paraphrased

"and so we would pray and taste the sweetness of prayer and iman until Allah decided to test us. and he took away that sweetness to determine whether we were worshipping Him or the sweetness. and that was the struggle, to pray with the same type of resolve, dedication, concentration, even when we didn't exactly 'feel' like it. and so Allah tested us and when we passed this test, he returned that sweetness to us."

word

salaamu alaikum

i took a break from studying for this math test and decided to eat breakfast. omlet and roti. don't know exactly how, but from that, i ended up on the comp. not to mention the plate that committed suicide by jumping from a great height and is now shattered all over the kitchen floor which i am now going to clean up.

anyways, my new favorite website.

Gangsta

Khutbah Vol. 2

salaamu alaikum,

Khutbah time...can't touch this tananana:

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"There is in the body a clump of flesh - if it becomes good, the whole body becomes good and if it becomes bad, the whole body becomes bad. And indeed it is the heart."

As Allah said in Surah Az-Zumar (39:22), "Woe to those whose hearts are hardened against the remembrance of Allah." They are in obvious misguidance. Woe to those whose hearts hear the Quran and they do not become fearful and humbled as a result of it. Woe to those whose eyes are reminded of the Words of Allah, but they do not weep in fear of Him. Woe to those who are reminded of the Warnings of Allah and they do not humble themselves to His Words.

Why are our hearts so hard? The prophet Muhammad SAW mentions that whenever someone does a good deed, a white spot comes onto his heart, and if he continues to perform good, his heart will become so white with Noor and light that it will become like shining marble. The same way for the person that commits a bad deed, his heart is afflicted by a black spot of sin, and as he continues to sin day in and day out, his heart becomes completely blackened by these sins and it becomes hard to the point that his sins do not affect him anymore.

Isn’t this how we are now? Sometimes we wonder how when we hear stories of the Sahabah about how they would be up all night in prayer, weeping and crying and begging for forgiveness…and then to find out for what? Their minor sins! The tiniest things that they did that they thought to be enormous on their records that they would spend entire nights crying and seeking forgiveness from Allah. Most of us, we do not think twice about the person we backbited a few minutes ago. Sometimes we DO think twice, and with a quick astaghfirullah, its all good. A lot of times, we do not even take notice to the sins that we commit because they have become so regular to us. They don’t even bother us.

Sheikh Husain Abdul Sattar gave his own example to illustrate this point. Once while he was driving, another car came from behind him and hit him. Nothing happened to the car that hit him, but the back of his car was all banged up. So he gets out of the car and goes towards the two teenagers that step out, obviously nervous wrecks. And so they ask him to move his car out of the way so that traffic can pass, and he knows what’s up, but he obliges, and as soon as he moves his car, they peel off and drive away. The point of the story was that if his car had not been so beaten up already, he might of cared a little more. If he was driving a brand new BMW or Mercedes or something, he might have been a tad bit more concerned and upset that two kids with no insurance had just come and put a dent into his vehicle. But his car was already so beat up and dented up, that it just didn’t matter to him that another dent was just put in.

Our hearts are just like this. When our hearts have so many dents in them by result of the sins that we do so frequently, another sin, another Haram glance, episode of backbiting, or anything at all, will not bother us at all, because our hearts are already so hard; they are already so banged up and dented and dirty. But if we made our hearts into those beamers and shiny new Lexus’s, then the tiniest scratch would put us through the roof. The smallest sin would bother us to the point that we would want to seek forgiveness from it immediately as to not chip the paint on our souls. And not only would the sin bother you, but like the person you’re watching trying to back out of a parking space next to you, and is cutting it a tad bit too close? Just being close to the sins, in an environment of sins, just the notion of being succeptible to commit an injustice to your self, your heart, and that new Lexus, would cause you to begin to sweat.

Br. Nouman Ali Khan made 3 points regarding roadblocks towards softening our hearts, 2 of which I remember.

- Desensitization. Why are there some people who when a verse of the Quran concerning the Akhirah or the horrors of the fire of hell, break down and are moved to tears, while the vast majority of us remain unaffected. Even if we try to cry, sometimes, the tears just do not come. And its actually a very sad case in the west where we have been desensitized to any type of pain and injury by means of the media. So when Allah mentions the punishments of Hell, we are unaffected because of how desensitized we are. That is why when a person is making a conscious effort towards softening their hearts, a big step is to refrain from filling their minds with excess media.

- Intellectual arrogance. This is something that is very relevant to most of us who are living in the west and are studying in universities and what not. We have this false notion and idea of intellectualism, which suggests that a person who is intellectual and learned is somehow above these emotions that are triggered by the verses of the Quran or the remorse of a sin. And by this we develop a type of arrogance to say that it is beneath a person who has their emotions under control, is calm and collected, to cry out of the fear of Allah. Allah mentions heaven and hell, sure we believe in it, but we cannot be moved to tears because supposedly that is for the uneducated layman of back home. SubhanAllah. On an equal note, most of us brothers have developed the shell of a sort of apathy and disregard for emotions, and everyone knows what I am talking about. None of us would dare cry in front of his boys. So we fail to realize that the best generation ever, namely the Sahabah, whom no intellectual can surpass in status, would weep at the mention of death or the Akhirah. This is something that we, myself first of all, must get over.

"Do you then wonder at this recital (The Quran)?

And you laugh at it and weep not.

Wasting your (precious) lifetime in pastime and amusements." Surah Najm

“Had we sent down this Quran upon a mountain, you would surely have seen it humbling itself and rending asunder due to the fear of Allah.” Surah Hashr

Are our hearts harder than mountains? Have sins made our hearts so hard that a mountain would crumble by the weight of the Quran, yet we do not even feel our hearts flutter?

How can we cure this?

1. Make sincere Duah that Allah softens all of our hearts as individuals and as an Ummah. Ameen. And ask others to make duah for you. The Prophet SAW made duah for Umar bin Khattab, the hardest of hearts in Makkah, somebody who buried his own daughter alive, and Allah accepted and turned Umar’s heart around. [Quran, Surah Al-Baqarah 2:186 : "When my servants ask thee concerning Me, I am indeed close to them: I respond to the prayer of every suppliant when he calleth on Me; let them also, with a will, listen to My call and believe in Me: that they may walk in the right way"]

2. The Prophet SAW said it best, “Remember the destroyer of all pleasures.” Which is death. Death is certain upon every single one of us, and it does not discrimate age, health, or wealth. And know that the Akhirah for every one of us, starts at the point that we die. Remember death.

3. Read the Quran! And try to understand it. It’s so important for each and every one of us to make a sincere attempt at learning the language of the Quran. Because that is how the Quran is preserved. A translation of the Quran is not the Quran anymore, and can thus be touched without being in the state of Wudu. Quite simply, only the ACTUAL Quran, is the actual Quran. It’s like the lines of Urdu poems that my parents will decide to drop on me at random times, and then when I ask them to translate and they do, I am not able to recognize the same depth and beauty of the verse, and most of the time, I’m just thinking, “That’s it?” [Quran Az-Zumar 39:23 : Allah has sent down the best statement, a Book (this Qur'an), its parts resembling each other in goodness and truth, oft-repeated. The skins of those who fear their Lord shiver from it (when they recite it or hear it). Then their skin and their heart soften to the remembrance of Allah. That is the guidance of Allah. He Guides therewith whom He pleases and whomever Allah sends astray, for him there is no guide.

4. Do good deeds. And first and foremost, before all other actions, we must establish our prayer. If we aren’t praying 5 times a day, then we need to start lest our hearts become stones. If we ARE praying 5 times a day, then we need to ask ourselves, “Is going for prayer the highlight of my day? Is it what I look forward to?” The Prophet SAW, whenever afflicted with a hardship, the first thing he would do is go and pray. Prayer was a blessing for them, and for us it is a burden. The quicker we finish, Alhamdulillah. When on the Day of Judgement, we will WISH that we could pray again. This is the time for prayer, because over there, there will be no more chances to pray. Allah talks about the disbelievers in who will wish that they could go come back to this world and pray, and do good deeds, and not do what they used to do, but their time will be up, and Allah says that they have lost and destroyed their own selves by these things, and also that they are liars who would go back and do the same exact thing if they were given the chance. Ya Allah, save us from such a fate. Ameen.

[Bukhary, Volume 8, Book 76, Number 486: Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet said Allah will give shade to seven (types of people) under His Shade (on the Day of Resurrection). (one of them will be) a person who remembers Allah and his eyes are then flooded with tears.]

I pray that Allah grants all of us soft hearts, and makes us from among those who are granted His shade.