If You Love God Then Follow Me

﷽

The Qurʾān does more than simply command us to admire the Prophet ﷺ. Nor does it ask us to “be like him”. It emphatically instructs us to follow him. And that following is the actual proof of anyone’s claim to loving God.

Piety Is More Than Appearance

Last week we invoked the passage from Qurʾān 2:177: piety is not about outward direction or cultural identity. Instead, piety begins with submission, belief, and righteous acts.

As it relates to the latter, many misinterpret Islam as an “eastern” religion but there is nothing quintessentially eastern, or western for that matter, about Islam. Islam is at its heart about obedience to Allāh. Whether we turn our faces east or west, this is not what is important.

Faith Prepares Us to Meet Allāh

Ask yourself: what is Īmān (faith) ultimately about? Here’s a clue: its root meaning is related to “safety”. Namely, a safety in the Hereafter.

Our understanding of the Sunnah should therefore come to be seen as preparing us for That Meeting, where our beliefs and actions will be weighed and judged. This adds a weightier dimension of what it means to love, and therefore follow the Prophet ﷺ. Only by putting our feet in his footsteps can we walk the path that leads to salvation.

Who Is the Prophet ﷺ to Us?

The Prophet ﷺ is not merely someone we admire or celebrate. His station is more honorable and important than that. He teaches us who Allāh is and how Allāh wants us to live.

“If You Love Allāh, Follow Me”

Use Qurʾān 3:31 as the central verse:

قُلْ إِن كُنتُمْ تُحِبُّونَ ٱللَّهَ فَٱتَّبِعُونِى يُحْبِبْكُمُ ٱللَّهُ وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ غَفُورٌۭ رَّحِيمٌۭ

“Say [O’ Messenger of Allāh]: If you love God then follow me [Muḥammad] – Allāh will love you and forgive your sins. For Allāh is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

Anyone can claim to love God. It’s entirely different, and ever more important, if God loves you! The Qurʾān further challenges that claim with a test: follow the Prophet ﷺ. And by follow that means make his preferences your preferences. Make his way your way even though you might prefer your own way. So the greater question isn’t whether we love Allāh, but whether Allāh loves us.

Following Is Not the Same as “Being Like Him”

We cannot reproduce the Prophet ﷺ’s unique spiritual state or station. In trying to do so we may inadvertently turn such a pursuit into chasing spiritual highs. Highs we either cannot achieve or cannot sustain.

Thankfully, the command is simpler and merciful: follow him. Take for instance the prayer (ṣalāh/صلاة). We are commanded to perform it diligently on a daily basis. And it should be performed as we see him according to the well-known ḥadīth as collected in Muslim:

صَلُّوا كما رَأيتُموني أُصَلِّي

“Pray as you all see me pray.”

While a part of this ḥadīth is familiar to many of us many do not know the full context. It begins with a group of new Muslims who came to spend a period of roughly twenty days and nights with the Prophet ﷺ and towards the end of that period they began to miss their families to which the Prophet ﷺ sent them back to their families with a set of instructions: be present with your family, teach them the way of Islam, exhort them to good, etc. And importantly, for this post, he instructed them to pray as they saw him pray not as he prays. What is the difference? None of us could have the prayer, dedication, khushūʿ/خشوع (reverence of God) or even endurance to perform the prayer through the night every night. By Allāh inspiring the Prophet ﷺ to say as you all see me it places a buffer between what he does and what we are being asked to do: follow, not emulate. That buffer is a mercy because if we were actually called upon to be like him we would all fail eventually in one way or another. I will give one more example to make it clear.

Faith Does Not Stay The Same All The Time

Ḥanẓalah al-Usayyidī, a great Companion of the Prophet ﷺ who served as his scribe, called himself a hypocrite after experiencing the fading of his epiphany when he had to return to worldly affairs such as work, caring for family, etc. Because he experienced such an intense “spiritual” high as it were when he was with the Prophet ﷺ, when he was away that high came down. He charged himself with one of the heaviest crimes a person can be charged with: hypocrisy.

Upon hearing this, another great Companion of the Prophet ﷺ, Abū Bakr, told him:

فوالله إنا لنلقى مثل هذا.

“By God we all encounter the same thing.”

When Ḥanẓalah then explains his same predicament to the Prophet ﷺ he responds by telling him:

ساعة ساعة.

“There’s a time for this and that.”

Meaning, you can’t stay in your spiritual highs forever. It’s natural that, as a consequence of having to live in the world, that we will have to come back down to reality. The following (ittibāʿ/اتباع) of the Prophet ﷺ also entails living a normal life, with normal responsibilities. In fact, that is part of the challenge we mentioned earlier that the Qurʾān makes: follow Muhammad if you claim to love me and lead a normal, balanced life, not one of epiphanies and spiritual fantasies.

The Mercy of the Sunnah

The Prophet ﷺ was sent as a mercy. Part of that mercy is that his way can actually be followed by ordinary people. The Sunnah gives us a real path, not an impossible ideal, which leads to God’s clemency and ultimately, admission to Paradise.

This was a khuṭbah delivered by Imām Marc on Friday, September 4 2026. You can watch it here: