The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “Allah will take the whole earth (in His Hand) and will roll up the Heaven in His right Hand, and then He will say, “I am King! Where are the kings of the earth ? “ - Sahih al-Bukhari 6519
The question of our reality is, who sustains it? We are of the mind that it is perhaps self sustaining, but that is not true. We are of the mind that politicians manage and run our countries effectively, but that is not true. And we are of the mind that the leaders in this world will save us if we follow them, and yet that is also not true. The truth is that our existence, our survival, our sustenance is provided by the one true King, the Almighty, Allah (SWT).
The argument taken to it’s very root, it’s asl, it’s truth is that all things depend upon the Creator. Their very being depends upon the Creator. Yet the kings of this world did not create us, they were in fact created. We place such importance in these kings, in these leaders, in these figures, in these celebrities, in these CEOs, in these, whatever other title may be attributed to them. Will they save us from the truth? What is the truth?
The truth is that we are here for a purpose, to serve God, and we will inevitably go back to him.
Inna Lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un
“We belong to Allah and to him we will return” - Quran 2:156
So when this is the statement, when this is the truth we come to know and believe, what then of the kings, leaders and men of power in this world. Should they yield power over us? Do they even yield power?
There is only one with true Power, that is the Almighty, Allah (SWT).
The difficulty in understanding such conjecture is that it leaves the reader baffled or taken aback. If you have not already come to the same conclusion, that there is only one true King, then understanding that statement is truly a journey of a lifetime. Because all that we know is based in this reality and we are being told that this is just temporary.
Everything is dependent upon a transcendent deity we have only come to know through messengers who were divinely blessed. And even understanding or comprehending that in a way that we can reason is difficult. The hubris of mankind is that of disbelief. Not just in the Creator but in all premises that cannot be factually correlated. I urge the reader to reason about what we already don’t know, how much of science was only discovered in the past century, how much of the universe have we only just started to explore in the past decades, how much of our world are we still yet to uncover.
Then how in all our egotistical being can we expect to deny the existence of the Creator, the one true King.
If mankind was not given divine inspiration and the message to understand our existence, then we would still continue to ponder over it. And this is how it began for every messenger. Every person is asked to reason about their existence. In the Quran it mentions in hundreds of places, then will you not reason. God is telling man, think, just think, don’t be ignorant, don’t turn your back on this message, just think, use your faculties. If we are so intelligent then we should stop and think about what’s being asked of us.
The world and everything around us is a sign. It’s a sign telling us, hey you are here for a purpose, just think about it. The kings of this world are preoccupied with their glory, their power and privilege, yet it’s we the lesser people (“the subjects”), who have the opportunity to sit and ponder over these words, these titles and layers of hierarchy. If there is only one true King, then what of those who call themselves kings, leaders and the rest of us?