Volume 10 Surah 12 - 15 - Enjoy Islam

Yūsuf (Joseph) | FROM PRISON TO PALACE
indeed disputing God’s power, whether the claimant be an individual, a class, a
party, an organization, a community or an international organization representing
mankind. Anyone who claims this very basic attribute of God’s for himself
disbelieves in God. His disbelief is in the form of denying a part of faith which is
essentially and universally known as a fact.
Usurping the rights of sovereignty which belong to God alone does not come in
one form only. For a person to claim the basic characteristic of Godhead, which is
sovereignty, he need not be so crude as to say, ‘I know no God whom you may
worship other than myself,’ or, ‘I am your Lord, the Most High,’ as Pharaoh did. He
actually claims these rights disputing God’s authority when he starts to derive laws
from any source other than God’s law, declaring that the source of power and
authority belongs to some institution or being other than God. Even when that
institution is the whole nation or all humanity, the result is the same. In the Islamic
system, the nation selects the ruler, giving him the authority to govern in accordance
with God’s law. The nation, or the community, is not the source of sovereignty which
enacts the law and gives it its power. The source of sovereignty is God. Many are
those who confuse the exercise of power and its source. This confusion is found even
among Muslim scholars. What we say is that human beings, in their total aggregate,
do not have the right of sovereignty. They only implement what God has legislated.
What He has not legislated has no legitimacy. It does not carry God’s sanction.
Joseph (peace be upon him) justifies his statement that all sovereignty belongs to
God alone by saying: “All judgement rests with God alone. He has ordained that you
should worship none but Him.” (Verse 40) We cannot understand this justification as
the Arabs did at the time of the revelation of the Qur’ān unless we understand the
meaning of ‘worship’ which can only be offered to God.
The meaning of the verb, `abada, or ‘to worship’ in Arabic is ‘to submit or
surrender’. In the early days of Islam it never meant, in Islamic terminology, only ‘to
offer worship rituals’. In fact none of the worship rituals was as yet imposed as a
duty. So the statement was rather understood in the manner it was meant
linguistically, and this later became its Islamic meaning. What it meant then was
submission to God alone, and obeying His orders and commands, whether they
related to worship rituals, moral directives or legal provisions. To submit to God in
all these was the essence of worship which must be addressed to God alone. It could
never be addressed to any of His creatures.
When we understand the meaning of worship in this light, we understand why
Joseph stated that worship can only be addressed to God as his justification for
saying that all judgement and sovereignty belong to Him alone. Submission to God
will not become a reality if judgement and sovereignty belong to someone else. This
applies to matters where God’s will is done by the laws of nature which God has set
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