An Answered Prayer

“Then let us invoke God’s curse upon the liars” indicates the certainty of the response, therefore it was not said “we ask God to curse,” but rather it was said: “we place God’s curse.”

The certainty of this prayer’s acceptance is due to the luminous presence of the Messenger of God (s.a.w.), for he is one whose prayers are answered (mustajāb al-duʿā), and one whose prayers are answered is someone who does nothing except for God’s pleasure and is content with divine decree. Such a person is the manifestation of divine mercy and wrath. Imam Ḥasan al-Mujtabā (a.s.) said: “And I guarantee for whoever has nothing in their heart except contentment that when they pray to God, it will be answered.”(730)

The secret of why some prayers are answered can be understood through the content of the blessed hadith of qurb nawāfil (“proximity through supererogatory acts”),(731) because according to this famous hadith, God - in the station of manifestation and issuance of action (not in the station of essence nor in the station of essential attributes which are identical with the essence) - becomes the tongue of one who has attained the proximity of supererogatory acts. Such a person who speaks with the divine tongue never speaks without God’s permission, and if something is requested with divine permission, it will certainly be truthful and good, and such a thing is definitely pleasing to God, and God wills it and acts upon it. This is the certain acceptance of prayers of those who have reached the proximity of supererogatory acts and speak with God’s tongueless tongue.

Some exegetes have explained the secret of prayer acceptance thus: The relationship of the spirit with the natural world is like the connection of the spirit with the body: just as the thoughts and memories of an ordinary person’s spirit affect their own body, if the spirit becomes powerful, it will affect the entire natural system, and the divine saints (a.s.), who are like the spirit of this world, affect the entire natural system, and mubāhala is based on this principle.(732)

Note: Curse (laʿn) is an attribute of God’s action and means removal from God’s mercy. With cursing, nothing will remain of the cursed one, because the life and continuation of beings depends on special divine grace and mercy, and with the withdrawal of this grace and mercy, that being is uprooted, and mubāhala is for making the liars become like this; as in “Thus the wrongdoing lot were rooted out.”(733)