Guard Allah
🎧 Listen to this chapter (3 min)
Guard Allah. What does that even mean? How can a weak human being guard the Lord of the worlds?
Ibn Rajab explains. It means to guard His limits, His rights, His commands, and His prohibitions. To do what He asked, and to stay away from what He forbade, and not to step over the lines He drew.
And then he lists the most important things to guard. First, the prayer. Allah praises in the Qur’an those who guard their prayers. Second, purification, because the prayer depends on it. Third, your oaths, your promises in Allah’s name.
Then he mentions two pairs of things that need guarding most of all. The Prophet ﷺ said, in an authentic hadith: whoever guarantees me what is between his jaws and what is between his legs, I guarantee him Paradise.
The tongue, and our private desires. Two small places that cause so much harm.
And it is reported that he said: true modesty before Allah is to guard the head and what it holds, and the belly and what it contains. The head, meaning your eyes, your ears, your tongue, your thoughts. The belly, meaning that what you eat is pure and lawful.
So guarding Allah is not something grand and distant. It is what you look at, what you say, and what you eat, today.
