The Damage of Doubtful Sustenance

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِى عَنِّى فَإِنِّى قَرِيبٌ ۖ 

أُجِيبُ دَعْوَةَ ٱلدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِ

Wa idhā sa’alaka ‘ibādī ‘annī fa-innī qarīb; ujību da‘wata al-dā‘i idhā da‘ān.

Sūrat al-Baqarah 2:186 — “And when My servants ask you about Me, indeed I am near. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls upon Me.”

There are verses that console us.

There are verses that awaken us.

And there are verses that do both at once.

This verse is one of them.

Allah does not say, “Tell them I am near.” He says, “Indeed I am near.” The answer comes directly. The distance is removed. The servant asks. Allah answers. The caller calls. Allah responds. The door is not locked. The sky is not empty. The Lord is not absent.

And yet, the Qurʾān does not teach us to treat du‘ā as a formula without a life around it.

Du‘ā is not only words raised by the tongue.

It is a whole human being standing before Allah.

The tongue calls.

But the heart also calls.

The hands call.

The earnings call.

The food calls.

The habits call.

This is why the scholars and saints did not speak about du‘ā only as speech. They spoke about the condition of the one who supplicates. They spoke about adab. They spoke about sincerity. They spoke about repentance. They spoke about the morsel.

In Rūḥ al-Bayān, while commenting on this verse, Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī Bursawī mentions a report that wakes us up from slumber.

There were people in Kūfa whose prayers were answered.

Whenever a tyrannical governor entered upon them, they would supplicate against him, and he would either be removed or perish.

This is not a small thing.

A tyrant may fear armies.

He may fear rebellion.

He may fear assassination.

He may fear the anger of the public.

But here was another kind of fear.

The fear of pious hands lifted to Allah.

The fear of hearts not purchased by the world.

The fear of people who had no army, no treasury, no palace, no guards, no machinery of power — but they had du‘ā.

Then al-Ḥajjāj was appointed over Kūfa under Ibn Marwān.

Al-Ḥajjāj in his deviousness understood something that many of us forget.

He understood that the strength of these people was not merely in their tongues. It was in their piety.

So he did not begin by debating them.

He did not begin by imprisoning them.

He did not begin by threatening them.

He invited them all to a banquet.

He fed them using money from illicitly gained wealth.

They ate.

Then he said, in meaning, “I am now safe from their prayers being answered, because unlawful food has entered their bellies.”

What a terrifying sentence.

Not because al-Ḥajjāj was powerful.

But because he knew where to strike.

He struck at the core.

He struck at the hidden door between the body and the soul.

He struck at the place most people do not guard carefully enough.

We often imagine spiritual harm as something dramatic. A public sin. A visible fall. A scandal. A loud betrayal. But sometimes the weakening of the soul enters quietly.

Through a plate.

Through an earning.

Through a transaction.

Through a gift we should not have accepted.

Through a favour that bends the spine.

Through food that fills the stomach but clouds the heart.

Through comfort that arrives with a stain upon it.

The people of Kūfa in this report were not defeated by argument.

They were not defeated by swords.

They were defeated, at least in that moment, by a banquet.

That should make us pause.

Because a banquet is not frightening in appearance. It looks generous. It looks warm. It looks like honour. It looks like hospitality. It may even look like recognition.

But not every table is mercy.

Not every invitation is innocent.

Not every sweetness nourishes.

Not every full stomach is a blessing.

Sometimes the danger is not that we will be denied food. Sometimes the danger is that we will be fed by the wrong hand.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ taught that Allah is ṭayyib and accepts only what is ṭayyib. He then described a person outwardly in a state (of Ihram?) where du‘ā might be answered: travelling, dusty, needy, raising his hands, calling “O Lord, O Lord”; yet his nourishment, drink, and clothing are from the unlawful, so how is such a supplication to be answered? (Sunnah)

This hadith is not only about food.

It is about integrity.

The outer posture says, “O Allah, answer me.”

But the inner life may be saying, “O Allah, I have not cared about what You love.”

The hands rise to the sky.

But the income is not clean.

The tongue says, “Yā Rabb.”

But the appetite says, “Anything is acceptable as long as I get what I want.”

The body stands in need.

But the lifestyle stands in contradiction.

This is not to make anyone despair.

Allah is more merciful than our failures.

The door of tawbah is open.

The one who ate wrongly can repent.

The one who earned wrongly can purify.

The one who accepted wrongly can return.

The one whose du‘ā became weak can become alive again.

But mercy should not make us careless.

Allah is near.

But nearness has adab.

And when a person nourished by the unlawful calls, the morsel also stands there as a witness.

That is the lesson.

The morsel is not small.

It can become strength.

It can become attention.

It can become mood.

It can become prayer.

It can become sleep.

It can become the energy with which we teach, speak, decide, discipline, love, lead, and worship.

A morsel does not remain a morsel.

It becomes part of the person.

This is why food is not merely biological in Islam. It is moral. It is spiritual. It is educational.

What enters the child enters the character.

What enters the home enters the atmosphere.

What enters the school enters the hidden curriculum.

What enters the teacher enters the lesson before the lesson.

We may teach honesty in the classroom, but if the institution is fed by dishonesty, the children will learn the contradiction.

We may teach simplicity, but if the culture is fed by vanity, the children will learn the appetite.

We may teach service, but if leadership is fed by ego, the children will learn performance.

We may teach trust in Allah, but if the adults are fed by fear, comparison, and restless ambition, the children will learn anxiety.

Children do not only consume what is placed on their plates.

They consume the way adults speak about money.

They consume the way we treat workers.

They consume the way we respond to mistakes.

They consume the way we choose what is easy over what is right.

They consume the way we celebrate success.

They consume the way we hide compromise and decorate it with language.

This is why the story of al-Ḥajjāj is not only a story about old Kūfa.

It is a story about every age.

For every age has its banquets.

Some banquets are literal.

Some are professional.

Some are institutional.

Some are emotional.

Some are ideological.

Some are digital.

Some come as money.

Some come as praise.

Some come as access.

Some come as comfort.

Some come as an invitation to belong.

The tyrant does not always need to silence the righteous by force.

Sometimes he only needs to feed them in a way that makes their prayers heavy.

Sometimes he only needs to make them dependent.

Sometimes he only needs to make them grateful for what should have been refused.

Sometimes he only needs to make them enjoy the table so much that they stop asking who prepared the food, with what wealth, and for what purpose.

This is why integrity is protection.

Not decoration.

Protection.

Halāl is protection.

Truthfulness is protection.

Simplicity is protection.

Carefulness is protection.

Asking, “Where did this come from?” is protection.

Saying no is protection.

Leaving a doubtful benefit is protection.

Teaching children that not everything available is acceptable is protection.

A person who can say no to a banquet for the sake of Allah is not poor.

He is free.

A school that can say no to stained support is not weak.

It is guarding its du‘ā.

A family that can live with less rather than feed itself through wrong is not deprived.

It is preserving light.

There is a kind of poverty that is actually dignity.

And there is a kind of luxury that is actually captivity.

Even someone lik Al-Ḥajjāj understood this.

Do we?

Earning is connected to eating.

Eating is connected to the heart.

The heart is connected to du‘ā.

Du‘ā is connected to nearness.

And nearness is the secret of the verse.

فَإِنِّى قَرِيبٌ

Indeed I am near.

Allah is near to the broken.

Near to the repentant.

Near to the one who calls.

Near to the one who returns.

Near to the one who wants to purify his life even after years of carelessness.

So let no one read this story and despair.

Read it and wake up.

Read it and review the table.

Read it and review the income.

Read it and review the habits.

Read it and review what we feed our children, not only through the mouth, but through the eyes, ears, imagination, and daily atmosphere.

Read it and ask Allah for a clean life.

Not a perfect life.

A clean life.

A life in which the servant keeps returning to Allah.

A life in which the morsel is watched.

A life in which the hand is careful before it takes.

A life in which the tongue is careful before it asks.

A life in which the heart is careful before it attaches.

A life in which du‘ā is not only spoken, but prepared.

The people of Kūfa had something al-Ḥajjāj feared.

May we have something falsehood fears too.

The kind of purity that makes a poor person powerful.

The kind of purity that makes a parent’s du‘ā reach places money cannot reach.

The kind of purity that makes a child feel that truth, beauty, goodness, service, and remembrance are not slogans, but nourishment.

May Allah purify our food.

May Allah purify our earnings.

May Allah purify our homes.

May Allah purify what enters our bodies and what enters our hearts.

May He protect us from every banquet that weakens our du‘ā.

May He protect us from every comfort that stains our integrity.

May He protect us from every gift that bends our conscience.

May He make our children people of halāl, people of truth, people of courage, people whose hands rise to the sky with hearts made clean by tawbah.

O Allah, You are near.

Teach us how to call upon You.

O Allah, You are Pure.

Make us love what is pure.

O Allah, do not let the morsel become a veil.

Do not let appetite steal our prayer.

Do not let comfort purchase our silence.

Do not let the tables of this world make us forget the table of the Hereafter.

Accept our du‘ā, forgive our carelessness, and return us to You with bodies nourished by halāl, hearts softened by dhikr, and lives made truthful by taqwā.

Āmīn.