High Aspirations
…and why you should have them
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…and why you should have them
Dec 2
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In an authentic ḥadīth the Prophet ﷺ stated,
لاَ يَقُولَنَّ أَحَدُكُمُ اللَّهُمَّ اغْفِرْ لِي إِنْ شِئْتَ اللَّهُمَّ ارْحَمْنِي إِنْ شِئْتَ . لِيَعْزِمْ فِي الدُّعَاءِ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ صَانِعٌ مَا شَاءَ لاَ مُكْرِهَ لَهُ
“None of you should say, ‘O Allāh, forgive me if You will,’ or ‘O Allāh, have mercy on me if You will.’ Instead, you should be firm in your supplication, for Allāh does whatever He wills, and no one can compel Him.” – Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim no. 2679
As Muslims we should have aspirations, great aspirations, not the least of which is asking Allāh for forgiveness. To this, the great scholar Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, in a statement attributed to him, said:
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مجالسة الصالحين تحولك من ستة إلى ست:
من الشك إلى اليقين.
ومن الرياء إلى الإخلاص.
ومن الغفلة إلى الذكر.
ومن الرغبة في الدنيا إلى الرغبة في الآخرة.
ومن الكبر إلى التواضع.
ومن سوء النية إلى النصيحة.
The company of righteous people transforms you from six states to six other states:
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From doubt (shakk) to certainty (yaqīn).
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From insincerity (riyā’) to sincerity (ikhlāṣ).
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From heedlessness (ghaflah) to remembrance (dhikr).
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From desiring (raghbah) the world (Dunyā) to desiring the Hereafter (Ākhirah).
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From arrogance (kibr) to humility (tawāḍuʿ).
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From ill-intent (sū’ niyyah) to genuine advice (naṣīhah).
This is from his book The Relief of the Distressed from the Traps of Satan (Ighāthah al-Lahfān min Maṣāyid al-Shayṭān/إغاثة اللهفان من مصايد الشيطان).
And finally, some words of encouragement in the face of our own deficiencies. Having low aspirations can can be just as much an act of disobedience or self-sabotage as it is to think too highly of one’s self. In the former, our error is that our devotion to Allāh is capped by how we think and feel about ourselves versus what we know Him to Be (as stated in the ḥadīth of the Prophet ﷺ) thus placing ourselves above him, may Allāh forgive us. And as for the latter, it should be self-explanatory in that thinking too highly of one’s self (istikbār/استكبار) was the very crime of Iblis, Satan himself. So as with so many things in Islām and in life, the Middle Path (Ṣirāṭ al-Mustaqīm/صراط المستقيم) is the best. We can see this disposition articulated in some lines of poetry attributed to the great Imām al-Shāfiʿī, may Allāh have mercy on him, in which he said:
أُحِبُّ الصالِحينَ وَلَستُ مِنهُم
لَعَلّي أَن أَنالَ بِهِم شَفاعَةً
وَأَكرَهُ مَن تِجارَتُهُ المَعاصي
وَلَو كُنّا سَواءً في البِضاعَةِ
I love the righteous, though I am not one of them,
Yet perhaps I may earn intercession by way of my association with them.
And I detest all who transact is sin,
Though we may be the same in terms of merchandise.
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