Dhikr in common parlance simply stands for remembrance of God. Just as our physical bodies require oxygen every moment to remain alive, so do our souls need God s remembrance to live a healthy life. A Muslim therefore needs to perpetually remember his Lord, God the Creator, praising Him, fearing Him, loving Him, and seeking to please Him through righteous living. This remembrance then is not time-bound, not a meditational effort at an appointed hour of the day. A Muslim is never to cease remembering God. Eating, drinking, working, travelling or intercoursing, he does never lose sight of the fact that this life is but a trial, a farce and that sooner or later; he has to return to his Lord God who will question him for his deeds and beliefs. This remembrance of God is for him so often and so intense as to pass through his conscious level and penetrate and dwell in his subconscious regions, so forceful as to direct every act or thought flowing out of his physical entity. For him then it is as unthinkable to miss a moment not spent in the remembrance of God as it is unthinkable for one to miss a heart-beat. Such a person then is to be called dhakir, the God-conscious:

“Surely in the creation of the heaven and the earth and in the turns of the day and night are signs for men of understanding. (Those) who remember God standing, sitting and reclining ana (those) who ponder over the creation of the heavens and earth. (Concluding) : “O God, our Lord I You have not created these in vain. Glory be to You, (You are above a purposeless act). Therefore save us 0 Lord, from the Fire (of Hell, when we return to Thee). ”

(The Quran 2 : 190-191)

The above verses tell us that dhikr is not simply repetitive chanting of Allah’s name, although as part of a bigger exercise good it is to do that. But the act of dhikr surpasses mere chanting. It should lead the dhakir to think of God, His Powers, His Wisdom and His many blessings It should lead one to conclude that this universe could not have been created without purpose, that man in it cannot be allowed to live a life of liberty. Surely, in return for the “joy of life” there are duties and obligations as there are rights, towards God the Creator, and man the created. No child needs to be explained the logic of rights of his nation. Can there be no rights then of God and his creations ? The conclusions of a man of understanding then, whether schooled or unschooled should necessarily be that without answering to the call of duty—to man and God—there can be no possibility of winning God’s approval. If a man thinks that without answering to to the call of these duties, he can please God merely by chanting His name, then surely he is imputing to God a purposeless act—that of the creation of the heavens and the earth. A true dhakir then is no escapist, no lethargic being who quietly takes his rights but manages to evade the rights on him of the Creator and the created through innocently- presented cunning philosophy. A true dhakir is as much the man of action as of reflection.

How best is dhikr “performed” is the question very often asked. The answer should be clear in the light of what we have said above. Dhikr, to make it plainer, is best performed by carrying out all the commands of God with a view to gaining His approval (rida). In yet simpler words, it can be done by offering the five-time prayers, observing fasts, offering welfare-due {zakat and sadaqat), going to hajj when possible, obeying the parents, earning livelihood through righteous (halal) means, abstaining from illegal sex, wine and interest (usury) giving up pride, deceit ‘and hypocrisy and, finally, enjoining the good and forbidding the evil as one’s first step in jihad. In short the best way of performing the dhikr is to carry out all obligations imposed by Allah (taraid wa wajibat) and desisting from all that is forbidden by Him (the hurumat, sing. : haram}. This is the least acceptable by way of one demonstrating that he or she does never forget God. This is how the following verse of the Quran has been explained by most of the mufassirin.

“Therefore remember Me, I will remember you (with blessings), and thank Me and be not ungrateful.”

(Chapter 2 verse 152)

If this is not done then no amount of meditation, chanting of God’s name, reading of rosaries, or simply remembrance of Him in the heart and mind can be accepted as proof of one’s fear of God, love of Him or authenticity of one’s effort to please Him. What God has fixed as the way of salvation can not be substituted by anything else. Islam, it should be understood, is a revealed religion. It is not a religion made by priests who are satisfied with large attendances. Islam is a complete way of life and not a system of worship alone. Islam is not a man-made religion in which you can utter any absurdity and get away with it by merely saying :

“That is how it is stated in our holy books.” In Islam, reason, logic and revelation go together in harmonious steps. There can be no fooling here in the name of holy words.

Explaining the term “remember Me” in the above quoted verse what Abdullah ibn Abbas has to say is : “And he who did not obey (all) the commands of Allah, did not remember Him, however much he prayed or chanted His names’. “This point then is to be clearly understood and firmly kept in mind.

However, in order for a Muslim to increase his moral and spiritual strength so as to remain righteous in a corrupt world, the sharia-al-mutahhara has prescribed specific ways and manners of remembering God. These then are aiding elements and not the goals in themselves, gaining that status in the advanced stages, which can not be achieved of course before all the obligatories are attended to, all things forbidden have been desisted from and the intentions (niyah) have been purified.

The best form pf dhikr of this kind is to offer superrogatory prayers, fasts, sadaqat, hajj, umra, recitation of the holy Quran etc. Next in importance and priority come those beautiful prayer words (adiya, sing. : dua) reported through authentic chain of transmitters which the Prophet uttered when rising from sleep, going in or coming out of the closet, mounting or alighting a conveyance, eating and drinking, and so on until sleep overtook him.

Apart from the above-stated, the Prophet has also taught specific words with which Allah’s mercy can be involved. Then there are those which are to be uttered as additional while carrying out the faraid and wajibat. These add beauty and grace to them and make them weightier in the sight of our Lord.

This then is dhikr-Allah and this then is the priority. Yet misinformed and ignorant people have devised ways of “performing” dhikr that carry no support of the Quran or hadith, and must therefore receive the scorn due. So also most people do not know and understand priorities, so that you will find a man reciting the name of God, a fixed number of times, at a fixed hour, with regularity and precision while turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the cause of widows dwelling on the steps of the very mosque. It does not occur to him at all that that’s no way to treat human beings, about whom Allah has said :

“We have indeed honoured the children of Adam and guided them by land and sea. We have bestowed on
them provisions good end gave them preference over many of those whom We created—a marked preference.

(The Quran 17 : 70)

People forget or they are never told how common the theme of “the orphan, the poor and the oppressed, the slave and the wayfarer” is in the early Meccan suras of the Quran when Islam could boast of only a couple of adherents. Today we are told, “Let us get organised religiously, then we shall take care of the widows”.

Or take the case of a man performing hajj upon hajj while in his own country his brethren are being cut down by their enemies and they have no financial means to defend themselves. Or again the case of a man who is never tired of speaking and hearing of jihad but when he is asked to do something specific for those engaged in jihad—in Afghahistan, Eriterea, Palestine, Phillipines or elsewhere—he will first give you a couple of evasive answers and when you have cornered him in argument, out comes the cool answer that the Muslims of these areas deserve the whipping they are receiving and their suffering is a punishment of Allah unto them for their misdeeds. He does not know, poor man, that it is this line of thinking which is the punishment of God for our misdeeds including evasion from jihad and works related to it. Abu Huraira says the Prophet (on whom be peace) said :

“One of the best types of subsistence (or way of living) is that of a man who grasps his horse’s reins in God’s path and races on its back making for the places where being killed and dying are liable to take place as often as he hears a terrible shout or a cry for help.”

(Mishkat)

Or take the case of a man who assiduously devotes his time to reading of the Quran but will pay no attention to the learning of Arabic to know what Allah is telling him through the lines he has been untiringly reading.

Or finally, take the case of the man who has fixed it upon himself to send so many and so many durud and salam to the Prophet but has never turned a single leaf of the Prophet’s life to know who and what really is the person to whom he has been sending his durud and salam ! !

In all the above cases no one can say that what the persons are engaged in are wrong and futile and that they must stop forthwith. But all those who know what Islam stands for and what its true spirit is will agree that in all these cases priorities have been disregarded.