Abraham and Ishmael are still standing beside the House. They have raised its foundations and asked God to accept their work. But their prayer does not end there. After building the House, they turn their attention from the building to themselves:

“Our Lord, make us both surrendered to You.”

This prayer comes from people who are not beginners in God’s way. The Qur’an describes Abraham as devoted to God alone and surrendered to Him, appoints him a leader for the people, and commands Muhammad to follow his way. Even so, Abraham does not rest on his past. He does not say: I am God’s close friend, I have become a leader for the people, and I have built His House, so there is nothing left to worry about. Nor does Ishmael treat his relationship to Abraham or his part in building the House as a guarantee for the future. Both still say: make us surrendered to You.

Submission (islām) in this prayer is therefore not a medal acquired once and then kept forever in the pocket of one’s identity. Surrender must remain alive until the end of life. This is why the Qur’an says in Aal ‘Imran 3:102:

“Do not die except in a state of surrender.”

A name and a history cannot take the place of this living, ongoing state.

Here, “to You” may be the weightiest part of the prayer.

It is not simply “two who surrender,” but “two surrendered to You.” The direction of surrender is clear. A person may bear the name of Islam, perform rites, and belong to a religious community, yet in practice take their final command from a denomination, leader, power, family, or tradition that rules over them in God’s name. Abraham’s prayer returns this direction to its source: to You.

The same humility continues in their prayer for their descendants:

“And from our descendants, a community surrendered to You.”

They do not even say: make all our descendants like this. The words “from our descendants” speak of a portion of their offspring. A few verses earlier, Abraham had asked about his descendants and received the answer:

“My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers.”

That same reality is now reflected in his prayer. Being descended from Abraham does not, by itself, pass on submission, guidance, or the divine covenant as an inheritance.

What he wants for this community is not an ethnic or sectarian name either: “a community surrendered to You”—a community surrendered to God. Blood can establish a line of descendants, but the community in Abraham’s prayer is formed by a shared direction of service to God.

Before such a prayer, many human religious guarantees lose their force.

In Sunni doctrinal tradition, on the basis of hadith regarded as sound and authoritative, ultimate salvation and release from Hell are accepted for a monotheist who dies retaining the foundation of faith, even if sinful and admitted to the Fire. In a large part of Christian theology, salvation is connected with faith in Christ and his atonement. In Jewish tradition, too, the idea of Israel’s chosenness has a longstanding place. Yet Abraham builds no guarantee of this kind for himself in this prayer. He relies neither on his past devotion to God alone, nor on his position, ancestry, building of the House, or the future of his descendants. He still says:

“Make us surrendered to You.”

Anyone reciting this prayer who wishes to speak alongside Abraham must, for a moment, set aside all their religious guarantees. A sect’s name, family, inherited religious law, and the answers they have already learned about their own salvation must not obstruct this simple question:

Am I, now, surrendered to The God?

Here the prayer’s spirit of undivided devotion becomes clear: instead of first making truth conform to our inheritance, we place ourselves before truth and ask what in us needs correction.

The fuller discussion of submission as the meaning of Islam, and its distinction from religion and religious law, appears in Dīn, Islām, and Sharīʿah in the Qur’an. Religious guarantees of salvation are examined separately in Paradise Is Not the Monopoly of One Sect or One Religious Law.

Within this same prayer, Abraham and Ishmael make another request:

“Show us our rites.”

They do not say: we will determine the rites ourselves and then ask You to endorse them. They want God Himself to show them. The choice of “show us” is clear: the rites must be shown and made evident to them, rather than being merely a collection of inherited customs repeated without question.

This request stands precisely between “both surrendered to You” and “turn toward us.” The rites stand within surrender and repentance. Their place here does not allow the outward form of worship to be separated from its spirit. Rites matter, but not so much that they take the place of surrender; nor can everything that generations have practiced be established, without evidence, as God’s rites.

If Abraham asks God to show him his rites, how can we attribute human custom to God without evidence, then declare that omitting it is a sin or invalidates worship? This issue is discussed at length in Hajj in the Qur’an.

The prayer is not yet finished:

“And turn toward us.”

Here Abraham and Ishmael’s humility reaches its height. They have built the House, asked God to accept their work, asked to be surrendered to Him, and sought knowledge of the rites. Yet after all this, they still do not consider themselves beyond the need for God to turn toward them.

They do not say: we are chosen servants, and nothing now stands between us and salvation. They say: turn toward us.

Elsewhere the Qur’an describes this remarkable relationship:

“Then He turned toward them so that they might repent.” At-Tawbah 9:118.

A person’s return is not separate from the mercy and opening that God provides. Even in repentance, Abraham and Ishmael do not see themselves as independent.

Here the difference between two attitudes becomes clear. When Iblis faced God’s command, he took refuge in arrogance and self-justification:

“I am better than him.”

But when Adam and his wife faced their own wrongdoing, they said:

“Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves. If You do not forgive us and have mercy on us, we will surely be among those who lose.” Al-A‘raf 7:23.

The difference is not that one was without fault and the other at fault; it lies in the response to wrongdoing. Arrogance invents reasons for the wrong and defends itself. Repentance draws aside that screen of self-defense and opens the way back.

With all his standing, Abraham keeps this same spirit alive. He has become a leader for the people, raised the House, and prayed for future generations; yet at the end he still says:

“And turn toward us.”

Perhaps this is one of the clearest signs of the way of undivided devotion: no history of worship, spiritual rank, or religious title removes a person’s need to examine themselves anew.

“You Yourself are the One who turns toward us again and again, the Most Compassionate.”

The prayer does not end with a claim to their purity; it ends with God’s mercy. Their hope rests not in their own freedom from fault, but in the Lord who opens the way of return.

We cannot recite this prayer only with Abraham’s words and then continue with a sectarian mind. To recite it, we must set everything aside for a moment and stand, like him and Ishmael, without titles or claims, and say:

Our Lord, make me surrendered to You. Show me the way of my service to You. And wherever I have strayed from it, turn toward me.

• Al-Baqarah 2:124— God’s covenant does not reach wrongdoers; guidance is not inherited automatically by descendants.
• Al-Baqarah 2:127— Building the House while praying, “Our Lord, accept from us.”
• Al-Baqarah 2:130–132— Abraham’s religious way, his surrender to the Lord, and his instruction to his children to follow the same way.
• Al-Baqarah 2:34–37— Iblis’s arrogance and Adam’s return.
• Aal ‘Imran 3:67–68— Abraham as devoted to God alone and surrendered to Him, and those who follow him as the people closest to him.
• Aal ‘Imran 3:102— “Do not die except in a state of surrender”: surrender must be maintained to the end.
• Al-A‘raf 7:23— Adam and his wife acknowledge wronging themselves and ask for forgiveness and mercy.
• At-Tawbah 9:118— “Then He turned toward them so that they might repent”: God’s turning and the human return.
• An-Nahl 16:123— The command to Muhammad to follow Abraham’s way of undivided devotion to God.
• Al-Hajj 22:34 and 22:67— Rites among different communities and their connection with service to God.
• Al-Hajj 22:78— The way of your father Abraham and being named “those who surrender.”
• Dīn, Islām, and Sharīʿah in the Qur’an— Islam as surrender, distinguished from the name of a religious identity.
• Hajj in the Qur’an— The rites, the House, and their place in Abraham’s way.
• Paradise Is Not the Monopoly of One Sect or One Religious Law— A critique of guarantees of salvation based on identity and sectarian affiliation.