5إِيّاكَ نَعبُدُ وَإِيّاكَ نَستَعينُMir Ahmed AliThee1,I (alone) worshipII we and Thee (only) we seek helpIIIIyyaka i.e. None else but Thee—All creatures be they of the highest or the lowest order, commissioned by God with any authority or not, are alike in being subservient to His Will, in obedience and worship to Him and in seeking His help in their activities. None is left to be out of His servitude as His partner. God’s relation to all, is the relation of the Absolute Creator and the Supreme Law-giver, and their relation to Him is the relation of the created being and the Law-abiders. Hence there is no room left for the deification of any finite being and there is no room for ‘Ta’addud’ i.e. the numeration of the Infinite. Thus the Infinite can be but one Absolute and the finite cannot be but a creature (a composite) (A.P.)Iyyaka Na’badu. The world Iyyaka means ‘Unto Thee (O’ Lord) and Thee alone’, and ‘Na’budu’ means ‘We do worship’. By declaring the devoted service being only to God and God alone, is in itself a great commitment and at the same time the source of great satisfaction to the devotee. Firstly, the supplicant commits himself to serve only God and none else. By adopting this attitude of life, man gets a spirit of faithfulness to his Only Real Master and thus there remains no need for him to fear anyone else. The individual who serves exclusively his master, depends also on him. On whomsoever one depends for all his needs he would never be inclined even to the least extent or in any sense to offend him in any way. The faithful servant who serves one as his only master will also be always invoking his master’s pleasure to expect his own needs being provided for, for he cannot expect anything from anybody else as he does not serve any one besides his only Master. ‘Na’budu’ The word Na’budu means we serve. Here it does not mean mere worship through performing some rituals, but service as it comprehends in its wide meaning, every thought and action on the part of the servant in faithfulness to his master. Man committing himself to the service of God, and of none else, directly vows to live and die as it would please Him. In short, man commits himself to execute the Will of his Lord through his thought, word and action. In other words man vows to live and die as God will and not as he himself wills. This proves that man owes loyalty to none but God and loyalty means to do nothing but to carry out His will and obey His order and represent His pleasure. Man should not be moved in his activity by any other motive than obedience to God’s Will, and that he should not seek help from any source other than God’s. To worship God, without His order is disloyalty to Him. To worship even a stone by His order is in conformity with the loyalty to Him. To seek help from the means which were not made by Him for that end, is disloyalty to Him. To seek help from the means made by Him for a particular end, is in conformity with the loyalty to Him. Therefore one can regulate his activities in such a way that every movement of his gets in perfect accordance with His Will and enjoys all the means of livelihood which have been made by Him for man to enjoy. If man worships the angels and the secondary authorities in the order of being, or seeks their intervention in the approach to Him, it is disloyalty amounting to idolatry. But if one pays respect or regard to such beings and seeks their intervention by His order in approach to Him it will be in conformity with the loyalty to Him. From Rubhul-Aalameen to Malikee-Yaumid-deen, the reference was to a third person and having completed the description, one feels that he is standing in the presence of the Absolute to address Him in the term of second person using the word Iyyaka which means unto Thee and none else, which term includes both the negation of everything else other than Him and the assertion of the only One, addressed. Here the feeling of the individuality of the person is faded away and he realises himself as a part of a whole or as a member of the community of the fellow creatures. Here is the unique characteristic and the peculiarity of Islam to convert the individual value of religion to its widest universal value. No social or collective service or worship can be performed without a lead and a leader and none can be taken in the social obedience and worship but the person who represents His universal grace ‘Wama arsalna kailla Rahmatunlil-Aalameen’ (21:107). The extent of the Holy Prophet’s mission is as wide as is God’s Rububiyat and this explains the state of his ‘Khatamiyat’ i.e. the Finality, and the fact which has been asserted in some authentic traditions that the Holy Prophet in his ‘Me’raj’ i.e. the Ascent, led the prayers which was attended by all his predecessor apostles of God and the angels and this shows the meaning of the Imamate-Kubra i.e. the Supreme Leadership in performing or leading the collective obedience and worship to Him. The notion of collective and universal obedience of the creatures is the basis of the Basic Theocratic form of Government advocated by Islam. It means that the sovereignty of the whole universe is God’s and His authority and power cannot be delegated to anyone else but the person who represents His Universal Will and who is in communion with Him and who knows the relation of the Infinite to the finates and the relation of every finate one to the other. Iyyaka Na’budu and Iyyaka Nastayeen is an indicative sentence that all the worlds with all their parts and particles are in the state of obedience to God’s Universal Will, all are in quest of His help and this is illustrated in verse 3:82:‘Afaghaira deenillah yabghoon walahu aslama man fissamawati wa-man fil-ardh’.What! Do they seek religion other than God’s while submitteth to Him all that is in the Heavens and the Earth. 59:24, 61:1.‘In kulla man fissamawaat wa fil-ard ill atar-Rahman abduh’ 3:82, 84, 19:93.This refers to the universal submission of the order of the beings as a whole, the norm of which man should submit his will to God’s Will and seek help from none but He. Taking the facts of creation as the norm of the execution and the regulation of God’s Will is the utmost endeavour of the Qur’an to guide man and from this point one can say that Islam is the natural religion deriving lesson for man from the Book of the Creation.In these two clauses of Iyyaka Na’budu and Iyyaka Nastayeen, Qur’an has given the brief solution of the most important problem which is the serious concern of philosophy, theology, ethics, jurisprudence, and which is the question of free will and determination. Hence the act of obedience and seeking help, is attributed to the creatures, proving that they are active and not merely passive onlookers of His activity. They have their own will responsible for their actions but their will and its outcome is subservient and subordinate to His Will as the Ultimate Authority in both fields of creation and legislation. They do things of their own will and inclination but their will is conditioned with His Will, Order and His Providence. Therefore the deeds of the creatures, is neither the outcome of their absolute free will nor is it the direct outcome of His Free Will, leaving the creatures will entirely ineffective and not responsible at all, as the determinisms would say. There is something in between as presented by the Fifth Holy Imam of the house of the Holy Prophet, Muhammad ibne Ali Al-Baquir, ‘La jabr wala Tafweez bal amarun bainal amrain’ i.e. it is neither compulsion nor is it a total handover, but the matter is a medium course. In the subsequent chapters of the Qur’an, here and there, are passages which apparently forward the Determinist views and there are also passages apparently advocating man’s free will and a total handover and there are reconciliatory passages too. Once taking all these in view, the result will be the same as forwarded here. In short God’s activity can be termed as action and the activity of the creatures as the re-action. There can never be any reaction without any action, and the action will be futile if there be no reaction and this is true about God’s action in the realm of creation and th reaction of creatures whether conscious or unconscious, endowed with any will power or not. The action is not conditioned by the nature of the actor but the reaction need not be the same as the act:— Though there can be no doubt about the purity or the excellence of the rain water, it raises flowers in the garden and thorns in the saltish soil (baran ke dar lataafate tab’ ash khilaaf neest; dar baagh lala rooyad dar shorazaar khas). In reaction, the act is represented conditioned with the manner and the nature of the finite one which reacts. Therefore, the reaction may seem to be sometimes as entirely unlike the action. The one and the same act of guidance may have different reactions. The divine action being the outcome of God’s unreserved grace, can be nothing but good but the reaction in the case of the finite creatures may fall short of the absolute goodness and thus it is termed as evil or bad for which the nature of the finite is responsible. Qur’an says that the goodness which reaches man is from God and the evil which reaches man is from his own self (4:79) And in Hadithe Qudsi God says:— ‘Abdi ana aula behasanatek minka wa anta aula besayyatika minni’ i.e. O’ My servant (man) I am more responsible for thy good deeds and thou art more responsible for thy evils than Me’. For example the rays of radiation differing from the rays of the reflection, the former being conditioned with the nature of its source and the latter getting conditioned with the different grounds. The ideas forwarded in this small chapter represent all that the Qur’an covers in details in all its chapters. Thus this chapter is called the ‘Ummul-Kitab’ i.e. the Gist, Essence or the Substance of the Book. (A.P.)Wa iyyaka Nastayeen i.e. Thee alone we seek help from (none-else but Thee). This prayerful statement is only logical and rightful, for one can seek help only from him whom the individual calls as his ‘Rah’ i.e. Nourisher, Sustainer and Protector, and has vowed to serve only Him and none else. Besides, it will be quite in accordance with the infinite Mercy of the All-Merciful, Almighty to respond to the degree of the sincerity with which His faithful creature acknowledges only Him as his ‘Rab’ and who has vowed sincerely to serve only Him and none else. By declaring this prayerful statement several times during his devout prayers, the individual would naturally and surely be invoking the Divine Mercy to reach him without fail. Having submitted his prayer in the sincerest possible way to his real Lord who is his ‘Rab’ and who is the All-Merciful, the individual would naturally get himself satisfied that he has petitioned to the proper authority Who alone can give him the desired relief, and even if what he prays for, is in any Way denied to him, it will be in his own interest, for as light only can shoot from light and never can light cause darkness, mercy and nothing but mercy would be done by the All-Merciful, and that which man thinks to be cruelty done to him by God, will be nothing but the failure of his finite thinking against the infinite Wisdom of the All-Wise Lord.Arabic ‘Iyyaka’.Arabic ‘Na’budu’ (obey).Arabic ‘Nast’ayeen’.