Allah commands all people to believe in Him:

 Dear brother, in lesson 30 we will continue studying Surat An-Nisaa. In ayat (verse) 59, Allah says:

(O you who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you. If you differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if ye do believe in Allah and the Last Day: that is best, and most suitable for final determination. )

 Dear brother, I repeat again, Almighty Allah commanded all people to believe in Him. When they believe in Him, He will order them to assume the details of this belief. Many a verse in the Holy Quran begins with:

(O you who believe!)

 This means that Allah is addressing those people who believed in Him, knew Him, believed in His knowledge, wisdom and mercy. All your matters and concerns, all your affairs and conditions are in His hand, and your return is to Allah. He created you for Paradise, not for this world.

(O you who believe!)

 This verse includes all the meanings: The one who believed in Allah as a Creator, believed in His existence as One and Complete, believed in all His beautiful Divine Names and Attributes, believed that all matters and affairs are in His hand, believed that Almighty Allah is a deity in heaven and a deity in earth, believed that the happiness of anyone is in the hands of Allah and through Him, and their misery is in the hands of Allah and through Him, and that Allah is the One who gives and prevents, exalts and humiliates.

The Creator of human beings is the Expert:

(O you who believe!)

 If you believe in Allah, you should obey Allah.
 Simply put, if you buy a computer and then it breaks down, who will you go to?
 Surely, you won't go to your mother or to your neighbor who works as a grocer. Rather, you will go to the representative of the computer company and ask for an expert.
 You have a machine and you care about its safety, you won't accept any instruction except from the maker of this machine.
 Once, a man wanted to have his car fixed. The mechanic removed one of the parts from the car and threw it on the floor saying it was useless. The owner of the car couldn't discuss the matter with him because he did not know anything about mechanics. He only said: "I can't believe that you know more about this car than five thousand engineers working in a one-hundred-year-old car manufacturing company. Bring that piece back!"
 The One who created the human being is the Expert. He created man from nothing, He created man's body in a perfect way and He gave man certain characteristics. If this Supreme Being orders you to lower your gaze and avoid looking at women, while everybody tells you to look at them wherever they are, you should obey His Majesty.
 The end of the one who has worshipped Allah is happiness and Paradise, and the end of the one who has disobeyed Him -misery and Hell. That is why He says:

( And none, (O man!) can inform you like the One Who is acquainted with all things.)

[Fatir:14]

Obey Allah to achieve your safety and happiness:

 For your benefit, safety, happiness and progress, you should obey Almighty Allah.
 In the Holy Quran Allah repeatedly exhorts the believers: You should obey Me if you love yourselves and you seek for safety, for perfection and progress.
 You should obey Allah because he is the Expert and the One who is Acquainted with all things.
 The relation between Allah's command and its result is a scientific relation. Such relation is not to be found in any other religion.
 There, it is just a matter of movements, silences, whispers, mutterings and rituals void of meaning, which have no relation with life at all.
 But in this great din (religion) He ordered you to be honest, and the results of your honesty are countless. Being honest guides you to generosity, and generosity guides you to Paradise.
He ordered you to be faithful and honest. Being faithful and honest is being rich.
 He commanded you to be chaste and virtuous. All scandals on earth are because of the unfaithfulness of a woman or a man. They are either money scandals or sex scandals.
Therefore, what Allah ordered you to do is for your safety and security, so that you can reach Paradise.

(O you who believe! Obey Allah.)

 In a hadith qudsi Allah says:

(( My servants! If the first man of your creation and the last, the humans and the Jinn together were pious like a single man, My kingdom would not expand in the least; and if the first of your creation and the last one, the humans and the Jinn together were dissolute like a single man, My kingdom would not decrease in the least. It is only your deeds that are of account to Me.))

[Sahih Muslim:From Abu Zarr]

(O you who believe! Obey Allah.)

 You should be certain that if you obey Allah, you will achieve safety and happiness, and if you disobey Him, it will be the reason for your misery in this life and in the Life After.
Obedience to Allah is obligatory on us:

( O you who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger.)

 Obey Allah because he is your Creator, All Knowing, the Expert, the Compassionate.

( O you people! Worship your Guardian-Lord, Who created you.)

[Al-Baqarah:21]

( Except those on whom your Lord has bestowed His Mercy: and for this did He create them.)

[Hud:119]

 He created them to make them happy.
 The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessing of Allah be upon him, negated evil as being from Allah. He said:

(( Evil isn’t from you.))

[Sunan An-Nasa’ee:From Ali, may Allah be pleased with him]

 What is evil? Evil comes from two creatures only -men and jinn, because Almighty Allah put in those two creatures desires, and gave them mind and belief.

Desires according to the method of Allah can raise us:

 What is safety?
 It is to direct -by means of your mind- your desires according to the belief and the instructions of Allah.
 For example, when you drive a car, you have at your disposal an engine and its power (desires and spirit). By means of the engine and its power your car drives on.
 The mission of the mind is to control the movements of this car on the road and make it move towards its far away destination.
 But if the steering wheel has broken down and the engine keeps working, with all the curves the road has, the accident is bound to happen.
 If anyone deactivates their mind and their desires burst out, they will definitely commit sins, most of them related to either money or the relationship with women.
 Following the instructions of Allah, the mind has to direct and control all the movements according to the belief that Allah has bestowed on it.
 If there is a belief and a steering wheel, but the car lacks an engine, then neither the steering wheel nor the belief will be of any use.
 Allah says:

( Fair in the eyes of men is the love of things they covet: women and sons; heaped-up hoards of gold and silver; horses branded (for blood and excellence); and (wealth of) cattle and well-tilled land. Such are the possessions of this world's life; but in nearness to Allah is the best of the goals (to return to).)

[Aal’Imran:14]

 Almighty Allah has put desires in us and He has made the mind the tool and the means by which we get to know Him as well as the means of our safety, so that eventually you have the capacity to choose.
 We could define evil as the process by which a creature that has desires and mind, does not use it and does not care about the belief.
 If he uses his mind without belief, he will be miserable, like European people who use their mind in a wonderful way, but they don't have a belief to follow or to live according to. Therefore, their minds are decorated with corruption and aggression, which leads them to appropriating the wealth of other countries by force; it is their minds that lead them to such unfair behavior.
 Muslims deactivate their minds although Allah has given them all the means to live in perfect harmony in this world and the means to reach Paradise in the Hereafter.
 In both cases desires burst forth, either in the direction of Hell or that of perpetual happiness.
 Therefore, desires are like a ladder by means of which we either climb up or get down.

( Who is more astray than one who follows his own lusts, devoid of guidance from Allah?)

[Al-Qasas:50]

The definition of evil:

 What is evil then?
 To move or to burst forth either without a steering wheel or a din, or without both of them.
 The driver of a car made by one of the most important car manufacturers got drunk, and so he fell down a precipice. It is entirely out of the question to claim that this evil came from the factory which had made the car. Nobody would accept it.
 The car came out of the factory in perfect conditions, but the driver passed over the basic traffic law which prohibits drinking alcohol while driving, so this terrible accident was the result of the driver's misdeed.
 I will give you another example:
 You may put on the table salt, sugar and clean utensils. All those things are good and they are useful in our life.
 The evil is when you put a clean napkin in the food so that you can't eat it or when you put some salt in the tea so that you can't drink it, or else you use sugar to wash up the dishes so that they cannot get cleaned.
 Evil is misuse.
 That is why it is said that the absolute evil does not exist in the world because Allah is the Complete Being.
 But there is a creature which Almighty Allah has created, honored, and given him the possibility to choose. He has also placed in him desires by which he may raise to Allah, the Creator of heavens and earth.
 He gave him belief and mind. Now, if he deactivates his mind and conceals his belief, his desires will burst out uncontrolled and make him live in a constant conflict.
 That is what you hear and see everywhere: the dominance of power and burning lusts.
 They rob the wealth of the nations, they live at the expense of the other, they get rich by impoverishing the people around them, and they feel safe by terrorizing their fellow creatures. They build up their glory on the destruction of the other.
 Evil is from a creature who has been given the choice and desires; din and mind, but he deactivated his mind and neglected his din, choosing to satisfy his lusts only.

( Mischief has appeared on land and sea because of (the meed) that the hands of men have earned. That (Allah) may give them a taste of some of their deeds: in order that they may turn back (from Evil).)

[Ar-Rum:41]

Don’t attribute evil to Allah:

 Let me give you another example:
 When you see a wonderful car you will say: "The one who has designed this car must be a great engineer with an excellent taste"; but if that car falls into a precipice, will you ask: "What kind of manufacturer has made it?" No, you won't because it happened on account of the driver being drunk.

( Say: "O Allah! Lord of Power (and Rule), You give power to whom You please, and You strip off power from whom You please: You endue with honour whom You please, and You bring low whom You please. In your hand is all good. Verily, over all things You have power.)

[Aal’Imran:26]

The human being is commanded to obey the Messenger:

( O you who believe! Obey Allah.)

 Because He is the Creator, all Knowing, all Wise, the Kind, the Compassionate.
 That is why when the believer reads the Holy Quran he should stop at the verses which contain an order.

( O you who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger.)

 This order puts things straight and clear. Allah has ordered you to obey the Prophet, you should obey him without asking where this order is in the Holy Quran.

( So take what the Messenger assigns to you, and deny yourselves that which he withholds from you.)

[Al-Hashr:7]

The Prophet showed details of the Holy Quran:

 Those people who underestimate the value of the Sunnah are contradicting the Holy Quran. So are those who say that the Holy Quran is sufficient in spite of the fact that Allah protected His Prophet from mistakes in his words, deeds, decisions and attributes, and then He ordered us to follow him. Without the Sunnah of the Prophet, would we know how to pray, how to pay the zakat, how to carry out the rites of the hajj?
 The Holy Quran contains general issues and the details are found in the Sunnah.

( And complete the Hajj or Umra in the service of Allah.)

[Al-Baqarah:196]

( … That you may explain clearly to men what is sent for them, and that they may give thought.)

[An-Nahl:44]

( O you who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger.)

 Obey Allah in His Quran and obey the Prophet in his Sunnah; some of the Sunnah has definitely been proved to be true although some of it has resulted to have been falsified or with evidence too weak to be followed.
 The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessing of Allah be upon him, said:

(( The one who obeys me has obeyed Allah, and the one who disobeys me has disobeyed Allah.))

[Sahih Al.Bukhari:From Abu Hurairah]

Obedience to the Messenger is obligatory:

 The obedience to the Prophet is a religious duty.
 You are in a society in which there are two important figures: the learned man and the ruler.
 The mission of the learned man is to show and clarify the matter to you, and the mission of the ruler is to put the matter into practice as the executive and legislative power.

( O you who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you.)

 The obedience to the rulers is related to the obedience to the Prophet, but there is no obedience in a creature who is in a state of rebellion against Allah.
 The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessing of Allah be upon him, sent a military force on an expedition and put one of his Companions in charge of it. This Companion was known afterwards for his sense of humor.
 He ordered to make a great fire, and then asked his companions: "Am I not your ruler?" They said that he was. He asked: "Do not you owe obedience to me in the same way as you owe it to the Prophet?" They said that they did. He then ordered them to pass through the fire. They asked: How can we pass through it if we believed in Allah in order to get away from it?
 They refused to do so and when they returned, they went to the Prophet and informed him about what had happened. He said:

(( By Allah, if you had passed through it, you would stay in it till the Judgment Day. The obedience is in the fact of obeying somebody who orders to do good only.))

Obedience of rules is related to obedience of the Messenger:

 The ruler should be one of you; he should care about your safety, progress and happiness. He should care about the morals of the youth, the marriage of your daughters.
Let us take a Palestinian citizen into consideration, who are his rulers? The rulers are not from among the people. They are enemies, and they want to destroy people's houses, take hold of their money and humiliate them.

( O you who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you.)

 If a learned man introduces a new thing in the din which contradicts the Sunnah, no obedience is due to him.
 Let us consider now another subject: We should obey the Prophet with reservation because we have in the Sunnah parts that are not proved, and when Almighty Allah ordered us to obey the Prophet, he ordered us to obey him in his proved Sunnah only.

Don’t obey any creature in disobedience to the Creator:

( O you who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you.)

 It was narrated that while the renowned learned man Al-Hassan Al-Basri was sitting with the governor of Bosra, the governor received a letter from the Caliph, and this letter contained an order which, if obeyed, would lead to the governor's disobedience to Allah. The governor was deeply embarrassed. If he failed to put the order into practice, he would make the Caliph angry. He asked the learned man for advice: "If I disobey Allah, I deserve Hell, and if I make the Caliph angry, I deserve prison. Imam, what should I do?"
 The learned man said: Allah is able to protect you from the Caliph, but the Caliph is not able to protect you from Allah.
 If you obey Allah, you are safe.
 I obey Allah and I don't care about any one. I obey the Prophet and I don't care about any one.
 But I obey the rulers in what Allah and his Prophet have ordered me.

( And Shaytan will say when the matter is decided: It was Allah Who gave you a promise of Truth: I too promised, but I failed in my promise to you. I had no authority over you except to call you, but you listened to me: then reproach not me, but reproach your own souls. I cannot listen to your cries, nor can you listen to mine. I reject your former act in associating me with Allah. For wrong-doers there must be a grievous chastisement.)

[Ibrahim:22]

 Do only what Allah commanded you:

( O you who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you.)

( If you differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger.)

 If we dispute about a case, there is the Divine Order to refer this case back to the Holy Quran and the Sunnah.

The Quran and Sunna has a solution for every problem:

 In the Holy Quran and in the Sunnah you will find solution to any problem that may arise in a society from Adam's birth to the Judgment Day.
 They say:
 A war may last for years. There was a war between two Islamic countries which had lasted eight years, everything got burnt down, what do you find in the Holy Quran about it?
 We have in the Holy Quran the sacred months in which there is no war; no victory, no defeat, the people enjoy peace during these months.
 When an Islamic country invaded another Islamic country, we went to the West to make it the judge. They came and stayed in our land.

( If two parties among the Believers fall into a quarrel, make peace between them: but if one of them transgresses beyond bounds against the other, then fight (all) against the one that transgresses until it complies with the Command of Allah; but if it complies, then make peace between them with justice, and be fair: for Allah loves those who are fair (and just).)

[Al-Hujuraat:9]

The one who believes in this world and wealth will go to his interests:

 Dear brother, you will find the solution to any problem in the Holy Quran and in the Sunnah, and if someone believes in this life and in money, he will not go with his problem to Allah and his Prophet, he will go to his interests.
 To believe in Allah is not enough. You should realize the fact that He exists and knows everything.

The believer goes back to the rule of Allah and the Sunnah:

 For example:
 You are driving a car, the light is red and there is a policeman standing by, and you are an ordinary citizen. Do you drive with the red light on? Definitely not, because the one who laid down the traffic law is able to punish you by means of this policeman. If you believe in Allah, you won't disobey Him.
 A woman in America may have problems with her husband and she goes to an American judge. Why? Because he will rule that half her husband's wealth goes to her, but if she went to a Muslim judge, he would decide that she has the right to her dowry only, and because she believed in dollars, she went to an American judge. It is good for you to go to Allah.

( If you differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if you do believe in Allah and the Last Day: that is best.)

 It is best for you, then, to go to Allah.

The believer goes back to Allah’s law because he comply with the Quran:

( That is best.)

 A poor farmer who lived all his life working for other people was given twenty acres of land. He was extremely happy. He went to his sheikh who said it was not his, so he went to the owner of the land and said: "They have given me some of your land. Will you sell it to me?" The owner said: "I have lost four hundred acres all in all, and no one came to me except you. Take it as a gift, I forgive you. May Allah bless it for you."

( If you differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if you do believe in Allah and the Last Day: that is best, and most suitable for final determination.)

 You should go back to the way of Allah.
 We will continue later on, Allah willing, in our other lessons.