"You alone we worship, and from You alone we seek help" (Quran: 1/5)
"You alone we worship, and from You alone we seek help" means that one worships Allah(God) alone and no one else, and that one turns for help to Allah(God) alone and to no one else.
It has been reported from certain great scholars and saints of the earliest centuries of Islam that the Surah "al Fatihah" is the secret (i.e.,the gist) of the entire Quran, and this verse is the secret of the whole Surah, for the first sentence of the verse is a declaration of one's being free from all desire to associate anyone with Allah(God), and the second sentence is an expression of one's putting oneself in the hands of Allah(God) in all concerns.
The Holy Quran again and again commands us to do so:
"Therefore serve Him and rely on Him". (Quran: 11 / 123);
"Say: He is the Beneficent God, we believe in Him and on Him do we rely" (Quran: 67/29)
An ordinary example will make the discussion clear. In your room,
you receive light from a lamp and air from a fan, but the lamp and the
fan do not possess in themselves an absolute power to give you light
and air, but need the electric current which they receive from the
power house, and without which they cannot function. Giving you light
and air is, in actual fact, not the work of the lamp and the fan, but of
the electric current which comes from the power house. Similarly,
saints, prophets and angels, all depend on Allah(God).
Miracles of the prophets are the direct acts of Allah(God), but they are manifested through prophets and saints so that people may recognize their spiritual station. Prophets and saints themselves have no powers to make such things happen. This fact is borne out by
so many verses of the Quran. For example, the verse:
"It was not you who threw when you threw; Allah(God) is the One who threw." (Quran : 8/17) refers to a miracle of the Prophet (pbuh) in which he
threw a handful of pebbles at an army of his enemies, and Allah(God) willed
it so that they smote the eyes of the whole army. The Quran
attributes the act of throwing pebbles, not to the Prophet(pbuh) but
to Allah(God), which clearly shows that a miracle is manifested
through a prophet, but is in reality an act of Allah(God).
All these verses come to mean simply this : A
true Muslim should, entrust himself completely to Allah(God), for Allah(God) alone is All-Powerful, and Allah(God) alone is the absolute helper.
