Does Allah need our worship?

We hear from both those who do not perform prayers (salah) and those who are often lazy in their prayers: Does Allah need our worship that He insistently commands us to worship and threatens those who abandon worship with many verses in the Quran with a severe torment like hell?

How should we respond to people who think like that?

Allah does not need anything, so He does not need our worship either! “Allah is Samad.” (He is the One that everything needs, and He does not need anything.) But we are in need of worship.

For instance, a compassionate doctor insists on a patient to take medicines that will cure him, but the patient says to the doctor: “Why do you need to insist on me like that?” Everyone would understand how illogical his statement is.

For example, in response to his teacher’s insistence on studying if a student says “My teacher! Why do you need to constantly recommend me to study?” It will be understood how wrong it is. That is to say, we are the ones who need worship that our Lord insistently commands us to worship.

Another issue is that man is the weakest and poorest of all creatures. He needs many things: the best tastes, clothes, houses, cars, yachts. He also has eternal needs and desires, such as getting eternal pleasures, not being destroyed, never leaving his loved ones.

However, he does not have the power and wealth to make one millionth of them. Moreover, he has many enemies that harm him. He has enemies, diseases, misfortunes, and many more that make him sad and miserable. But he cannot find the strength to repel them.

Again, man is a very sensitive and fragile creation. Just as anything can upset him, he also needs a lot to be happy. But he also lacks the power, strength and wealth to obtain them. Some of the things that he has achieved by working, on the other hand, leave himself to nothingness with death, and the person who has nothing remains without anything.

It is understood that weakness and poverty are two terrible wounds that make people miserable. These wounds, on the other hand, can only be treated by worshiping Allah by taking shelter in the One Who is Omnipotent, Who has endless treasures, and by turning away from all beings. By means of worship, man draws on Allah’s mercy, power and protection, so he can attain Allah’s approval and achieve the happiness of the world and the hereafter.

Man is not created only with matter that is physical. As well as the physical needs of the body, there are also spiritual needs of his spiritual devices such as mind, heart, soul, feelings and emotions. Hearts are fed and healed only by remembering and love of Allah. Our Almighty Lord states that the food of our hearts is dhikr and worship by saying, “You should know that hearts can only be satisfied by the remembrance of Allah.” (Ra’d, 28)

Again, the mind needs to contemplate Allah. The spirit, which is constantly overwhelmed by the suffocating and boring states of the world, can only breathe and relax with the window of worship. That is to say, human beings are created in a way that they are spiritually in need of worship.

Another aspect of man’s need for worship is as follows: Every sin committed by man damages his faith and creates deep wounds in his heart and soul. Righteous deeds, especially prayers (salah), cleanse man of his sins, and he thus attains the mercy of Allah Almighty. In this way, that servant, who is cleansed of his sins by gaining the consent of his Lord, becomes worthy of the eternal Paradise, which he desires with all his feelings, with the grace of Allah. That is, man needs worship for eternal bliss as well.

Finally, just as the gift given to the sultan of a country is a sign of loyalty, love and obedience to that sultan – because the sultan does not need a gift – so too all our worship that we perform and will perform are a sign of our servitude to our Lord, our loyalty, gratitude, love and obedience. At this point, we always need worship to declare our servitude and thanks to our Lord. After all, why would Almighty Allah, the Creator of the earth, skies, visible and invisible, known and unknown, all the worlds, this life and the hereafter, the One Who is the true Owner and Owner of everything, need the imperfect and limited worship of us tiny servants?

With greetings and prayers…!