Question:
Salam Shaykh,
How does one understand purpose of making dua if they say “Allah will give me what He wills regardless of dua or not. If I make dua and He wills to give me something else or nothing or the thing I asked for it is the same as if I didn’t ask…”
Answer:
Alaykumussalam,
If the upshot of that kind of reasoning is that we stop making duaa, then it would be a sign that such a person is someone Allah wants to misguide, because He commanded us to make duaa, yet such a person refuses. However, to make duaa while knowing that it is all in the Hand of Allah, is to obey Him and at the same time to know Him as All-Powerful, which typifies the knowledge of a blessed servant whom Allah wants to guide and to bless.
The issue, therefore, is not to have some knowledge devoid of deeds; that would be useless knowledge and satanic knowledge. Rather, it is knowledge plus deeds of obedience. We line up with what Allah loves and commands. All this is embodied in the Prophetic Sunnah and the lives of the righteous. We do not live in a vacuum of idle reasoning but are people of deeds, hope and striving in the way of Allah as shown by the Prophet (s).
Hajj Gibril Haddad
