Barakaat-ud-Do

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Barakaat-ud-Doaa(Blessings of Prayer)by The
Promised Messiah Imam Mahdi (a.s.)Presentation
at the 14th National Taalim-ul Quran Class
at Toronto, Canada (5-7 August, 2005)Prepared
and Delivered byDr. Saleem RahmanOttawa
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Background of Writing this Book

• Barakaat-ud-Doaa
• (Blessings of Prayer)
• Published 1310 Hijra April 1893 A.D.
• A rebuttal of two books written by Sir Sayyed
  Ahmad Khan KCSI Knight Commander Star of India

• 1. Ad-Doaa wal Istijaabah
• Prayer and the Acceptance of Prayer
• 2. Tahreer fee Osool-it-Tafseer
• A Treatise on the
• Principles of Exegesis
• (i.e., the Commentary of the Holy Quran)

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Background

• Sir Sayyed negated the Islamic beliefs in
• Revelation
• (God as the) External Source of Revelation
• Revelation in the form of Specific Words
• Angels
• as the medium, who carry Revelation from God to
  a human
• Sir Sayyeds writings helped formulate a Naturist
  school of thought in India. The Naturists were
  influenced by the Western Philosophy of that time
  

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Background

• They tried to reconcile Islamic Principles with
  Western Philosophy, by presenting interpretations
  of the Holy Quran that were usually quite
  distorted
• The Naturists were without their realizing it
  causing a lot of damage to the perception of
  Islam and were misleading the Muslims and turning
  them away from Islam
• The Promised Messiah defended, and clarified, the
  beliefs regarding
• The Angels and their many tasks, in his book
  Aaeena-e-Kamaalaat-e-Islam (A Mirror of the
  Excellences of Islam) and,
• The reality of Prayer to God and the Acceptance
  of Prayer by God, in his book Barakaat-ud-Doaa
  The Blessings of Prayer

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Background

• In this book, Barakaat-ud-Doaa, the Promised
  Messiah also laid out the principles that must be
  followed in any commentary of the Holy Quran
• Sir Sayyed had demanded, from a rival, to produce
  a description of such principles. The Promised
  Messiah (a.s.) responded, instead.
• The Promised Messiah described seven guiding
  principles to be kept in mind in evaluating any
  commentary of the Holy Quran.

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What did the Book, Barakaat-ud-Doaa,
Accomplish?A Warning, A Challenge, A Defence

• Warned the self-appointed friends of Islam that
  they were, in fact, hurting the cause of Islam
• Challenged the opponents of Islam to come to the
  Promised Messiah and witness Signs from God in
  support of Islam
• Defended Islamic beliefs, that were under attack,
  by presenting logical and rational arguments

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Sir Sayyeds Ideas about Prayer and the Meaning
of its Acceptance

• 1. God promises that He will accept prayers
  (4061)
• Your Lord says, Pray to Me I will answer your
  prayer (4061)
• But, in practice, many prayers are humbly
  presented to God, yet nothing is gained as a
  result

• This can only mean that
• The acceptance of prayer does not mean that God
  will simply grant someone the thing which one
  has prayed for

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Pre-destination is supreme Prayer is of no help

• 2. It is, in fact, the Pre-destination that
  determines all events that will happen and those
  that will not happen
• Thus, Gods promise to accept prayers cannot be
  taken as a general promise, because events
  pre-destined to not happen will surely not
  happen regardless of your prayers for them to
  happen
• Therefore, the notion of Acceptance of Prayer can
  only mean the Acceptance of Prayer as an Act of
  Worship that is all!

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Pre-destination is supreme Prayer is simply
redundant

• However, if something is pre-destined to happen
  and, by chance, you also prayed for it to happen,
  then it will happen though not due to the
  (acceptance of) prayer, but due to its pre-destiny

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Prayer as a tool of Distraction from Ones
Problems

• When you pray, and call to your mind How Great
  is God, and how Majestic and Powerful is He
  then this idea occupies your mind and distracts
  your attention from your worries this is Sabr,
  or patience to persevere in the face of your
  hardships

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Summary Sir Sayyeds Ideas about Prayer and the
Meaning of its Acceptance

• In short
• Whats going to happen is going to happen
  whether you pray for it or not
• Prayer is utterly useless as a means of getting
  something from God.

• Prayer is accepted only as an act of worship.
  
• It is not accepted in the sense of God
  answering you, or actually giving you what you
  prayed for

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Summary Sir Sayyeds Ideas about Prayer and
the Meaning of its Acceptance

• Prayer is, at best, a distraction from your
  problems and worries, and it can give you an
  illusion of patience just to get you through
  hard times

• It is mans nature to expect someone to help
  him in his desperate moments
• So to satisfy mans nature man has been
  taught You must ask God, for whatever you need
  help with

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The Rebuttal of Sir Sayyeds Naturist Ideas by
The Promised Messiah (a.s.)
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Pre-destination Cause Effect

• Everything in the world, whether good or evil, is
  governed by the laws of destiny determined by God
  Almighty
• Such laws are in terms of Cause and Effect
• CAUSE EFFECT

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Means Ends (or Objectives)

• God has established the operation of these laws
  by providing means that may be used in order to
  achieve the desired ends (or, objectives)
• MEANS ENDS

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An Example Using Medicine vs. Using Prayer

• A medicine has certain properties due to which it
  is used (as a means) when needed by a patient,
  so that he is cured (i.e., gets the end result)

• The patient does not avoid using medicine, due to
  his belief in the power of pre-destination
  (What is going to happen is going to happen so
  why use medicine?)

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• Similarly, Doaa (Prayer) is a humble
  supplication in the form of an earnest request to
  God (i.e. a means) to grant a person something
  he needs (i.e., he wants to get a desired end
  result)
• So, how can a person, in need, avoid using the
  means of Prayer (which has God-given properties)
  due to his belief in the power of
  pre-destination (What is going to happen is
  going to happen so why resort to Prayer?)

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• The system of Pre-destination (or, effects) has
  been linked by God to the system of causes (or,
  means)
• Nothing, that is pre-destined, happens without a
  cause-and-effect relation.
• The error of Sir Sayyed is that he fails to
  recognize that Prayer is also among the
  God-created effective means, for the benefit of
  human beings to achieve desirable ends, under
  Gods laws

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• Sir Sayyed believes that fire has a specific
  quality it burns. Now, although he believes in
  the reality of pre-destination, yet he would not
  say that
• If someone is pre-destined to get burnt, he
  would get burnt even without fire.
• Sir Sayyed seems to think that although fire has
  an effective quality but prayer has no effective
  qualities
• He fails to recognize that the same
  pre-destination that rules (the quality of) fire
  also governs (the qualities of) Prayer.

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The Root and the Branch An Analogy

• Prayer is the Root (i.e., the main fact)
• Acceptance of Prayer is its Branch (i.e., a
  subsidiary of the main fact)

• PRINCIPLE One who is confused about the Root,
  always has difficulties in understanding the
  Branch (as does Sir Sayyed)

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The Promised Messiah (a.s.) Explains the Nature
of Prayer and the Process of the Acceptance of
Prayer

• There is an existing force of attraction between
  a righteous man and God, at all times.
• First, Gods Rahman attribute pulls man towards
  Him
• God Righteous Man
• Secondly, due to the pull of a righteous mans
  truthful sincerity with God, God gets closer to
  him
• God Righteous Man

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• At the time of Prayer, this ongoing attraction
  between God and a righteous Man, reaches a
  Special Height
• Then, at that level, it produces strange and
  wonderful attributes of power

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What are the components that take one to that
level?

• When a person is facing some hardship and turns
  to God with the following attributes of his
  prayer
• Perfect certainty (of belief in Gods powers)
• Perfect hope
• Perfect love
• Perfect faithfulness
• Perfect courage

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• Then, becoming exceedingly vigilant (and
  awakened) he pierces through the coverings of
  oblivion (unawareness) and advances on and on in
  the fields of self-negation (and
  self-annihilation)
• Then, eventually, he perceives that he is in the
  presence of the Divine Court of Allah to the
  total exclusion of everything and everyone
• Then his spirit obediently places itself, in
  submission, at the threshold of Gods presence

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• Now, the existing force of mutual attraction that
  is (already) within him, attracts the favors of
  God Almighty
• At this point, Allah the Glorious, the Exalted,
  turns His attention toward granting this mans
  wish (who has been praying)
• Now, God diverts the full impact of that Prayer
  onto all those initial causes that give birth to
  another set of causes (or means) that are
  necessary to achieve the desired objective

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• Example If the prayer was for the rain to come,
  then after the acceptance of this prayer
  those physical factors that are essential for
  rain are created (i.e., provided)
• The saints believe that a power of creativity
  is born within the prayer of a perfectly
  righteous person it can do something (under
  Gods permission)
• i.e., under Gods permission, that prayer
  powerfully diffuses into the Physical Realm as
  well as the Spiritual Realm, and brings together
  the physical elements, the heavenly bodies, and
  the minds of other human beings towards the
  favorable direction

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An Excerpt from A Book of Hadhrat Sayyed Abdul
Qaadir Jeelani (r.a.), presented by the Promised
Messiah (a.s.)

• If you want to become one accepted by God then
  believe that your hands and feet, your eyes,
  tongue and your entire body, and all its elements
  are idols lying in your way. So also are your
  children and wife, and everything you wish for in
  the world these are all idols lying in your way.
  So, therefore, you should not obey any of these
  idols by devoting yourself wholly to itexcept to
  fulfill your obligations according to the
  Shariah. If you do that, you will rise in rank
  in Gods estimation until your self will not
  be visible anymore

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An Excerpt from A Book of Hadhrat Sayyed Abdul
Qaadir Jeelani (r.a.), presented by the
Promised Messiah (a.s.) Contd.

• Then through your prayers and your blessings,
  acute sufferings of other people will be removed
  Whatever will find expression through your tongue
  will, in fact, originate from God And the
  operation of pre-destiny will be nullified in
  your case, i.e., your prayer and your attention
  will creatively permeate the world. And then,
  should you wish to cause what is extinct to
  become present and what is present to become
  extinct, the same will transpire. And matters
  that transcend the normal operations would find
  expression through you From Fotooh-ul-Ghayeb

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What did the Prophets have in their hands,
except Prayer? The Promised Messiah (a.s.)

• Several kinds of Miracles are, in fact, the
  result of the Acceptance of Prayer
• Various Revealed Books of God contain many such
  examples

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• The strange and wondrous spectacle that
  transpired in the desolate country of Arabia
  when hundreds of thousands of the spiritually
  dead were revived to life within a very short
  span of time and those who had had crooked ways
  for generations, they acquired the Divine color
  and those who were blind of sight became people
  of vision and the mute started giving expression
  to the God-inspired words of wisdom. And all of a
  sudden such a Revolution took place in the world
  that was totally unseen and unheard of before
  that time. Do you know what it was? It was the
  nightly Prayers supplicated in pitch darkness
  by the one who had totally annihilated himself in
  (the cause of) Allah, that raised a clamor in the
  world, and wrought such amazing feats that would
  seem impossible to be accomplished by that
  unlettered man who was without any human support.

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• In my personal experience, too, the effectiveness
  of Prayer far exceeds the (effective) attributes
  of water and fire.
• Rather, in the entire Physical Realm, there is
  nothing, by comparison, that is as superbly
  effective as the Prayer

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Prayers and Medicines

• DOUBT Some prayers do not seem to hit the target
  and they seem to produce no result
• REPLY Various medicines are no different, in
  this regard, either. So, would you stop medical
  treatment as such?
• Although pre-destination governs everything, but
  it has neither wasted nor discredited various
  branches of human knowledge
• If you observe carefully, the Physical Means and
  the Spiritual Means, neither are outside the
  purview of pre-destination

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Both Physical Means and Spiritual Means are
within the Pre-destination

• Example If the pre-destination is favourable to
  a patient, then
• (A) The (pre-destined) suitable means of
  treatment will become fully available
• (B) The condition of the patients body will be
  such as to be fully receptive to that treatment
• When (A) (B) occurs, the medicine hits the
  target and the patient is cured

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Medicine and Prayer The Same Principle of
Success

• The Prayer acts on the same principle
• The suitable means and
• The favourable conditions
• come together only in such cases where it is
• Gods intention to accept the Prayer
• God has tied the Physical Realm and the Spiritual
  Realm in the same chain of Cause and Effect
  relations
• It is an error of Sir Sayyed that he accepts only
  the Physical Realm, and rejects the Spiritual
  Realm

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Proof of the Acceptance of Prayers An Offer by
the Promised Messiah (a.s.)

• If you persist in your beliefs against the
  acceptance of prayers, I promise that I will
  inform you about some of my prayers about
  youwell in advance of their acceptance. If you
  permit me,I will even publish them in advance,for
  the benefit of general public.
• But, in return, you must also promise to give up
  your false ideas, after witnessing the truth of
  my claim

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Another Offer to Sir Sayyed by the Promised
Messiah (a.s.)

• Sir Sayyed should try to imagine his last day
  of life and, in view of that, I think it is
  better for him to come and stay in my company for
  a few months. Since I am Divinely Appointed, and
  I am commissioned to be a Giver of Good News,
  therefore, I promise that I will prayerfully
  focus my attention for achieving satisfaction for
  Sir Sayyed. I am hopeful that God will show
  some Sign to bring to naught the Law of Nature
  as theorized by Sir Sayyed.

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• Sir Sayyed misunderstood the meaning of the verse
  (4061) he quoted
• The command Pray unto Me is not about all kinds
  of ordinary prayers. It is only about the Act of
  Worship (or Prayer) that is obligatory for
  mankind.
• That is why, disobeying this command is stated to
  be punishable by Hell (unlike the case of
  ordinary prayers).

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• Even if we accept (for the sake of argument) that
  it refers to all ordinary prayers, the fact
  remains that the Acceptance of Prayer requires
  that all the necessary conditions of its success
  are met at the same time.
• And only God can cause them all to happen at the
  same time (when He intends to accept a prayer)

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Favorable Conditions for the Acceptance of a
Prayer

• Humble submission is not the only pre-condition.
  Others include
• Taqwa (Fear Love of God)
• Purity (physical spiritual)
• Truthfulness

• Perfect Belief
• Perfect Love
• What is prayed for is not contrary to wisdom
  underlying a Divine Purpose

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Favourable Conditions for the Acceptance of a
Prayer Contd.

• Success in acceptance of prayer further requires
• A full measure of spirituality must enter into
  the prayer, and
• An affinity (closeness) between the person who
  prays and that what is prayed for must be firmly
  established

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Favourable Conditions for the Acceptance of a
Prayer Contd.

• Until the Divine Intent moves favourably towards
  the acceptance of a prayer
• The simultaneous occurrence of these favourable
  conditions does not occur, and
• One falls short of the full measure of
  persistence and attentiveness needed for a
  successful prayer

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Salvation in the HereafterA Result of Acceptance
of Prayers So, Why Not in This Life?

• If Sir Sayyed believes that a true believers
  prayers for getting salvation in the Hereafter
  are accepted, then it must be also accepted that
  his prayers are accepted for achieving what he
  prays for in this world, too!
• Alternatively
• If prayers for needs arising in this world simply
  go waste
• Then the prayers for achieving salvation in the
  Hereafter will go waste, too!
• (So, what does now remain of the Belief in the
  Hereafter?)

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Seven Guiding Principles for Assessing a
Commentary of the Holy Quran

• Internal supportive evidence (i.e., from within
  the Holy Quran)
• Support from the commentary by the Holy Prophet
  (s.a.w.)
• Support from the commentary by the Companions of
  the Holy Prophet(s.a.w)
• Pondering over the Holy Quran with the help of
  ones own purified nature
• Digging into Arabic lexicons to add to the depth
  of perception in the meanings of the words of the
  Holy Quran
• Pondering over the Physical Phenomena to try to
  understand the nature of the Spiritual Phenomena
  (due to the parallelism, created by God, between
  the Physical Realm and the Spiritual Realm)
• The evidence received through the Revelation of
  a Saint, or of the Mohaddaseen i.e., those who
  are blessed to be able to converse with God and
  receive response through receive Divine
  Revelation

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The Promised Messiahs Narrative of his Personal
Experience of Receiving the Revelation from God

• I affirm the truth of the fact, by swearing to it
  in the name of Allah , the Exalted in His Glory,
  that the Revelation descends upon my heart like a
  ray of light from the sun falls upon a wall. I
  experience every day that, whenever the moment of
  Divine Converse arrives then, initially, I
  suddenly experience a state of rapturous
  detachment roboodgi and I become like a
  transformed object although my sense of feeling
  and cognizance do remainnominally speakingbut,
  at that moment, I find myself as if my entire
  being has been powerfully secured within the grip
  of another exceedingly powerfulbeing. At that
  moment, I perceive that every fibre of my being
  is in his hand, and whatever was mine is no
  longer mine but belongs to him.

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• While I am in that state, initially God the
  Exalted brings forth those thoughts of my heart
  or, mind upon which He wants to cast a ray of
  His Discourse. Then, amid a wondrous state, those
  thoughts are marshalled in front of my view,
  i.e., when a thought appears, e.g., for Zayed, as
  to whether or not he will be cured of a specific
  illness, then in a flash a piece of Divine
  Discourse falls on that bit of thought like a
  ray of light and, due to that, quite often my
  whole body quakes. Now, that matter having been
  resolved, another thought comes in view. The
  moment this thought is positioned in front of my
  view, immediately another piece of Divine
  Discourse falls upon it! This is analogous to a
  hunter-archer who keeps on shooting arrows as
  soon as the game successively comes right on the
  mark. Right at that time it is perceived that
  this continuum of thoughts is born out of my
  natural capacity, whereas the Divine Discourse
  that falls upon it descends from higher up This
  narrative aids in clearly understanding as to
  what is the natural capability and what is it
  that descends from the heaven.

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The Promised Messiahs Narrative of his Personal
Experience of Receiving the Revelation from God
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The Promised Messiahs Additional Narrative of
his Personal Experience of Receiving the
Revelation from God (page 26)

• This humble one has been blessed with the Divine
  Discourse almost for the last 11 years, and know
  this fact very well that Revelation indeed
  descends from the heaven
• I have experienced that, at the time of
  Revelationthat descends on me in the nature of
  the Revelation granted to the Saintsan external
  and overwhelmingly strong control is felt.
  Sometimes this control is so overpoweringand
  engulfs me in its myriad luminescence in such a
  way that I feel being pulled toward it in a
  manner that none of my faculties can resist it.

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The Promised Messiahs Additional Narrative of
his Personal Experience of Receiving the
Revelation from God (page 26)

• During this state of being under Divine
  Control, I hear an openly flowing and luminous
  Discourse. I sometimes see the Angels and
  experience the profound impact and
  awe-inspiring quality, which characterizes the
  Truth. Such Discourse, quite often, comprises the
  matters pertaining to the Unseen. And such a
  Divine Control and its grip is external, which
  provides the proof of the existence of God the
  Exalted.
• Now, negating this would amount to killing a
  manifest truth.

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The Promised Messiahs Additional Narrative of
his Personal Experience of Receiving the
Revelation from God (page 26)
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Conclusion

• A Persian Poem by the Promised
  Messiah (a.s.)
• Cure your Disease of Disbelief in Prayer,
  through using the medicine of Prayer
• Just as the habitual drinker treats the
  morbidly strong urge to drink, by drinking even
  more wine.
• O ye who says that if a Prayer has any
  effect, where is it?
• Rush towards me! I will demonstrate it for
  you, as clearly as the bright Sun
• Listen up! Do not negate the mysteries of
  the Transcendent Power of God
• Wrap up this issue come and see through me
  the living example of an Accepted Prayer