What is will power?

Put simply into words, it means the ability (POWER) to control your desires (WILL).

Will power is very important because, as we have already learnt, the highest stage of this life, is to attain the pleasure of God, to be content; and that cannot be attained except by controlling and developing the will.

In the world around us, we are always exposed to objects which are dangerous, drugs, alcohol, pornography. If we were to yield (give in) to these temptations, we would ruin our lives.

To have will power means to be able to keep yourself from all these bad habits, from simple points such as sleeping in late to behaviour which is much worse, such as not offering our prayers on time, or even not offering them at all!!

The whole month of Ramadhan is an exercise of will power. The easiest thing in the month of Ramadhan is NOT to eat food. It is very easy to fast, compared to what else we must accomplish. We must control ourselves from looking, listening to things which are Haraam. We must control our tempers, and our language. At the end of the month, we would have conquered that voice inside us which invites us towards evil. The voice of our nafs.

Once, the Prophet (S) was asked, "Don't you have a voice inside you (a Shaitan) which tells you to do evil ? And he replied, "Yes I do ! But I keep it locked up".

It was not with chains of metal that the nafs was tied up, but with the fetters of will power. This shows that the most powerful weapon against evil, is what Islam teaches us to use and develop, the will power.

When Islam teaches us to offer our prayers on time, it teaches us discipline, which strengthens our will power. The same way a mother will tell the child to go to bed exactly at 7.00 pm, so that by discipline, the child will learn to go to sleep early by itself, Islam teaches us that only by discipline, will we be able to control our NAFS.