يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَابْتَغُوا إِلَيْهِ الْوَسِيلَةَ وَجَاهِدُوا فِي سَبِيلِهِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ
O you who have believed, fear Allah and seek the means [of nearness] to Him and strive in His cause that you may succeed.
হে মুমিনগণ! আল্লাহকে ভয় কর, তাঁর নৈকট্য অন্বেষন কর এবং তাঁর পথে জেহাদ কর যাতে তোমরা সফলকাম হও।
What are those things? Those Issues/Subjects?
Those 3 instructions are the subjects.
(1) How do you Fear Allah?
By obeying His command. Easy to understand.
(3) How do you do Jihad?
Have to look for it what is meant by Jihad.
(2) What’s the WASILAH to get to Allah?
No idea.
So, what do we do now to understand this instruction?
Check the Ayah before it and after it if you can find any relavant info.
And this Ayah has no relavance with the AYah before or after it.
Now, what do you do?
I check the Tafseer.
What Tafseer you check?
The first one is Tafseer Abdullah Ibne Abbas?
Why is that?
Because Rasulullah Salla Allahu Alaihi Wa Sallam made Dua for him for knowledge of Qur’an. Our Ulema consider him the best scholar knowledge of his time.
Tafseer Ibne Abbas says the following:
Seek with Allah high degrees through RIGHTEOUS works.
What do you mean by that?
Through the work that please Allah. Which means basically follow closely the instructions, recommendation etc. So, we don’t get nothing special from here about the word WASILAH.
So, What’s next?
I will check Tafseer Ibne Katheer.
Why do you choose that?
He usually links an ayah with the relavant other Ayat and Hadith.
So, what do you get there?
He quote another Ayah where Allah mention about Wasilah.
Also he mentions the understanding of the Sahaba
And he mentioned the Hadith that talks about how to get Wasilah.
Can you summerize those?
Wasilah means to them is How you approach, the way of approaching to things. So they mentioned it is by obeying Allah’s commands.
Ath-Thawri said that Talhah said that Ata' said that Ibn Abbas said that Wasilah means the means of approach'. Muj ahid, Abu Wa'il, Al-Hasan, Qatadah, Abdullah bin Kathir, As-Suddi, Ibn Zayd and others gave the same meaning for Wasilah. Qatadah said that the Ayah means, “Seek the means of approach to Him by obeying Him and performing the acts that please Him.”
But at the same time, the hadith says that Rasulullah Salla Allahu Alaihi Wa Sallam instructed the companion to ask ‘WASILAH for him, for it is a GRADE in the Jannah which Allah will only allow one of His slaves’
And what did He instructed to do?
Sending Salah and Salam after hearing Adhan and asking for WASILAH for Rasulullah. It is basically the Dua that we make after Adhan.
Is that you think enough to understand the meaning and your action about this?
Unless I get any other meaning from any other reliable sources.
What about other Tafseer? What about reading the group who explains this word as for giving Baiyah to a Sheikh/Awlia/’Peer’ to seek means to Allah?
It would be intersting to read that too.
But I think it is enough when you have opinion of Sahaba about it from a reliable Tafseer.
And anything extra-ordinary, unusual from any later generation of scholars can be easily discardable.
And Allah knows best.