—incumbent upon every person at every moment—and no one can ever be released from its obligation. It is what Allah seeks and intends from His servants, for migration is of two kinds:
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A bodily migration from one land to another. Its legal rulings are well known, and we are not concerned with them here.
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The second migration is the migration (1) of the heart to Allah and His Messenger, and this is the subject (2) under discussion. This is the real migration, the foundation; the bodily migration merely follows it. This migration contains both a “from” and a “to.”
• He migrates with his heart from love of anything other than Allah to love of Him alone;
• from serving anything else to serving Him;
• from fearing, hoping in, and relying on anyone else to fearing Allah, hoping in Him, and relying on Him;
• from calling upon, requesting, submitting to, humbling himself before, and abasing himself to any other (3) to calling upon his Lord (4), asking of Him, submitting to Him, humbling himself before Him, and abasing himself to Him (5).
This (6) is precisely what is meant by fleeing to Him. The Exalted says, “So flee to Allah” (7). Thus, the monotheism required of the servant is to flee from Allah to Allah.