I was thinking about this ayaah all day and night after as it came up over lunch with some brothers,

إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِى مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَهْدِى مَن يَشَآءُ ۚ وَهُوَ أَعْلَمُ بِٱلْمُهْتَدِينَ

“Surely you do not guide whomever you love, but Allah guides whomever He decides, and He knows best the ones (who are) rightly-guided”

There are in our lives people whom we love and want guidance for, this is definitely the case with reverts who would love for their family members to be guided,

Then there are individuals in raised Muslim households that are far from the religion, and you wish guidance for,

It’s clear from the ayaah we love guidance for those we love,

but after some pondering and looking at it from another angle, I came to understand guidance in another way,

How many times do we hear of married couples who live in toxic relationships, say they worry that if they leave, the other will be misguided,

and if they have children in such relationships, this fear is intensified, and they also think the same. “If I leave, then children will be misguided…..”

But here’s the thing,

What gives the guarantee that if you dont leave, they will be guided?

This is a heavy realisation that I think most people don’t see, again,

“Surely you do not guide whomever you love, but Allah guides whomever He decides, and He knows best the ones (who are) rightly-guided”

What’s to say, perfect relationships means you will have a perfect rightous spouse or perfect rightous off-spring?

again, “you do not guide whoever you love…” cementing that guidance is from Allah, he guides who he pleases, guides those who we love or hate, guides those in perfect scenarios or terrible scenarios, and the opposite it true,

whether we are in the picture or not makes absolutely no difference to who is guided and who isn’t, and this is hard to grasp and come to terms with. We simply do not guide!

But surely there is some sort of effort on our part that we must do, right?

Absolutely right, what we need to realise is our part involves us doing our bit to the best of our abilities, we need to try to direct towards the right and away from the evil, if they are guided Alhumdulilah, but if they are not, we stand without fault, we can stand in front of Allah (swt) and confidently say, “O ALLAH I TRIED” and that’s the key.

On the Day of Judgement no one will be concerned about anyone except themselves,

On that day we all will flee from those we love today in the Dunya, from our brothers, parents, from our spouse, and even our children.

In the effort in trying to save those around us who we love, what’s more important, and this will sound selfish, but we need to save ourselves first,

Allah says,

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا قُوا أَنْفُسَكُمْ وَأَهْلِيكُمْ نَارًا وَقُودُهَا النَّاسُ وَالْحِجَارَةُ عَلَيْهَا مَلَائِكَةٌ غِلَاظٌ شِدَادٌ لَا يَعْصُونَ اللَّهَ مَا أَمَرَهُمْ وَيَفْعَلُونَ مَا يُؤْمَرُونَ

“O, believers! Save yourselves and your families from a fire, whose fuel is men and stones; upon it are fierce and mighty angels who never disobey Allāh’s command and who promptly do what they are commanded to do.”

We are not sailors that need to go down with the ship, we are Muslims that need to save ourselves from the Hellfire, do your bit leave the rest with Allah(swt).

And Allah knows best.

-Abu Ousayd