24/7 WiFi: Going Beyond Starlink

We live in an age obsessed with connection.

We become irritated when WiFi takes five seconds to load. We carry phones capable of speaking across continents. Fibre-optic cables run beneath oceans. Starlink and other satellite systems increasingly reach places where conventional communications infrastructure cannot.

Humanity has spent extraordinary amounts of ingenuity—and money—eliminating the places where people cannot connect.

But some of the most important moments in a human life occur when none of that technology is useful.

The diagnosis comes back.

The relationship collapses.

Your child is in trouble.

You lose your livelihood.

You have made a terrible mistake.

Someone you love dies.

Or you simply wake at three in the morning feeling completely alone and lost and with an existential crisis.

Who do you call then? Modern life tells you it’s “therapy”. I have spent an extraordinary amount of time studying Kierkegaard, Jung, Freud and the other psychologists who go behind what we call therapy and CBT. There is good in this – even books like PsychoCybernetics from Maxwell Maltz are good. 

There is good in these tools, and some are backed by empirical evidence. However, none of them address the core yearning of a human being for truth and guidance at anything more than a surface level.

My background to claim this is a MSc in Psychology which is accredited by the British Psychological Society, someone born in Hinduism – having spent time in Yoga Ashrams, Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries in India, learning from Rabbis in Stamford Hill in London as well as being exposed to church history, and different Islamic “groups” like Sufis and Tabligh. 

The Qur’an offers a remarkable answer :-

“And when My servants ask you concerning Me, indeed I am near. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls upon Me.” — Qur’an 2:186

There is something beautiful even about the structure of this verse. In a number of Qur’anic passages, people ask Muhammad ﷺ something and Allah tells him, “Say…” But here, when they ask about Allah, the answer is immediate and personal. In the first person, not the third person.

No intermediary is required for duʿāʾ.

Like a 24/7 WiFi, always there, connect anytime.

In that metaphorical sense, every human being has been given something beyond permanent WiFi: the capacity to call upon the Creator at any time.

Not because Islamic theology teaches that Allah is physically located inside us. It does not. Rather, the “connection” is always available: Allah hears, knows and responds wherever His servant may be.

The receiver, so to speak, travels with us.

This Hadith captures it beautifully :-

Ibn Umar reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Whoever among you has the door of supplication opened for him, the door of mercy is opened for him as well. Allah is not asked for anything more beloved to Him than to be asked for wellness. Supplication benefits by what is sent down and what is not sent down. O servants of Allah, you must supplicate.”

Source: Sunan al-Tirmidhī 3548

Grade: Hasan (fair) according to Al-Albani

The Man With No Signal

Perhaps no Qur’anic story illustrates this more........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)