Treat others good to reach God

This was causing a lot of inconvenience to the people who were coming to the mosque as the street outside the mosque was a no parking street.

I suppose whoever had parked his vehicle like that, in his eagerness not to miss the prayers, had paid little attention to the plight of others like him who also did not want to miss their prayers.

What we must reflect upon is if we offer prayers to the Almighty after having caused inconvenience to people or by being rude or unkind to them will our prayers be accepted of us? Or if it is accepted will it be accepted a full acceptance?

In Islam, it is clearly understood that if we seek approach to God then the way to that is through the good treatment of our fellow men.

An incident from the life of Prophet Mohammad will amply illustrate this point; Once a person inquired from the Prophet about the condition of an old lady who lived in his neighbourhood.

She was very earnest in her worship of God and would spend long hours in prayer and would fast for days on end. But her shortcoming was that she was a quarrelsome person and constantly troubled her neighbours.

As a result, her neighbours were unhappy with her.

Upon hearing this, the Prophet replied that if that was the case then she will not find salvation as long as her neighbours are troubled by her.

This is so because just as Islam advocates Unity of God and strict monotheism and explains the right of God upon his creation, it also advocates Brotherhood and equality of man and explains the right of people upon each other as members of one big family.

The right of God upon the people is that He should be worshipped alone without ascribing any partners to Him in His Divinity.

And the right of people upon each other is that they must never ill-treat each other and never be unjust to each other but help each other and be kind to one another and coexist in love and harmony.

Therefore if one is sincere about winning God’s favour and his mercy then he must make sure that he never ill-treats his fellow men, who are really none other than his extended family and if he is guilty of ill-treating them and is disliked by them then he must make haste in making sure that he atones for his misdeeds and make peace with them.