The Philosophy of Ibadah

God is a Necessary Being, and a Necessary Being [wajib bil zat] must be Necessary [wajib] from every aspect [jihat] including the aspect of Independence [ghina], which means that he must not be dependent upon another for anything, because that which is dependent is contingent in essence [zat/mahiyat] and that which is essentially-contingent [mumkin bil zat] cannot simultaneously be Necessary in Itself [wajib bil zat], it therefore follows that God does not need or desire us to praise Him for His Own benefit, because lacking nothing He desires nothing. Desire for something arises only due to a lacking or an imperfection hence that which is Absolute Perfection itself does not lack anything.

Therefore the reason why God wants us to pray and praise Him is for our benefit not His, worshiping the divine in terms of seeking perfection and developing within ourselves divine attributes and thereby becoming existentially-perfect, therefore remembrance of an All-Perfect and an All-Good Divine Essence facilitates and renders us also good and perfect to the extent of our efforts and capacity.

The first thing to appreciate is that everything that is said to be perfect besides God, is something in which the quality of being perfect [sifat] and that which becomes perfect,namely that particular essence [zat] which is the recipient of perfection [kamal] are two distinct things such that in case of every perfect being that is essentially-contingent, its essence is distinct from its quality or the attribute of perfection, and hence it can be said to be a thing to which perfection occurs; now everything which is of this nature such that it is an essence to which perfection occurs is such that the occurring perfection is not necessary for it, because had it been necessary for that essence and inseparable from it, so that essence would have never lacked it, but the fact that it did not possess it initially, and only acquired it subsequently proves that the said perfection was not necessary for that contingent-essence. Now the said perfection is neither impossible for that essence because had it been impossible so that essence would have never been able to acquire it ; this therefore proves that all contingent essences negate both the necessity of perfection as well as the necessity of imperfection, and because of this they need an external agent to bestow perfection to them.

Now if this Agent [illat] is such that its essence [zat] is distinct from its quality or the attribute of perfection [sifat-e-kamal] so it would also be in need of a cause to bestow perfection to it, and so on and so forth, leading to a regress, but since infinite regress is impossible therefore the ultimate Agent that bestows perfection on all must be an Essence in which this duality of that which is perfect and the quality of perfection does not exists, in other words it must be a being in whom perfection is identical to its Essence, such that His Essence itself is Perfection, limitless and Peerless.

Now the above discussion proves that everything that is perfect becomes perfect by virtue of receiving perfection from the Divine; it is the seeking of this perfection that is defined as worship by the philosophers because every perfect being acts as a mirror or a manifestation of divine-perfections to the extent of its capacity or degree, and worship is nothing but the seeking of perfection, because the search for perfection is in truth the search for that which is Absolute-Perfection itself, meaning God. The true meaning of seeking nearness to the divine [qurb-e-ilahi] is to seek perfection.