For Ramadan Prep

Assalam-o-Alaikum,

Ramadan is just around the corner,

So if anyone is interested in learning how to prepare for ramadan then you could either go to this link and listen to the lectures given by some of the most amazing scholars, including Wisam Sharieff, Nouman Ali Khan and AbdulNasir Jangda, from here:

http://ramadanprep.ummahnow.org/recordings/

Or you could go to this link, this is a lecture given by Shaykh Kamaludin:

http://www.islamicspirituality.org/lectures/ramadan

There are many other lectures available online regarding how to prepare ourselves for Ramadan, but the general theme of all these lectures is that don't start eating too much in Ramadan because eating too much actually makes us lazy and makes it difficult for us to worship properly. Furthermore, we should increase all our good deeds and actions in Ramadan. Also pray that the effects of Ramadan last all year round and not just through out Ramadan.

However, do listen to at least a few good lectures and if possible then make a Ramadan resolution and actually strive to make some changes in your lives in accordance with Islam. Pray that Allah makes this Ramadan and all the other Ramadans that follow it, a source of Allah's mercy on us and a source of our maghfira In shaa Allah.

JazakAllah.

Why is it so hard to act upon what we know?

This is one of the biggest problems that I have had myself. Somehow it is easier to listen to dars and Islamic lectures, read up on Islamic articles and even pass them on to others but it seems so much harder to implement those same things into our own lives.

I guess one of the reasons for this is that our intention before listening to a good lecture or talk isn’t to immediately adopt all the good things, that we learn, into our lives but rather our intention is just to listen to something good. This might also be a result of the way we are taught in schools, many a times we are expected to learn so many facts and figures that we cannot apply practically but that we only have to store in our heads e.g. dates of events in history, to quote just one example. We are so used to the idea of hoarding up knowledge, consciously or subconsciously, that we forget that knowledge is actually just a “tool” for “application”.

If we don’t apply what we learn practically then it is as good as not having that knowledge in the first place. There is a narration that a young boy used to go to Hazrat Aisha (R.A.) to learn hadith from her, so she taught him a few the first day. And then the next day he came back to her to learn more, she asked him that have you implemented all the ahadith I told you yesterday and he said no. To that she replied that then why are you increasing God’s arguments against you. Meaning that Allah has given us knowledge for us to benefit from it and the more knowledge we have, the more it should show in our actions and deeds but if we have knowledge and we don’t act upon it then Allah is going to ask us with regards to it.

So the first thing we need to do is that we should make the niyyat of changing our lifestyles and actions in accordance to whatever good we read or hear and we should pray that Allah makes us do “amal” on the knowledge that we already possess. What else is there which stops us from benefitting from all the good that we hear and read? One other reason can be that the hereafter seems very, very far away to most of us, however, for the sahaba the hereafter was right in front of them. And so we procrastinate in doing good deeds because for us there is always so much time, which is obviously never true because time is passing away by the second and it just passed away even while I wrote that.

One more thing is that people have reduced Islam to just a set of rules and instructions, all they want to know is whether this is haraam or that is halal, they don’t care about nafli ibadah or extra rewards, they just want to do the bare minimum. However, sometimes very little actions earn us great rewards for example; in jama’at one should say aameen after the imam has recited fatiha and if the person’s aameen coincides with the aameen of the angels then all his past sins are forgiven. (I believe this is mostly for men but it can probably apply for women too, e.g. during tarawih and eid namaz etc.)

We also need to realize that we NEED extra rewards, we need all that we can get. If you’re a student then you’ll see to what extent some people go just in order to obtain a few extra marks but when it comes to Islam, they only want to do the faraiz. Imagine the sahaba who were actually guaranteed jannah STILL didn’t leave out on any good deeds they could get a hand on. And our own Prophet (S.A.W.) used to pray so much that his legs would swell and when he would be asked as to why he is doing so much when Allah has already forgiven all his sins, he would say “Should I not be a grateful servant then?”

One other reason people don’t act upon knowledge is that some people have TOO MUCH rajah or hope in Allah, in fact there are some people who don’t even do the faraiz but they say that since they have such a “good” heart hence on that basis they’ll enter jannah! They are not even doing the bare minimum and yet they have the guts to say something like that! And although there is absolutely no doubt that Allah is Ar-Rahman and Ar-Raheem but remember that Allah is “oft-forgiving” and “very Merciful”, not “all-forgiving” neither “entirely Merciful”. Meaning that one cannot disobey the very commandments of Allah and then be so blindly arrogant that they can even claim that they’ll enter jannah when Allah Himself has said that, “Enter Islam completely.” Meaning you can’t just do a few good things and leave out the rest especially the faraiz and think that you’ve gotten the ticket to heaven. Allah has made it very easy for us to enter jannah, no doubt about that, but it requires complete obedience and submission from our side.

May Allah accept every effort from our part even if our niyyat wasn't "entirely" to please Him and may Allah correct our niyyat and help us act on whatever good we learn. Aameen. 

At-Tahiyyat - the origin.

What is the dividing line between muslims and non-muslims? Salah. But is that all there is to it? No; it has been said by the Prophet (S.A.W.) that Salah is the Mairaj of a Momin. However, for how many of us is that even true? We pray salah like we breathe; without thinking and without concentration. But WHY is it that we are so heedless with regards to our salah? The answer may vary from person to person but generally it’s either because we lack that level of imaan needed for us to attain khushoo or that we lack the understanding of what salah actually is.

For right now, let’s just focus on the second part that is the understanding of what salah actually is; its importance and uniqueness. We pray salah as an act of obedience to Allah and to remember Him, that is the purpose of salah. But sometimes, to have a deeper understanding of its purpose, we need to have a deeper understanding of its origin; it was “gifted” to the Prophet (S.A.W.) during his mairaj. It is a gift, it is a blessing and not just that but there is a part of salah which is the actual part of the conversation that took place between Allah and the Prophet (S.A.W.).

So what is this special part of the salah which gives a whole new meaning to the statement that “Salah is the Mairaj of a Momin”? It is the at-tahiyyaat that we recite in namaz. During the mairaj, Hazrat Jibrael (A.S) was assisting Prophet (S.A.W.) with his journey but when they reached the seventh sky, Hazrat Jibrael (A.S) refused to accompany him beyond that point as he said that he’ll get burnt if he went any further so then Prophet (S.A.W.) went on his own. And when the Holy Prophet (S.A.W.) reached the place that we don’t know of and met Allah Subhan-o-Ta’ala he sent his greetings upon Allah which forms our first part of the attahiyaat: Attahiyat-tu lilLah, wassalawato, wathtayyabatu which means “Greetings to thee, O Allah, and prayers and all good things.”

Then Allah answered his greetings by saying: Assalam-u Alayka ayyuhan nabiyu wa rahma-tul-lahy wa barakatu-hu which means “Peace be upon you, O Prophet, the mercy and the blessing of God be upon you.” And this forms the second part of our attahiyaat. Here notice that Allah sends peace, mercy and blessings only upon Prophet (S.A.W.) and Prophet (S.A.W.) could have just graciously accepted it but he had so much love for his ummah that he did not want to exclude us from the mercy of Allah so he included: Assalam-u alayna wa ‘ala ‘ibadillah-his swaliheen which means “Peace be upon us, and upon the righteous people of God.” 

And when Hazrat Jibrael heard this conversation between Allah and His messenger from wherever he was, he bore witness to it by saying: Ashhadu Allah ilaha illalLah wa ashhadu- unna Muhammad-an ‘abdu-hu wa rasool-lu hu which means: “We witness that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His slave and His Prophet.”

SubhanAllah! This one small part of the salah captures such an immense incident in itself with all its beauty. So I think if we even started concentrating on just our attahiyaat while praying then In shaa Allah our salah will be a whole lot better. Of course, we should always make an effort to be attentive throughout the salah and this can act as a stepping stone for us in attaining concentration and khushoo in namaz.

Alhamdulilah I'm a Muslim

Its simple...

Believe in the Oneness of Allah, in His messengers, His books, angels, the day of judgment and life after death, do good deeds and abstain from evil, that is pretty much ALL that Islam wants us to do, speaking in extremely general terms, obviously.

Seems simple enough, right? Our entire “deen” summarized in just two lines; so then why is it so hard for us to cope up?

Now here is where our twisted sense of morality jumps in, we get bored easily, we get distracted easily and then there’s the shaitaan who surprisingly, or rather annoyingly, never gets tired of doing his job. And yet we tire ourselves all the time by doing what? Good deeds? No. We tire ourselves in claiming to believe in One God, Allah, and then “brilliantly” deceiving our very own selves and following the footsteps of shaitaan. Look around, is shamelessness common? Yes. Is corruption everywhere? Yes. Is killing common? Is robbery common? Is injustice common? Do people give respect to people with wealth even if they have earned it the haraam way? Are haraam ways of earning common? Are opportunities (doorways) leading to sin common? Are pre-marital and extra-marital relationships common? The answer to ALL these questions is yes!

Why? Because we have been following shaitaan and we have been aiding shaitaan. We have been befriending our own enemy; an enemy who has challenged God that he will make most of us ungrateful and he won’t rest till he does his best to land us into hell! Well I guess it’s time to congratulate him because we have made his job a whole lot easier. It’s like self-control and self-righteousness are unheard of terms. And somehow our generation is ahead of the game, you’ll find kids who probably don’t even understand the meaning of love completely claiming their love for the opposite gender. The cartoons these days show things which weren’t shown in adult dramas in the earlier days. The entire system is as if aiding this sense of zero accountability, drive for desires, lust and greed etc. Religion and goodness are literally pushed out of the entire picture, people actually feel uncomfortable if you talk to them about religion too much because they are not accustomed to hearing such things.

Despite the fact that we are drowning in a pool of sins and we are so lost in it and are so deep down in it that we have learned to breathe in it and live in it. We have forgotten the joy of breathing into CLEAN air, we have forgotten what it actually means to love and what true love is, we have forgotten that we will ALL have to stand in front of Allah one day and that that day our OWN body will bear witness against us. If we have walked to a place of sin then our legs will testify against us, if we have done sins with our hands then our hands will testify against us, if we have done sins with our eyes then our eyes will be testifying against us and we will be crying out to our OWN body to keep quiet but that day it won’t.

So miserable will be our fate if we don’t make an effort to change ourselves, there’s always time, think of everyday as one more chance, every second as a blessing, don’t just waste it away. Because we only get to have one life, to do good or to do bad; there is no middle line despite what many people might say. Yes, Islam does teach us to strike a balance but by that it doesn’t mean that ok do a few sins but also do a few good deeds so you’ll have a perfect balance. In fact it rather means to keep a balance between deen and dunya, like giving enough time to family, relatives and friends alongside taking out time for ibadah.

So repent as often as you can and truly and honestly ask Allah for guidance, He is after all Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem, Ar-Raqeeb, Al-Kareem, He is our Rabb, He is the One Who loves us SEVENTY times more than our mother loves us, He is the One Who is closer to us than our jugular vein, He is the One Who is our Creator and He is the One to Whom we all have to return one day In shaa Allah. Never despair of Allah’s mercy, in fact when shaitaan swore to Allah that he will keep on luring us to bad deeds till our souls remained in our bodies, Allah swore on His Own “izzat-o-jalal” that He will keep forgiving us till we keep on reciting istighfar to Him. SubhanAllah.

And so Allah awaits our turning back to Him despite the fact that He does not need us nor our worship, in fact it is us who need Him. So how long will we take to turn back to our only God?

Remember Me, I will remember you

Written by Waleed Wasti

Edited by Dania.

[فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ ]

So remember Me; I will remember you. And be grateful to Me and do not deny Me.

(Surah Al-Baqarah, ayat 152)

The ayah itself should be enough for instilling the much needed faith back in us; yet we are so blind sighted that we overlook its significance and beauty while we are engrossed in this world of ‘ours’. It does not befit our heedless behavior, our stubborn attitude, and our immoral character that God Almighty should remember us, but that is what He has promised to do in return, IF ONLY we remember Him. How glorious an opportunity this is which we continue to overlook, to be remembered by the Creator of all, the Master of all, the Eternal, and the Ever-present Himself!  

And lo, He then says that if we go one step ahead and love Allah (S.W.T), then not only would Allah love us but He would also order Hazrat Jibrail (A.S) and all the angels of the heavens to love us as well. Yet the love of this world continues to hold a bigger place in our hearts rather than the “ishq-e-haqiqi”, i.e. the love for Allah (S.W.T). We live our lives in heedlessness and just turn a blind eye towards everything that invites us to a religious ‘good’.

We give up prayers, humility, modesty, and any other quality, all in the vain desire to get the recognition and the love of the people. It’s ultimately them who we aim to please, no matter what sphere of life we are in. Our advancement in career depends on how big a social network we have, our respect in the society depends on the social class that we belong to, and obviously keeping a beard, for men, and wearing a hijab, for women, would be a hindrance in our way up the corporate ladder! And the funny thing is that people never realize that no matter what they do, they will never be able to completely please other people and yet we so easily waste away our lives in doing just that. This real-life example is also mentioned in the Holy Quran, by Allah, Himself:

Competition in [worldly] increase diverts you Until you visit the graveyards.

(Surah At-Takasur, ayats 1 and 2)

The very notion of remembering the Almighty Lord is sufficient enough in keeping us on the right track. If we remember Him often then we are more likely to stay away from evil and chances are that we would add more good deeds to our accounts rather than bad deeds. This remembrance would redefine our lives and open up avenues that we never would have imagined otherwise. 

The Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said, “Allah the Most High said, ‘I am as My servant thinks (expects) I am. I am with him when he mentions Me. If he mentions Me to himself, I mention him to Myself; and if he mentions Me in an assembly, I mention him in an assembly greater than it. If he draws near to Me a hand’s length, I draw near to him an arm’s length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed.’”

[Sahih Al-Bukhari]

SubhanAllah!

A person only remembers someone often whom he or she loves. Often if the love is too great, it will even start defining a person’s life e.g. mothers often end up telling their friends or relatives about the stories of their kids, they often plan out their entire routines in accordance to the need of their kids and so on and so forth. This should be the case in our remembrance of Allah (S.W.T), we should remember Him throughout our lives.

All we need to do is get out of our comfort zones and develop a longing for Allah (S.W.T). We should realize the fact that ‘everything’ in this world that we have gotten has been due to the favors and blessings of Allah (S.W.T). Had God Almighty not been this generous then we could have been born in a poorer family, we could have been deprived of education, we could have not had the luxuries that we enjoy in our lives, and yes we could have been born in a Christian/Jewish/Hindu/Atheist family! We should take absolutely nothing for granted. 

فَبِأَيِّ آلَاءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذِّبَانِ

So which of the favors of your Lord would you deny?

(Surah Rahman)

When wolves become shepherds.

This is an amazing lecture MashaAllah by Mohammad Al-Shareef, it is of seven parts. This is the first part, please do listen to the rest of the parts as well, they are all available on youtube.

Scheduling the sunnah way

What are your assets? Your money, your education, your intellect, your health,....., your time? Time is one of the most precious assets we have, yet it is often misused, mismanaged and not given its due importance. People claim to be very busy, when all they are doing with their time is finding newer and better ways of earning more and more; their primary and ultimate goal is earning as much as possible. However, we as Muslims and even as people with common sense should know that life and its purpose is much greater than just that. So lets learn the value of time and how to put it to its best use.

One misconception amongst people is that they believe they’ll have freer time later on in life, a student will think “yaar vacations mein ye karun gi”, a person getting married will think “shaadi ke baad he ab karun gi” etc etc. But people fail to realize that with the passing away of time, time only gets less and less and less. SO VALUE FREE TIME, BEFORE YOU BECOME BUSY. You know how they say that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop; similarly think about what an idle day or rather idle days are for a devil, it’s literally like a devil’s field trip or something.

So how was the schedule of the Prophet (s.a.w.)? One of the characteristics of his schedule was that it revolved around salah and salah timings.

So the schedule starts from fajr;

      ·        A sahih hadith tells us that the reward of praying fajr, then sitting their doing dhikr and then subsequently praying the ishraq prayer receives the reward of a maqbool hajj and umrah. The masnoon way of praying ishraq is to pray 4 nafl.

(one thing to note however is that one cannot pray during the time of fajr to ishraq, and we can only do dhikr or tilawah etc.)

     ·        Then after praying ishraq, we can get started with our daily activities like going to college for students etc. Sleep isn’t an option after fajr, because sleeping after that time removes barakah from our activities. One may argue that they have enough barakah in their lives, but the point to realize here is that Allah being Ar-Rahman has put barakah in our lives despite our not following the sunnah way so imagine how much more barakah He’ll put if we follow the sunnah way. Also not sleeping during this time, increases our productivity and if we learn anything in this time, we are able to better retain it, this is even proven scientifically and medically.

     ·        The working time according to the sunnah lasts from the ishraq time to zawwal time. Just like the duration of fajr and ishraq, one cannot pray at the zawwal time either. There are a number of things, however, that one can do in this time e.g. we can take a 20-30 mins nap, start preparing for zuhr salah or eat.
     

     ·        Zawwal time ends with the azaan of zuhr prayer, so after praying the zuhr prayer again the question arises of what to do next? The time after zuhr prayer is also called a productive time, however if one wants then they can have a mid-day nap also known as qaylula in this time, it is permissible.

     ·        Then comes the asr prayer. Now the time after this can be thought of as a break. So there are again like a few options regarding what you can do in this time, some of them can be:

1.      Eat; this was one of the two meal times of the Prophet (s.a.w.),

2.      Meet with family, relatives, relax or exercise etc.,

3.      Do dhikr, now this is obviously the choice of people who even in their break remember and want to remember Allah.

     ·        And then right before maghrib, is a time for the qubooliat of duas.

     ·        Then is the time of maghrib to isha; we shouldn’t sleep in this time because its not recommended to sleep before isha. So in this time we can either do ibadat, we can spend time with our family or we can have dinner at this time as well. The awaabaein prayer can also be prayed at this time, its time is from after maghrib to isha, and the masnoon amount of nawafil in this namaz are 12 nawafil.

     ·        Then comes the question of when should isha be prayed? According to Islam the night starts after maghrib and goes on till fajr. And it is considered better to wait for the first one-third of night to pass away and to then pray isha; meaning that if maghrib is at 7.30 these days and fajr is at 4.15-ish am then it is “afzal” to pray isha at 10.30. However if a person feels that they’ll have better concentration if they pray earlier on or later on then that is allowed too.

     ·        Then what to do after isha? Ideally we should just go to sleep after isha. And it’s a sunnat to not to eat after isha.

     ·        Then after one goes to sleep, they should try to wake up for tahhajud. When we do wake up for tahhajud, we should try to make a lot of istighfar and send lots of durood to the Prophet(s.a.w.).

It is convenient to note here though that if a person is sleeping late as it is, e.g. most students stay up all night or till very late when they have to study for something, then they should pray tahhajud before sleeping, that is allowed too.

And last but not the least, the most afzal time for praying and making dua is in the last portion of the night, that is the time just before fajr.

Teaser for "scheduling the sunnah way".

So firstly, we need to realize why is it important for us to schedule through the sunnah method anyway. It is because our life is continuously slipping away; someone described this with the likeness of the melting away of ice. And we can better understand this phenomenon by looking at a person whose occupation is to sell ice hence his primary objective will obviously be to sell ice before it melts away. Similarly, our objective in this life should be to make good use of our lives before we cease to exist and one practical way of making the most of our time is to schedule through the sunnah way.

Many people like to use the phrase; “we’re just killing time”, when they pass their time watching movies or doing other entertaining yet useless activities. However, what they, or rather we all, fail to realize is that we are not killing time IN FACT time is killing us. However, morbid this may sound it is none the less true. We need to realize that shaitan is our open enemy and that his ultimate victory is when believers waste their time or rather “just kill” time.

So what is our challenge then, our challenge is to;

·        Use our idle time to do good deeds,

·        And to more efficiently act out on the first point, it is best if we make a schedule that allows us to do so.

You know how they say that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop; similarly think about what an idle day or rather idle days are for a devil, it’s literally like a devil’s field trip or something. Hence realize the importance of making a sunnah oriented or a sunnah centric schedule, the importance of this cannot be overemphasized as our time is our asset. It is that asset which will determine our ultimate outcome so the subject of time should not be taken lightly.