Understanding Fear of Allah
Answered by Shaykh Yusuf Weltch
Question
How do we understand fear of Allah, fear of punishment, and fear of a bad ending, especially since we are encouraged to be grateful, to have love, and to rely upon Allah, which seem contradictory to fear?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate
Fear is not the opposite of love, gratitude, and reliance. In fact, fear, love, gratitude, and reliance upon Allah Most High are all manifestations of true knowledge regarding the attributes of Allah Most High.
Knowledge and certainty that Allah Most High is the Omnipotent, the All-Powerful, automatically brings forth within the heart reliance and fear. Why?
Knowing that your entire salvation, your Heaven or Hell, your well-being in this life, and the Next is all in the discretion and will of Allah Most High automatically instills awe and fear. At the same time, it instills hope. Knowing that all these major outcomes are in the control of the Most Merciful, the Generous, brings about hope.
Beauty and Majesty
The Scholars have divided the attributes of Allah Most High into two categories: the attributes of beauty and the attributes of majesty.
The attributes of majesty are those attributes that show the Believer that he or she is absolutely not in control of anything and that the will of Allah Most High is ever dominant.
The attributes of beauty are those attributes that show the Believer that Allah Most High intends and wills for them the greatest good of this life and the Next.
Knowledge of these types of attributes is the path to purification.
Certain Knowledge
Certain knowledge of Allah’s mercy produces love, gratitude, yearning, etc…
Certain knowledge of Allah’s power and dominance produces fear, awe, reliance, submission, desperation, etc…
Both of these are necessary to draw nearer to Allah Most High and live right.
The Levels of Fear
The highest level of fear is to fear Allah Most High, Himself. To fear losing one’s love, connection, and nearness to Allah Most High. This is the most selfless fear.
Fearing Hellfire or the loss of one’s blessings is praiseworthy in itself, but compared to the selfless fear of the first type, it is self-serving as it focuses on what that person gets in the relationship.
The same applies to hope and love. Hope of Allah Himself. Love of Allah Himself. Not hope and love for something that benefits one in this life or the next. Although, all of this is praiseworthy – selfless love and hope are the greatest.
Hope this helps
Allah knows best
[Shaykh] Yusuf Weltch
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Shaykh Yusuf Weltch teaches Arabic, Islamic law, and spirituality. After accepting Islam in 2008, he completed four years at the Darul Uloom Seminary in New York, where he studied Arabic and the traditional sciences.
He then traveled to Tarim, Yemen, where he studied for three years in Dar al-Mustafa under some of the most outstanding scholars of our time, including Habib Umar Bin Hafiz, Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf, and Shaykh Umar al-Khatib.
In Tarim, Shaykh Yusuf completed the memorization of the Quran and studied beliefs, legal methodology, hadith methodology, Quranic exegesis, Islamic history, and several texts on spirituality. He joined the SeekersGuidance faculty in the summer of 2019.
