The human soul—may Allah protect us from its evil—can enslave a person, dictating to him his passions until he becomes their servant. When passion prevails, intellect is eclipsed. As the poet observed:

Twice drunk: once with desire, once with wine—
How can the one so doubly drunk ever come to his senses?

He is describing someone who drinks wine—Allah forbid—saying that such a person is drunk in two ways: drunk with lust and drunk with liquor. How, then, can one who is doubly intoxicated ever sober up? Clearly, there is little hope for his recovery.

The point, therefore, is that a person must devote himself to Allah alone, not to his ego or to Satan, so that he may break free from shackles that harm and never help.

Another aspect of sincere counsel to Allah is to spread His religion among His servants. This was the station of all the messengers, for they were callers to Allah, inviting people to Him. Allah the Exalted says: “Indeed, We sent to every nation a messenger, [proclaiming], ‘Worship Allah and avoid taghūt.’ Among them were those whom Allah guided, and among them were those upon whom error was decreed” (Surah an-Nahl 16:36). The phrase “among them” refers to the nation to which the messenger was sent. We ask Allah to guide us and you to His straight path.

The Prophet ﷺ then said, “and for His Book,” meaning that part of the religion is also to offer sincere counsel to the Book of Allah. This includes the Book revealed to Muhammad ﷺ and the scriptures revealed before him. Sincere counsel toward these books is to affirm the truth of the information they convey; whatever they state must be believed.

As for the Qur’an, the matter is self-evident, for the Qur’an—praise be to Allah—has been transmitted through multiple, concurrent chains of narration