Dr. Nasim Rehmatullah - Naib Amir USA & Chairman Markazi Al Islam Team
Published: November 9, 2025
Man seeks God but finds Him too abstract, unseen, untouchable, unknown. He craves something tangible, something he can feel and relate to. This hunger drives many toward visible objects or charismatic leaders who promise to bridge the gap between man and God.
The Promised Messiah (as) warned against this very trap: "The Unity of God has three grades. The lowest grade is to abstain from the worship of any created thing like oneself, neither stone nor fire nor man nor any star. The second grade is that one should not be devoted to material means as if they were a sort of partner in the operation of Rububiyyat. One must concentrate on the Provider of means rather than on the means. The third grade is that having witnessed perfectly Divine manifestations, one should consider every other being as nonexistent including one's own self." (A'ina-e-Kamalat-e-Islam, Ruhani Khaza'in, Vol. 5, pp. 223-224)
'Religion' becomes what happens when the means to God is confused with God Himself. The ladder becomes the destination. Leaders, rituals, and institutions stand between man and the Divine, offering the flesh what it craves: activities, structure, visible results. It is spiritual dynamic stagnation.
But true worship requires faith, abstract, intangible, uncomfortable for the flesh. As the Holy Prophet (sa) said returning from battle: "We are returning from the lesser war to the greater war: the battle of the self."
God designed this test deliberately. Those who surrender their ego and persist, sometimes for years or decades, moving forward in dynamic stability, discover what they were truly seeking. In a hadith qudsi, God says: "My servant continues to get nearer to me by doing what I've asked, until I love him. And when I love my servant, I become the eyes by which he sees, the ears by which he listens, the hand by which he grasps."
Rumi captured this in his story of the seeker who knocks on God's door. First he says, "It's me"; the door stays closed. After years of struggle, he returns and says, "It is You." The door swings open.
Even Abraham (as) sought tangible proof, asking God to show him how He gives life to the dead (2:261). God didn't rebuke him but answered his need for certainty.
The path forward is clear: "If you love Allah, follow me: then will Allah love you" (3:32). Through this following comes the ultimate tangible experience, the soul at peace, well pleased with God and He well pleased with it (89:28-29).
The Promised Messiah (as) explains this: "Prayer comes from God and to Him it returns. Ever since God has created man He has made it His wont that, out of His sheer grace, He blesses with His Holy Spirit whomsoever He pleases. Then, with the help of the Holy Spirit, He infuses His love into such a person, grants him truth and perseverance, strengthens his knowledge with various signs and removes his weaknesses until he is practically ready to lay down his very life in His path." (Lecture Sialkot (also published as The Essence of Prayer and Faith), pp. 29-35)
This is the tangible we seek, not an object or person, but a transformed self where nothing remains but God.
