woohoo

salaamu alaikum

yeaaaah, so today was funny. i had to give a lil khutbah at the darul taqwa summer camp right, so i looked up the hadith on the seven types of people that will be shaded on the day of judgement and decided to explain it and stuff. so i got up there, explained the seven types, and then sat down closing the first khutbah, and realized while i was sitting that i had nothing else to say. i didn't even think about what i was going to talk about for the second part. i had said everything i wanted to in the first part. greaaaat.

clock was ticking tho, so i got up, and started saying random things, and then tried to re summarize the hadith, and forgot it. so i stood up there for at least 10 seconds trying to figure out what the 3rd type was and i just couldn't, wouldn't come in my mind, and this is after i just gave a whole talk about this hadith. i was laughing at myself, (inside of course) and i'm sure the kids were too. and the older guys, and girls... haha, whatever. so i just said i forgot the rest and closed up with some more random stuff. i don't even remember it.

lesson: if you're not bringing notes, at least make sure you know the hadith well enough by heart.

then i came back to bmore and had all-you-can-eat crabs at loafers. heh, what a looser.

walaikum assalaam

"khutbah time" cont.

assalaamu alaikum

anyways, after the prayer i left the place. btw, the place is actually a car dealership with a musallah in the back. my teacher is the imam there, and i don't know if he owns or works at the dealership, but he's definitely in charge or whatever. i went to his house once for class (yes all the way to VA, 70 miles) and then dinner, and then we went to the dealership to check out the cars and pray and stuff, and we ended up playing cricket in the backroom. i came to find out those guys play cricket from maghrib to isha every single day at the dealership. chill job. anyways, that trip deserves a post in its own.

so i left the place, got stuck in traffic on the way back, was starving, so i stopped by pizzaroma, told a friend to meet me up there. met some heads from the area over there, chilled and left.

fast forward an hour or two, and we're running around trying to look for a showing of pirates of the caribbean that is NOT sold out. everywhere we went, it was sold out. EXCEPT, security square mall, right next to my house, and you KNOW how bad a place sucks if every real theater is sold out, but this place wasn't even half full. either way, i gotta go see it again, cuz i didn't see the ending. i had no idea how long that movie was going on for, and when there was 5 minutes left in the movie, i thought there was at LEAST 30 minutes left, so i looked down at the time and was like, ohhh snap, cuz maghrib time was almost over. so i went outside the theaters, prayed, and by the time i got back in, the movie was over. so i haven't seen the ending.

then i came home, ready for a basketball all nighter as is usual on fridays. but as soon as i walked into the house, i was getting a lecture on how my phone never rings and i don't tell anybody where i'm going or where i am the entire day, and how nobody knew if i was even alive. which perplexed me because every friday, i'm out the entire day and don't come home till like 2:30 AM and nobody worries, and then i was made to realize that i had gone to VIRGINIA in the morning, and never reported back AFTER THAT, which i totally forgot about by the way, but that is why my parents were so pissed.

so i ended up NOT being able to play ball, and went to the gym and just watched, assuring everybody that i could play after 12AM because at that time, technically, the "you're not gonna play basketball TODAY" rule would expire. by the time 12 o clock rolled in though, i still had no shoes and half the people left and i didn't even feel like playing forreal. so that was my half-eventful friday.

alhamdulillahi Rabbil Aalameen.

PS: I DON'T KNOW WHY THE FONT IS ACTING WEIRD. first it was black and pretty much invisible, so i had to take paragraph by paragraph and make it a different color. friggin blogger.com...

khutbah time

assalaamu alaikum

yeaaaaaa, so before it becomes too late (not that it's not super late already) to make this post and i forget all about it, i will. earlier last week my teacher calls me up and leaves me a message saying that it's important and i should call him back. so i do, and it turns out he's in buffalo and won't make it back in time for jumuah, and i gotta go to manassas, VA and lead. woohoo. lesson: never call back when things are important...sike? sike sike.

anyways, i prepared the joint on friday after fajr. it was very simple, just enough to get through. here it is:

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, He who has humbled and broke the stiff necks of tyrants from before us with Death, who has reminded us by sending to the grave those who wished immortality, sending them from the greatest of palaces to the lowliest of graves, that none of us is exempt from this fate of death.

“Every soul shall taste death.”

However, today, it seems that we have no problem listening to hours upon hours of discussion on politics, or hours and hours of vain talk full of gossip and hate that show us how different we are from one another, yet we can’t bare a few minutes worth of talking about how similar we are, because every single one of us is going to experience death. And we hate it to the point that if somebody reminds us of it, we begin to complain, and tell the person to talk about something else.

Allah SWT says in the Quran: “Say: (As for) the death from which you flee, that will surely overtake you, then you shall be sent back to the Knower of the unseen and the seen, and He will inform you of that which you did.”

And the Prophet SAW encouraged us to remember death. He said, “Frequently remember the destroyer of all desires.” Why? The entire reason for this type of remembrance is NOT so that we leave everything and sit in our rooms and think about how we are going to die, but it is to take away the love and attachment of our hearts to this world so that we can make preparations for the Afterlife. We still have jobs, school, family, and lives, but we won’t allow these things to take us away from the remembrance of Allah. What is this life besides play and amusement? Someone who is heedless of death will only indulge in worldly desires, because he feels he will live forever. He knows he will die. Because statistics show that on average, people end up dying. But he doesn’t REALLY know. He has the information in his brain that he could die any second, whether it be in a car accident, sickness, or he simply drop to the ground as his heart stops beating, but he doesn’t REALLY know. And few of us do, because we do not remember death.

Among the knowledge of the Unseen, which is only with Allah, is the hour of the trumpet being blown. The day of judgement. However, know that for each and every one of us, the Akhirah, starts as soon as we die. And the topic of death and the journey through the different stages are so long and detailed that it would take days to try and relate everything that has been revealed to us by Allah and his messanger and collected by the scholars of the past. So we will talk about death itself.

Imam Ghazali talks about death in his section of Ihya Ulum-ul-Din and says, Know that there is no terror, calamity or torment except that of the pains of death alone, that would be enough to render a person’s life miserable and would it impossible for him to live in happiness.

Take for example a man who is enjoying himself at a party, with the finest luxuries and delights, but he knows and is expecting someone to come in later that night and kill him, he would not be able to enjoy his party. Yet with every breath, the Angel of Death draws nearer to us, and the pains of death come closer, but we pay this no mind.

We all know of the flimsy excuse as to why our brother is not practicing. Because I’m still young. InshaAllah when I get older, I will start praying. Or the notion that when I’m about to die, all I gotta say is the kalima, and I go straight to paradise. It’s in the hadith, right? The Prophet (SAW) said: Advise the dying person to say, (There is nothing worthy of worship except Allah) because a dying Muslim who recites this will be saved from Hell. So a person can do whatever they want in their life and then right when they are about to die, say the shahadah? That is completely false. A person will die with their life on their mind and on their tongue.

There are so many accounts of people lying ready to die, having entire conversations, singing their favorite songs, asking about loved ones, but when told to recite the kalima, their throats lock up and their voices are stopped at their throats, and they simply cannot say it. Right now, anybody can say the shahadah by their lips but not really mean it, but over there, you won’t be able to even say it with your lips unless it was constantly on your tongue.

Just a couple weeks ago, an Imam was giving a talk to some youth, and he told a story about how he was going to the masjid for Salah, and he was in his car making dhikr, and while he was driving around the curve, a drunk driver came and hit him in a head on collision. And at that second, when he could do nothing to control his thoughts, when everything was just instinct and he had no chance to prepare what he would say, he said, SubhanAllah, I think I’m about to die. And he said the shahadah, and he COULD, because it was on his lips constantly. His tongue was wet with the dhikr of Allah constantly; it was like he was training himself; you know how fighters do, they train so hard so that when it comes down to the punch, its all reflex. Its not fake. Its natural and smooth. Because they have been practicing. The same way we cannot expect to be able to have Allah on our lips upon our death if we have music in our ears all day long, or useless talking, backbiting, gossiping, slandering, all these stories playing in our minds all the time. We need to start practicing. Make dhikr. May Allah make us from those who keep their tongues wet with His remembrance.

And do not think that death can come easy, for the Prophet SAW himself used to say, “Oh Allah, Lessen for Muhammad the agonies of death!” The Prophet, upon his time of death had a vessel of water nearby him, where he would dip his hands and rub his face and say, “Oh Allah, alleviate for me the agonies of death!” An then Fatima would say, “How great is my sorrow at your sorrow, father!” But he said, “There shall be no more sorrow for your father after this day’. If the prophet SAW himself sought refuge from the pains of death, and he was the purest of the pure, imagine us who’s souls are foul with the muck and grime of sin.

Umar RA said once, “O Ka’b, Speak to us of death!’ Certainly O Commander of the Faithful, Death is as a thorny twig made to enter the stomach of a man, so that each thorn becomes attached to an artery. Then a powerful man pulls at it, and it takes what it takes, and leaves what it leaves.’

Such are the agonies of death, and we ask Allah to ease the pain of Death for us and make us from those for whom death is a gift from Allah.

Allah SWT says, Oh you who believe, Fear Allah the way he should be feared. And do not die except in the state of Islam.

And Taqwa, which is translated as fear, is more than just fear. It is a balance between both fear and hope. And the Prophet SAW warns us about the fire and the punishment of Allah, as well as gives us hope by giving us the glad tidings of Paradise. And I end with a narration of the Prophet SAW telling us of the last man to enter paradise.

Narrated Ibn Mas'ud: Verily the Messenger of Allah said: The last to enter Paradise would be a man who would walk once, stumble once and be burnt by the Fire once. Then when he passes beyond it, he will turn to it and say: Blessed is He Who has saved me from thee. Allah has given me something He has not given to any one of those in earlier or later times.

Then a tree would be raised for him and he will say: O my Lord! Bring me near this tree so that I may take shelter in its shade and drink of its water. Allah, the Exalted and Great, would say: O son of Adam, if I grant you this, you will ask Me for something else. He would say: No, my Lord. And he would promise Him that he would not ask for anything else. His Lord would excuse him because He sees what he cannot help desiring; so He would bring him bear it, and he would take shelter in its shade and drink of its water. Afterwards a tree more beautiful than the first would be raised before him and he would say: O my Lord! Bring me near this tree in order that I may drink of its water and take shelter in its shade and I shall not ask Thee for anything else. He (Allah) would say: O son of Adam, if I bring you near it you may ask me for something else. He would promise Him that he would not ask for anything else. His Lord will excuse him because He sees something he cannot help desiring. So He would bring him near it and he would enjoy its shade and drink its water.

Then a tree would be raised for him at the gate of Paradise, more beautiful than the first two. He would say: O my Lord! Bring me near this (tree) so that I may enjoy its shade and drink from its water. I shall not ask Thee for anything else. He (Allah) would say: O son of Adam! Did you not promise Me that you would not ask Me for anything else? He would say: Yes my Lord, but I shall not ask Thee for anything else. His Lord would excuse him for He sees something the temptation of which he could not resist.

He (Allah) would bring him near it, and when He brings him near it he would hear the voices of the inhabitants of the Paradise. He would say: O my Lord! Admit me to it. He (Allah) would say: O son of Adam, what will bring an end to your requests to Me? Will it please you if I give you the whole world and a similar one with it? He will say: O my Lord! Art Thou mocking at me, though Thou art the Lord of the worlds?

Ibn Mas'ud laughed and asked (the hearers): Why don't you ask me what I am laughing at. They (then) said: Why do you laugh? He said: It is in this way that the Messenger of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) laughed. They (the companions of the Holy Prophet) asked: Why do you laugh, Messenger of Allah? He said: On account of the laugh of the Lord of the universe, when he (the desirer of Paradise) said: Art Thou mocking at me though Thou art the Lord of the worlds? He would say: I am not mocking at you, but I have the power to do whatever I wish.
[Sahih Muslim, Vol. 1, #359, 361]

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and then i gave the Arabic khutbah. that was the Bayan in english.

Subhanalli wa bihamdihi, subhanallil Adheem

long time coming

Anonymous said...

wow.. assalamu alaikum,
im at the point in my life where everything is going up & down. somedays i am so enthusiastic about islam, but other days im just plain neglectful. these posts and other muslim bros/sis, writings really allow me to come back to myself. but how do maintain a strong imaan without fading off and on??

walaikum assalaam

first of all, i gotta say something. and to do so, i'm gonna paraphrase what one of the speakers said at the ISNA regional conference in DC a couple months ago. it's interesting to note that while the other muscles in the body all go through (insert name of process that muscles go through and use up energy etc - biology major my foot) the tongue is the only muscle that does not go through this. so while you can only do so many sets of curls until you're muscles get tired, you're tongue doesn't have to worry about that, so it can talk and talk and talk and never get tired. this is the way Allah SWT has created us, and it's almost a neat way of telling us that, "talk is cheap!"

and by the way anonymous, i thought about replying as another comment, but i started thinking and decided that this warranted a post of its own, so yeah, i am kinda singling you out (which doesn't matter cuz you're anonymous :D). but anyways, the reason i mentioned what i did above is to say that obviously, talk is cheap, and your words only take life through action. so basically i can give advice, but it's only the same advice that i have to give to myself, cuz i go through the same thing, and everybody else does too.and it's really crazy sometimes how Allah sends people to remind us even if they don't know they're doing the reminding.

the thing is, everybody goes through this same thing that you're talking about. the Prophet SAW himself has mentioned that Iman will increase and decrease. i remember IBOO posted something about this, so i went and dug it up:

Muhammed al Shareef once said that the iman is not a static thing, it is something which goes up and down constantly and the trick is to not allow the lowest valley, of your iman line graph if you will, to get lower than any other previous point your iman has been at. In other words your iman never gets as low as its previous lowest point, and therefore in the long run will ultimately always go up.

so iman is going to go up and down. some days you will feel the sweetness, and some days you won't. both curves are equally important though. they say it takes 23 days to make or break a habit. ramadan is an entire month of spiritual high where we can make and break habits. the same way, there really is no benefit for us to listen to talks and lectures, or read articles, or attend a halaqah or an event if we're just savoring the "feeling" or the EmanRush (TM) that comes afterwards but then do nothing with it. that's like getting a free summer pass to your local gym but you never go to start working out. or getting that free 20oz coke bottle top but never taking it in and getting that free coke. ya'll see where i'm going?

what do we do with this pass? this rush of eman that comes into us? we USE it to bring something into our lives that wasn't there before. take it gradually, but take a sunnah and make it a habit. look at how many of the prophet SAW's sunnah we neglect and are basically nonexistent in our lives! can you imagine living just ONE day doing everything the Prophet SAW did? incorporating all of his practices in a day, into our day? what is wrong with us that we adhere to the sunnah after salah only because the scholars say that if you leave a sunnah mu'akkadah, you are sinning. why can't we adhere to these things because the PROPHET SAW DID THEM, and we want to emulate him??

so back to the topic. we've gotta take steps forward. we can't stay in the endless loop of nonproductivity. we gotta take one thing, and start doing it. take that rush, and use it to start fasting. use it to start making dhikr after fajr, every fajr, everyday. use it to start praying all of your sunnah, every prayer, every day. step by step. and in the beginning, we're going to enjoy it. heh, and this is reminding me of that quote i posted up a while ago, because once you start doing it, you're going to hit the opposite curve, the low end, the dip, the iman "low". Shaytan is going to try and stop you, by hitting you in places you didn't see coming. make you focus more on this stuff than your fardh, or beat you in a couple battles and simply depress you, and this is where Allah will be testing you:

"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."

~ severely paraphrased. this was actually the same dude who i was talking about earlier, ISNA DC, "talk is cheap"? ya'll remember don't you? don't know his name.

but this is where we have to pass the test. when our iman is "low". stick to it. these things are our lifelines, each one an extra rope thrown into the water for us to hold on to. we gotta hold on to em though.

=================================

heh, i actually wanted to make this post a while ago, it just never happened until now. Ya Allah, make us from those who put into practice the things they hear and say. and make us resolute on this deen. Ameen.

Allahumma A'innee bi thikrika wa shukrika wa husni ibadatika. Ameen.

walaikum assalaam

92 degrees outside

assalaamu alaikum

so my fam and i have been in in the midst of a battle of temperatures. here is the situation. it is summer time, and naturally, the weather is getting hotter and hotter. as most people would, my family turns on the air conditioning, and like the house very cool. but me, i'm warm blooded or something. i prefer summer over winter all year long. i'll get cold quick, but i'm usually the guy that says, "what? its not hot out here!" when people start complaining about the heat. i would rather be hot than cold. i think usually, its the other way around for people, well desis at least. which is weird, cuz isn't pakistan hot as a mess?

but anyways, that's why when i'm in the house alone, or when the air conditioning is on blast and it's like a freezer in the house, i'll go and turn the AC off, or set it to like 85 degrees, open up all the windows, and have fans running throughout for circulation. that's the ideal setting for me; fresh, real summer air, fans running. i love it. then my sister will come home and start complaining about how hot it is, and will turn the AC on and set it down to like 65 degrees, ready to have icicles form on our ceiling and what not, so i'll just wait till they walk out the room and turn the AC back off. it's like that constantly. when its confrontation time, i'll just bust out the "i'm saving us energy AND money, BUDDY!" argument. they can't say much to that, and near the end, i'll quickly throw in the, "what would you do if we didn't have AC, huh?"

and no it's not cruel, cuz during the winter, they use the same argument to leave the house below freezing, while i defrost my hoodies over a fire in my room.