term standing for all the inward (implicit) or outward (explicit) deeds admired by Allah” [1].
In this definition, inward deeds would include major beliefs such as believing in the Oneness of Allah, His Names and Attributes, and His worthiness of sincere worship. Inward deeds also include knowledge such as knowing about Allah’s Names and Attributes, and emotional states such as love of good and justice and hatred of oppression and evil. Outward deeds, on the other hand, may include such deeds as articulating the testimony of faith, performing prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage. They may also include seeking and spreading useful knowledge, offering help, and behaving kindly to parents, relatives, and all people. In Islam, all these are acts of worship but only on one condition: that one intends them as acts of worship, performed in full obedience to Allah, the ultimate Lawmaker. Believers in Allah and the Afterlife believe that all their deeds, inward and outward, have a meaning and that they will face the reality of what they have become on the Day of Judgment.
Hence, the concept of worship in Islam is drastically different from that found in all other religions. It is so comprehensive a concept that even one’s smile and cheerfulness can become an act of worship. All acts of benevolence, with the proper intention, are considered an example of worship. The Prophet said:
“Never belittle any good deed even if you were to meet your brethren with a cheerful face” [2].
“Smiling when meeting your brethren is an expression of charity, as are enjoining good and preventing evil, guiding the one who has lost his way, removing stones, thorns, and bones from people’s paths, and pouring water from your bucket into the bucket of your brethren”[3].
This stands in stark contrast to the idea that action is always subordinate to faith. In Islam, faith and action are actively integrated. They reinforce and complement each other. Faith is not enough; it must be acted upon consistently so that all prescribed forms of practical worship serve to distinguish those who truly believe from those who are merely content with paying lip-service [4].
“Do people think that they will be left alone saying, “We believe” without being tested? Verily, We have tested those before them and Allah will certainly know those who are truthful and those who are liars” [5].
“A fundamental error of Buddha”, says John S. Blackie “consists in his placing human excellence in meditation rather than in action. The hero with him is always a saint, never a king. This is a subordination contrary to the great fact of the universe. The world is a work; life is a work; growth is a work; all things are full of labour, and attain to their perfection only by labour”[6] .
Faith is incomplete without the endorsement of action, and yet not any action but only rightly-guided action. This is a crucial binary, iterated numerously throughout the Quran:
“By Time; verily, man is in loss. Except those who have faith and do good works, and exhort one another to truth and exhort one another to patience”.
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[1] Resalatal-Uboodiah, Ibn-Taimiyyah, p. 38.
[2] Tirmithi, No. 1833.
[3] Tirmithi, No. 1956.
[4] Al-Zarqa, M. Ahmed (1980) Worship in Islam, The Islamic Foundation, UK, p, 10.
[5] Quran: 29: 2-3.
[6] Blackie, John S. (1878) The Natural History of Atheism, New York, (edit.) p. 164.
