Wow – I missed a whole day's blog! You've got the Bradford boys and Tawfique and Rahim to blame for that…
Masha'Allah very beneficial evening last night with the brothers, much discussion and much good advice from Tawfique; all very gratefully received I should add. I hope that everyone has benefited from his brief but very busy stay in the UK, whether his lectures, TV programs or just help in fiqh issues – don't miss him today at Masjid as-Sunnah at 1pm and then later this evening at Jaami' Masjid in Huddersfield for the
'How to move a Mountain' conference.
Jazakallahu Khayran bro, and also to JIMAS and especially Rahim for doing a marvellous job supporting and hosting him.
Woah man – that's far too many compliments for one morning!
Blogshareef – have you heard the phrase
'Use in moderation?' Masha'Allah, I was planning on a few a week and my man pastes the whole Qur'an in the comments page!
:-)
Trials and tribulations – there's no let up in the deluge of misery that we are witnessing in Aceh. Please don't get tired of
sadaqah folks, for they only have
us to depend upon after Allah
jalla wa 'ala – not to mention all the other excellent causes to use our
sadaqah for in the world today.
Remember the blog motto –
'We don't do charity fatigue' :-)
Passionate discussions between the brothers in recent days seem to be surrounding the aid effort in recent days from the UK. My views have been very clear as expressed here last week – I am hugely impressed and grateful for the public response. I wonder how I can show my gratitude and happiness to them…
Very strangely, I find many brothers that are very upset and angered when I might praise or thank the non-Muslims for some
ihsaan or good actions that they may do. Very ajeeb. The rationale espoused by them is because they do so much evil, kill so many innocent humans especially Muslims etc etc. Whilst this is no doubt true in many cases, the two issues do not have to be linked. And come on, they are not all the same! If one was to list all the favours or good shown by our people and neighbours to us Muslims and others round the world, we might be here until tomorrow! Ok, if we were to list the crimes then that would also be lead us to next week! But let's be more grateful and human please…
As an example: I rang my mother in Pakistan today after a while and she gave me a heart attack and then fixed it within 10 seconds. She informed me that my young baby cousin has been diagnosed with a brain tumour! Then, she told me that it had been excised via surgery in Islamabad alhamdulillah and that we're waiting for further results on any further metastases (please make du'a for his speedy recovery). As you know in Pakistan, this kind of surgery is available really only to two people: 1, those who have done some kind of corruption of a certain level in the country and usurped its national wealth somehow or 2, those who live and work outside and can therefore afford it. I belong to the second category and the cost of a lak rupees for the operation (which is a huge amount of money for those who normally might earn 300 rupees a month) was within my means (£1000) and therefore we are very fortunate.
As for the rest of us here in the UK, living with the system we call the 'No Hope Service' which in actual fact should be recognised for what it is i.e. the National Health Service, a service which we as a British nation should be proud of; there 24 hours a day to tend to any of our needs upto its capabilities – at no cost! Yes we pay taxes but what about all the Muslims here who don't!? Ask the rest of the world what they think of free health care and then we might become a tad more grateful! Even with all it's deficiencies and problems – and remember I know these problems personally far better than most of you as it is my industry and also my recent experience with Zak aswell.
Yasir was saying they have to PAY to have a kid in America!! Can you believe that!? We Brits have NO excuse but to reproduce like crazy!
But yeah, recently a good friend of mine who lives abroad in Qatar had a huge shock when his daughter was found to have a brain tumour which had reached an advanced stage. Fortunately, he was able to use a family link in the UK and get her back for urgent surgery here in Manchester and then remained for a year to finish off the chemotherapy. Cost? £125,000. How much paid? £0.
A little bit less moaning please guys.
Man – I can't stand working at Superdrug sometimes when they have no counter staff! How on Earth can a man write when he has to keep going down every 5 seconds! Grrrrrr!
;-)
Another result of the recent events has been the ensuing arguments concerning
'qadr' and the whole pre-destination issue. Unfortunately it is often those who are neither qualified or have sufficient time that get involved in this and start to produce answers which are dubious at best.
Let there be a lesson in this for all of us – especially those involved in da'wah to non-Muslims if they ask about the rationale of God in such actions. Classic mistakes that we make are things like claiming that all such events are just trials and tribulations and nothing else. This doesn't explain the very real fact that our Lord displays His Anger upon nations and therefore people get stuck in a philosophical hole trying to marry the two. Enough for us is His blessed statement that
'His Mercy has preceded his Anger', and wallahi all the praises possible and not possible are due to Him
subhanahu wa ta 'aala for that concession upon us.
Imagine if it was the other way round?
'Aafiyah Ya Allah!
Also, the standard emails have already started circulating, showing the customary single mosque untouched with mass devastation surrounding it. Ok, a slight Iman boost might be achieved here but once you start to build your Deen and Iman on such facts then prepare for it to fall just as quickly. One can easily respond to such points by mentioning the hundreds of mosques that have been destroyed, the massive majority of the dead being Muslims again, the fact that so many polytheists etc claim to have been saved in some of the miraculous stories by praying to their 'Gods', the same 'miraculous' reports of various churches and temples also remaining fully intact with utter ruins around them etc etc etc.
We are seeing the
Sunnan Allah fil Kawn playing out in the World today – the 'Laws of Nature and History in the Creation' as I like to translate it or rather more simply "the Way of Allah". Here are a few random ones that have come to my mind now as part of this perfect system of Laws that are such facts that we see in our lives today such as:
1. The amazing constant precision of sub-atomic structure allowing us to base our time system upon it to an accuracy of many billions of a second
وَلَنْ تَجِدَ لِسُنَّةِ اللَّهِ تَبْدِيلا
"And you will not find any change in the Way of Allah" (al-Ahzab, 62)
2. That the Believers will be Victorious in the end
وَالْعَاقِبَةُ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ
"The successful outcome is for those who have taqwa." (al-A'raf, 128)
3. That without gravitational forces and many other such scientific phenomenon, we'd die, thus the system of the Universe is in perfect balance
الَّذِ ي أَحْسَنَ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقَهُ
"He who had created all things in the best possible way…" (as-Sajdah, 6)
4. That the sun will never ever ever rise from the West except at the onset of the Hour
"The Hour will not be established until the Sun rises from the West." (Bukhari, 4382)
5. That Allah will test the ones He loves most
"When Allah loves a people, He tests them with trials." (Ahmad, 23/633)
6. That Allah will give much victory and success in the dunya to the non-Muslims
وَلا تُعْجِبْكَ أَمْوَالُهُمْ وَأَوْلادُهُمْ إِنَّمَا يُرِيدُ اللَّهُ أَنْ يُعَذِّبَهُمْ بِهَا فِي الدُّنْيَا وَتَزْهَقَ أَنْفُسُهُمْ وَهُمْ كَافِرُونَ
"And not let their wealth and their children amaze you; Allah's plan is to punish them with these things in this world, and that their souls should depart while they are disbelievers." (at-Tawba, 85)
7. That Allah will allow astray people to 'enjoy' and 'believe' their falsehood for a set time
كُلُوا وَتَمَتَّعُوا قَلِيلا إِنَّكُمْ مُجْرِمُونَ
"Eat and enjoy yourselves for a little while, indeed you are evildoers." (al-Mursalat, 46)
Naturally, the benefit of Iman and Islam is that we believe in miracles from those that Allah has given the authority to enact. No doubt about that.
But the miracle game is a dangerous game and I advise Muslims to stay well away from this culture – in my experience I never found a tangible benefit pushing such 'miracles of Islam' and Allah knows best. Our da'wah doesn't need that kind of wacky artifical content and when it starts to rely on super mosques, praying trees, bowing stones, blessed tomatoes, holy pomegranates and super 2 year old memorisers of the Qur'an in its 10
qira'at – well, you're just asking for it aren't you?
There. That's 2 days worth if ever saw it!
