The word ‘ilah’ found in the Kalimah means God. Only that being can be our God, the Master, Creator, Nourisher and Sustainer, who listens to our prayers and grants them, and who listens to our prayers and grants them, and who alone is worthy of our worship and obedience.
Saying La ilaha’ llahh means two things. First, you acknowledge that the world has neither come into being without God nor has many gods. God is there; He alone is God, and there is no other being except Him which possesses divinity. Second, you have accepted that the same God is your Lord and Master as well as of the whole universe. You yourselves, and each and every thing that you have or is found in the world, belong to Him alone. He is the Creator and the Provider. Life and death are under His command. Both trouble and comfort come from Him. Whatever one receives is really given by Him; whatever is taken away is taken away by His command. He alone should be feared. From Him alone should we ask any and everything. Before Him alone should we bow our heads. He alone is worthy of worship and service. We are slaves or servants of nobody save Him, nor is anyone else our Master and Sovereign. Our duty is to obey him and abide by His laws – and His alone.
This is the covenant which you make with Allah as soon as you recite La ilaha’llah, and while so doing you make the whole world your witness.
If you violate this covenant, your hands and feet, the tiniest hair on your bodies and every particle on earth and in the heavens, all that witnessed you breaking your pledge, will testify against you in God’s court. You will find yourselves in such a hopeless position that not a single witness will be found to aid you. No barristers and trial lawyers who in the courts of this world are themselves all too often guilty of bending the law to their own ends, will themselves be standing there, like you, in the same hopeless position. That court will not acquit you in the basis of forceful pleading, false witnesses, or forged documents. You can hide your crimes from the police in this world, but not from God’s police. The police here may be bribed, but not there. A witness in this corld can give false evidence, but not Allah’s witness. The judges of this world can do injustice, but God can never ne unjust. And there is no escape from the jail to which Allah sends the guilty.
It is great folly – the greatest of all follies – to enter into a false covenant with Allah. Before making the covenant, think it thoroughly and then scrupulously adhere to it. You are under no compulsion to give a mere verbal pledge; but empty words shall not profit you.