Response Is Life

A foundational, formative reading of the call: "Respond to God and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life" [al-Anfāl: 24]. By Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Ali Abouseif, President of the American Imams Academy. (This article is inspired by a blessed Friday sermon delivered by the eminent Dr. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Sālim — Imam of Dār al-Ḥadīth in America, and Professor of Hadith and its Sciences at al-Azhar University; its meanings have been re-woven, restructured, and documented anew — in faithfulness to the wellspring of its inspiration, and in acknowledgment of the one to whom its merit is due.)

Introduction: A Call That Gives Life

There is no call in the Book of God that opens with "O you who have believed" but that it is a doorway among the doorways of honor, and a station among the stations of sacred duty — one at which the heart of the believer quivers with joy that it has been addressed by the noblest of its descriptions. To be summoned by faith is a reminder of what faith requires, and an honoring that calls for compliance. And among these "calls of faith" descends His saying, exalted is He: "O you who have believed, respond to God and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life. And know that God comes between a person and his heart, and that to Him you will be gathered" [al-Anfāl: 24]. So the verse gathers together the command to respond, the disclosure of its supreme end — life — and a warning against procrastination, in a phrase that shakes the heart.

First: On the meaning of "response" and "that which gives you life"

Response (istijābah), in the root of the language, is the answering of one who calls together with hastening to fulfill what he calls for; it is obedience and compliance, not mere hearing and acknowledgment. The command was made transitive by the particle *li-* in "respond to God" (*istajībū lillāh*) to signal that the answer is a right belonging purely to God and to His Messenger. Then came His saying: "when he calls you to that which gives you life," disclosing the rationale behind the command; for the *li-* here carries the sense of "toward," that is, toward that in which lies your life. And it is a life not confined to the pulse of the veins, but one that flows through the heart, the mind, and the body all together.

The expressions of the exegetes regarding the meaning of "that which gives you life" varied — a variation of complementarity, not contradiction. Al-Suddī said, "It is faith," for the disbeliever is dead and is brought to life by it. Qatādah said, "It is the Qurʾan: in it are life and salvation." Mujāhid said, "It is the truth." Ibn Isḥāq said, "It is jihād, by which God gave you honor after lowliness." And al-Ṭabarī favored taking it to mean obedience, for in it is the life of the religion. These sayings are rivers pouring into a single sea: faith is the life of the heart, the Qurʾan is the life of the mind, and truth and jihād are the life of the ummah in its honor and very existence.

In describing the call as "life" there is a subtle secret; for God did not say, "to that which benefits you," nor "to that which sets you right," but rather He said, "to that which gives you life" — drawing attention to the fact that the one who turns away from the command of God — though he breathes and moves — is counted among the dead. As He said, exalted is He: "And is one who was dead and We gave him life and made for him a light by which to walk among the people…" [al-Anʿām: 122]. So response is not a burden added onto life; it is its very soul, by which life becomes upright and bears fruit.

Second: "And [know] that God comes between a person and his heart" — respond before the heart turns

Then He followed it, exalted is He, with a sentence that strikes awe into hearts and stirs resolve: "And know that God comes between a person and his heart." In this concluding clause lies a great formative secret; it is as though He says: hasten to respond while the heart is between your sides, turned toward Him, for you do not possess it with a possession that secures you against its turning. The heart (*qalb*) was named *qalb* for the frequency of its turning (*taqallub*); between the passing thought and firm resolve there is a moment in which a person may be barred from the good he had intended. Whoever procrastinates today cannot guarantee tomorrow's heart.

In the hadith there is what confirms this meaning; for it is established that "the hearts of the servants are between two of the fingers of the Most Merciful; He turns them however He wills," and the Prophet ﷺ would frequently say: "O Turner of hearts, make my heart firm upon Your religion." So if the master of those who respond, ﷺ, kept this supplication on his tongue, then those beneath him are all the more in need to seize the moment of turning toward God, and to carry their resolve through before circumstances change. To hasten to good is a safeguard against the trial of delay.

Third: The first generation's swiftness to compliance

For the first generation, response was no deferred contemplation, nor a hesitant reconsideration, but rather a swiftness that seized the command the moment it was heard and translated it at once into deed. In their biography are scenes that take hold of the whole heart, established by sound transmission:

When the prohibition of wine descended, it was poured out until it ran in the streets of Madinah, and its jars were broken in that very hour. When the command to wear the head-covering descended, the women of the early female Emigrants tore their outer garments and veiled themselves with them, hastening to comply. And when the qiblah was changed while they were in their prayer, the news reached them and they turned, as they were, toward the Kaʿbah, without interrupting their prayer.

When His saying, exalted is He, descended: "Never will you attain righteousness until you spend [in the way of God] from that which you love" [Āl ʿImrān: 92], Abū Ṭalḥah rose at once and gave in charity Bayraḥāʾ — the most beloved of his possessions to him — and the Prophet ﷺ said to him: "Well done! That is profitable wealth." And on the field of Badr, when ʿUmayr b. al-Ḥumām heard the Prophet ﷺ calling to a Garden whose breadth is the heavens and the earth, while in his hand were dates he was eating, he said: "If I were to live until I eat these dates of mine, that would indeed be a long life," and he threw down the dates and fought until he was martyred. So look how he placed true life in response, not in length of stay.

Among the most beautiful scenes of response on the part of women is what came from a young woman of the Anṣār, whose hand the Prophet ﷺ asked in marriage for Julaybīb — a man who had no share of wealth or beauty. Her mother hesitated, but the young woman heard from behind her curtain and said: "Would you reject the command of the Messenger of God ﷺ?! Hand me over to him, for he will not let me go to waste." So she submitted to the choice of the Prophet ﷺ with the submission of one who embodies the saying of God, exalted is He: "It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when God and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should have any choice in their affair" [al-Aḥzāb: 36]. And the Prophet ﷺ supplicated for her: "O God, pour out good upon her abundantly, and do not make her life one of hardship upon hardship," and there was not in the Anṣār a woman more generous in spending than she.(1)

The common thread among these scenes is that the secret of that generation's preeminence lay not in abundance of knowledge alone, but in the speed of converting it into action. Between them and the command there was no veil of interpretation nor interval of hesitation; rather they were — as the Qurʾan described them — "We hear and we obey" [al-Baqarah: 285], a saying confirmed by the deed in its own moment.

Note (1): The story in full — the proposal, the young woman's reply, and the Prophet's ﷺ supplication for her — was reported by Imām Aḥmad in *al-Musnad* (19784) and Ibn Ḥibbān in his *Ṣaḥīḥ* (4035), on the authority of Abū Barzah al-Aslamī, may God be pleased with him; its chain is ṣaḥīḥ upon the condition of Muslim (graded so by Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ and al-Bayhaqī). The original account of Julaybīb's martyrdom and the Prophet's ﷺ saying about him, "This one is of me and I am of him," is in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (2472). [Caveat: the young woman spoke the meaning of the verse, not its exact words; the link between the two is an inference, not a narration.]

Fourth: Deferred responses

If the swiftness of the early ones pleases us, then the greatest thing that comes between us and our life is procrastination. How many a divine call knocks upon the heart, so that its owner intends to act, then defers it to a time that never comes! Here is a prayer delayed past its time under the pretext of being busy; a repentance hesitated over in anticipation of what comes after youth or after the season; an exhortation that is heard until it brings tears to the eye yet does not move a limb; a truth that is known yet not acted upon. All of this is among the forms of "deferred response" that the verse warned against in its saying: "And know that God comes between a person and his heart."

The remedy is for the believer to make the distance between hearing the command and complying with it as short as possible; let him not consign a good whose summoner is present to an unknown tomorrow, nor wait, in his obedience, for a state more complete than his present one. For the moment of turning toward God is a blessing that may not recur, and the heart is a trust over which its turning is feared. A small, sincere act of initiative is better than a great resolve forever deferred.

Fifth: The fabric of response — life of heart, mind, and body

From here the unity of meaning upon which the verse is arranged becomes clear: that response is a life which flows through the three faculties of the human being, ordering them all together. It is a life for the heart in light and tranquility; for by turning toward God the heart lives after the death of heedlessness, and tastes of serenity that which no pleasure can equal — as He said, exalted is He: "Unquestionably, by the remembrance of God hearts are assured" [al-Raʿd: 28].

And it is a life for the mind in guidance and right direction; for the Qurʾan addresses the mind with proof, and opens to insight the horizons of contemplation, so that thought becomes upright upon the scale of truth and is freed from the whims of deviation. The responsive mind is a living mind that sees where it sets its feet, while the mind that turns away is shackled even if it imagines itself free.

And it is a life for the body in energy and work; for faith does not settle in the heart as a whisper, but overflows onto the limbs as movement and exertion. The body that responds to the command of its Lord is a working, productive body, in which creed is transformed into deed and word into a stance taken. Thus the inward and the outward fall into order, and knowledge and action are united; and the believer becomes a harmonious whole: a heart flourishing with light, a mind guided by right direction, and a body rising to work — with no split between them and no conflict.

Conclusion: So hasten — response is life

So, O believer, God calls you to that which gives you life, and warns you lest He come between you and your heart before you respond. So do not leave between hearing the command and complying with it a distance through which Satan may slip in with procrastination. Hasten to the prayer when you are called, to repentance when you are reminded, to righteousness when you are summoned, and to every good that your heart intends; for to hasten is an act of worship, and to defer is a forsaking.

And know that the people most pleasant in life are those most alive in heart through obedience to their Lord; whoever answers the caller of God attains the good life in this world and the everlasting bliss in the next. So make your motto, every time a call reaches your hearing: "We hear and we obey," and ask your Lord to make your heart firm upon His religion.

O God, O Turner of hearts, make our hearts firm upon Your religion, and make us among those who listen to speech and follow the best of it, and grant us the initiative toward that which gives us life. Indeed, You are the All-Hearing, the Responsive. And may God's prayers, peace, and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and all his companions.