The Unrelenting Submission to Allah by Prophets Ibrahim and Ismail

The story of Prophet Ibrahim (‘alayhi assalam) and his willingness to sacrifice his son and Prophet Ismail (‘alayhi assalam) and his willingness to be sacrificed by his father teaches an extremely profound lesson.

If we were to receive a vision that shows us doing something we found morally intuitively abhorrent, we would not follow it. We are not prophets, and we have revelation from Allah (i.e., the Qur’an and Sunnah) and will not believe that Allah is the one speaking to us via revelation through visions, let alone asking us to commit an act that does not appear to conform with the revelation that we already do have from Him.

However, Prophets Ibrahim and Ismail (‘alayhuma assalam) were prophets, and they knew that this was Allah speaking to them. What to do in such a challenging situation where you know that Allah is the one commanding you to do something so difficult to digest and enact?

Prophets Ibrahim and Ismail (‘alayhuma assalam) knew that they could not subject Allah to their own personal standards of ethics. They knew they could not say, “Surely this is an immoral command issued by God, and surely, we ought to reinterpret it or reject it.” No, they knew that Allah is the ultimate foundational standard of morality and that it is not their place to question Allah.

Contrast that attitude and submission with many of us Muslims today whereby we know that Allah is issuing a particular command to us in the Qur’an, and whose difficulty of submission to nowhere comes close to sacrificing one’s child. Yet, we still subject it to our own personal moral standards before deciding whether it is ‘acceptable’ for us to submit to it.

Many kafir moral philosophers today arrogantly proclaim that “Abraham” was immoral for following this command from God to sacrifice his son. They say that he should have questioned it and used his rationality. But, how could he do so when he, as a prophet, knew who issued the command? Similar to how we Muslims know that Allah speaks to us via the Qur’an and authentically transmitted Sunnah? The assumption here is that there is a moral standard (which we supposedly choose and adopt for ourselves) to which God’s commands should be subjected and whose standard they must meet. If they do not, then God’s commands are either not worthy of being followed, or we conclude that the one issuing the commands is not God after all. Either way we look at it, this entails ultimate submission to another moral standard of ethics before even considering whether God approves it or not.

This is the ugliest of kufr, as it is the peak of arrogance and the true manifestation of he “who has taken as his god his [own] desire” (45:23)

Many of us read the amazing story of Prophets Ibrahim and Ismail (‘alayhuma assalam), yet we do not fully heed the most important lesson to be derived from it, namely utter and unconditional submission to the moral dictates of Allah.

Many people will nod their heads in agreement and say “I know, I know”, but if you go ahead and observe them speaking about hudud, gender roles, etc., it will become evident that they do not “know.”