Belief & Relationship

The believers are ordained that belief should prevail over any other consideration, even if it involves blood bonds or valued possessions:

O you who believe! Do not ally yourself with your parents and your siblings if they prefer disbelief to belief. Whoever of you allies with them; these are the wrongdoers’’ (9:23)

It follows that belief has the supreme consideration in the divine scheme of things, and where one has to take a call between what he believes in and his blood bonds with the parents &/or the siblings, he/she has to tread the path of belief, even if it amounts to disassociation with those with whom blood bonds are shared. Not only the blood bonds, even valued possessions take secondary considerations, where belief is concerned:

‘’Say if your parents, and your children, and your siblings, and your spouses, and your relatives, and the wealth you have acquired, and the business you worry about, and the home you love, are more dear to you than God, and His Messenger, and the struggle in His cause, then wait until God executes His judgement. God does not guide the sinful people’’ (9:24)

At the dawn of Islam, when the call was given to join the faithful and abide by the message which the Holy Prophet (pbuh) carried, the message from Allah (SwT) there was a situation of conflict of interests, where relations and possessions stood on one side, and belief and faith on the other side.

In such a situation, past or present, it is divinely ordained that parents, children, siblings, spouses, the acquired wealth, the businesses indulged in, the loved abodes of living—the homes may not come in the way of holding God, His Messenger, and the struggle in His cause dearer than relationships and possessions. Were one to tread the forbidden path, he/she may wait for divine judgement, which never favours the sinful.