Am I Not Your Lord?

Allah (swt) says: and remember when your Lord brought forth from the children of Ādam, from their loins, their seed, and made them testify as to themselves, saying: am I not your Lord? They said: yes, we testify — lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection: verily, we have been unaware of this.

This is talking about a very important concept, and that is al-mīthāq, the covenant. Do you know that there is an agreement between us and Allah (swt)? Do you know that there is a covenant between us and Allah, an agreement? This ayah is talking about that agreement. Allah (swt) has made a covenant with us, and that is: we worship no one but Him. And we witnessed upon ourselves that we shall not worship anyone but Allah.

And then Allah (swt) says: lest you should say on the Day of Judgment that we are unaware of this. Don't say — in other words, don't say on the Day of Judgment — I didn't know about that. We have given this covenant.

Two explanations have been given to this ayah. One explanation says that this covenant is the covenant of fiṭrah. Fiṭrah is the original state. Every one of us has an original state, and that original state is Islam: al-fiṭrah. Allah (swt) has created us on fiṭrah. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) says: everyone is born on the fiṭrah of Islam, on the original creation of Islam, and then their parents make them a Christian, or a Jew, or a Zoroastrian. But in the beginning we are Muslim. Every one of us is Muslim.

And that's why many who embrace Islam don't like to be called converts. They say: we never converted to Islam; we reverted. We reverted to Islam, because we were Muslim in the beginning, and then we lost it, and then we came back to it again. So we are reverts — because every one of us started out as a Muslim, submitting to Allah (swt).

The next explanation is that Allah (swt) took out the seed of Ādam — every one, every one of us, from Ādam until the Day of Judgment, every one of us — and we were placed in the hand of Allah (swt). And then Allah (swt) asked us: am I your Lord? And we said yes. And that is mentioned in a hadith.

Now, the only reason why we have another opinion is because some of the ʿulamāʾ critique this hadith: some of them accept it as strong, and some don't. But the hadith is: inna Allāha akhadha al-mīthāqa min ẓahri Ādama bi-Nuʿmāna yawma ʿArafah, wa akhraja min ṣulbihi kulla dhurriyyatin dharaʾahā, fa-natharahum bayna yadayhi ka-l-dharr, thumma kallamahum qibalan, qāla: alastu bi-rabbikum? Qālū: balā. Allah has taken the covenant in Nuʿmān^****, the day of ʿArafah. Allah has taken out of Ādam all of his seed, and scattered them in His hand like pearls^*****. Then Allah asked them: isn't it that I am your Lord? They said: yes. According to this hadith, every one of us has spoken to Allah (swt) and said: yes, You are our Lord, and we will worship nobody but You.