"No time, no time" by Haris Gulzar

I wish all Believers could read this poem, especially those who mistakenly think dunya is their real life; and they can't be blamed for such a misunderstanding. Anyways, here's the poem

Courtesy: Ambar Bail: The Plant of Eternity.

"I knelt to pray but not for long

I had too much to do

I had to hurry and get to work

For the bills would soon be due

So I knelt and said a hurried prayer

And jumped up of my knees

My Muslim duty was now done

My soul could rest at ease

All day long I had no time

To spread a word of cheer

No time to speak of Allah to friends

They’d laugh at me was my fear

No time, no time, too much to do

That was my constant cry

No time to give to souls in need

But at last the time came, the time to die

I went before my lord, with hope

I stood there with downcast eyes

And there was an angel holding a book

It was a book of blessed lives

He looked into his book and said

“Your name I cannot find”

I once was going to write it down

But unfortunately never found time"

Sunna & The condition of Modern Society

"When we take on the Sunna, and reject flawed patterns of behaviour which have been shaped and guided by the ego and by fantasies of self-imagining, we declare to our Creator that we accept and revere the profound revelation of human flourishing exampled by the Best of Creation. Every act of the Sunna which we may successfully emulate declares that our role model is the man who had no ego, and to whom Allah had given a definitive victory over the forces of darkness. Modernity holds out lifestyle options centred on the self, and on the lower, agitated possibilities of the human condition. Every word of every magazine now breathes the message of the nafs: explore yourself, free yourself, be yourself. Buy a Porsche to express your identity; dress in a Cacharel suit to make a statement about yourself; be seen in the right places. The result, of course, is a society which pursues happiness with great technical brilliance but which puzzles over spiralling rates of suicide, drug abuse, failed relationships, and ever more aberrant forms of self-mutilation.It is a society in denial, a society in pain.

"By taking on the Sunna, a human being accepts a deep and total reorientation. For the Sunna is not one lifestyle option among many, simply an exotic addition to the standard menu. The Sunna tears up the existing menu by defying its assumptions. By living in the Prophetic pattern one pursues a paradigm of excellence that demonstrably brings serenity and fulfillment, and hence silences the babble of the style magazines. Living in credit, knowing one’s neighbours, and holding the event of the Mi‘raj constantly in view, confers membership of Adam’s family of khalifas. Living in debt, chasing mirages, and serving the nafs, renders the human being a definitive failure. We can be higher than the angels, or lower than the animals."

Abdal-Hakim Murad, Seeing with Both Eyes (Text of a Lecture given at a Cardiff conference in May 2000).

By modern society I mean modernity that which goes opposite to the sunna of Prophet, for it is not theo-centric, but anthropocentric, where man is the center of everything.

About the "grey" thing

"Beware the darkness in the grey areas."

-Abdul Hakim Murad

What I think this aphorism of Shaykh Abdul-Hakim Murad refers to really is what Islam is all about. According to a hadith, it's Islam to abandon things of doubtful nature (of which we have no certainty of its being either halal or haram). It, on another plane, may be a criticism on the general notion of the Muslims that many things lie in the "grey," implying ,as I have observed in my society, that all such things that lie in the grey area between clear Truth and clear Falsehood are things too much complicated to decode that easily, and hence should be left to the 'reason' to suggest the final answer. Practically, the obedience to reason here is by and large nothing but the obedience to our lower self/desires. I have generalized this mental attitude on the basis of observation of only a handful of the brightest people of my society, who are most literate of worldly and religious affairs, well only knowers of the later domain, and may not be the doers necessarily. 'Masses follow the brightest'. (That's a principle I a brilliant friend of mine told me, who is a president of a student organization called ESEF.) Therefore, when truth is obscure we should not tend to overlook that it is darkness that veils light from our sight, which is not a positive element in the equation.

A false way of utilising the knowledge of Shari'a

"Beware the Shari 'a of the Cheshire Cat: able to bite but not to nourish."

- Abdul-Hakim MuradImage source

The Root Crime

Imam al-Junaid said:

The root cause of all the evil and crime in this world is 'ghaflah' (heedlessness/negligence).

We are people of negligence. We day dream all the time even on busy roads. Only we tend to forget that the reckoning is coming near. Prophet (SAW) said, "Take yourself to account, before you are taken to account." One who feels himself to be safe and finds himself busy in playing ('activity with no purpose, i.e., entertainment') doesn't care about results. Why should he tremble and weep? Wo ankh k hai surma e Afrang say rooshan; Purkar o sukhan saaz hai, namnaak nahi hai! (Iqbal)

This world(dunya) is an illusion, because it makes us think that we are permanent. Historical evidence proves how deluded we are. The remedy to this state of heedlessness: Consider yourself already in the grave! (Hadith from Sahih Muslim.) Contemplating on death, barazkh, and the day of judgment induces hikmah (wisdom) in me, which is really profound and serious. It increases as I think more about these matters. My faculties becomes sharp like the ears of a Rabbit, constantly looking out for dangers. Considering the reality of this temporal world (dunya), I can only consider my myself to be already in grave, and I cannot afford haughtiness.

“O my Lord! bestow wisdom on me, and join me with the righteous”,

(Surah Shu’raa, verse 83)

Honour people, be merciful to them, do not backbite

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An unjust king asked a devotee what kind of worship is best. he replied, "For thee the best is to sleep one half of the day so as not to injure the people for a while."

Sa'adi

In the context of present condition of religiosity of Muslim Ummah, the above quote by Shaikh Sa'adi (RA) without doubt fits more for ordinary Muslims than for their not-so-extra-ordinary rulers; because as per a tradtion of Prophet, rulers treat their people according to their piety and God-consciousness (Taqwa), or obedience to God. If the people disobey Him, He punishes them through their rulers, and vice verse. I only need here to point out one of the greatest mischief and sins committed by the Muslims by and large against their own brothers in faith (which may only cured by the advice of Shaikh Sa'adi (RA) to the unjust king as you will see). The sin is called backbiting (geebat).

The life, wealth, and honour - according to a hadith narrated by Hazrat Abdullah bin Umer - of a Muslim is greater in value than Baitullah, Ka'aba shareef. If one attacks on the honour of a Muslim, let alone his life and wealth and property, he is actually striking on the very house of God dear to us more than our lives and families. Imagine. Everyday, in almost every gathering of ours, when we backbite we actually, by attacking on the honour and dignity of a Muslim, are ruthlessly destroying the house of Allah! However, we don't get sick here, we don't even deem it to be a crime, and we have got our own explanations that only amplify our foolishness and expose how irreligious we really are.


In an another hadith, the messenger of Allah said, which may allow us to a lend a few moments for little self-examination over how severe the sin we so easily commit: Backbiting is a crime more severe than fornication. No religion of the world appreciates fornication. We all denounce it openly. There are severe punishments for those who commit this sin in Islam. Yet...! The former is a sin more wicked than fornication. It's because is related to the rights of human beings, it's because its an attack on someone's dignity. And finally, as the whole point of this post was to raise a question to Muslims: Is our religion, i.e., Islam, lacking in wisdom and profundity, or our actions and commitment to its ideals? Answer is quite simple and much evident for the people of understanding. May Allah give us the ability to act upon and fully realize in our actions the ideals of His Last Revelation. Ameen.

O man! what has deluded you from your Generous Lord?

Quran says in chapter no. 2, verse 28, 29, asking man to use his intellect (al-aql) to surrender before the Truth most evident, then how can one deny it?; and may it just not become unclear to us like that moon which seemed to be fogged high in the sky once on a clear dark night:

Ch # 2: Verse # 28: How can you refuse to acknowledge Allah [when your very existence is a living evidence of the Creator. There was a time when you were a thing not worth mentioning (76:1)] You were lifeless and He it is Who gave you life [and made you worthy of being addressed as 'you' (32:9)] Then He will cause you to die and then bring you back to life again whereupon unto Him you will be made to return. (40:11, 7:25, 22:66, 26:81, 30:40, 45:26, 71:17-18) (2:281, 10:56, 32:11)

2:29: He it is Who created for you all, everything that is in or on the earth; then He directed His design to the regions above (the earth) and fashioned them suitably into seven layers of the atmosphere (67:3, 71:15)(11:7, 17:44, 23:86, 41:11-12, 57:4, 65:12); He knows all about everything, (truly and
certainly).

God reserves the right to wonder as to inquire: O man ! what has beguiled you from your Lord, the Generous (or Gracious) one? Seriously...

Two Devastating Causes of Muslims' Disintegration

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Muslims should not fall apart. They are not here to disintegrate. They are the best Ummah. They command good and forbid evil. But why have they disintegrated? Why there condition is most pathetic of all the nations of this world?

Sheikh ul Hind, Maulana Mahmood Hasan, after getting free by the grace of God from the harsh and oppressive imprisonment in Malta by the Britishers, happened to find himself in a company of a group of scholars in Deoband. What else could he say to them other then presenting the fruits of this arduous experience, i.e., the wisdom (hikmah) extracted. He said to them that from this whole experience of Malta he had learned (only) two lessons. The scholars around him became attentive as to what could be those two important lessons the leader (imam) of scholars of his time had learned. The Shakyh said: I have learned that two things have destroyed us (Muslim Ummah): one is our abandoning of Quran; and second is the disunity among us. (From Ikhtilaaf Rehmat Hai.) Firqabandi is haram for us, proclaims Mufti Rafi Usmani.

We are not people of argumentation. Those who wish or try to disperse us are shaitaan, devils. Yet the balance is needed, which can be better understood from the little booklet already quoted and the following lecture by Hamza Yusuf. Insha Allah!

Four Preambles to Salat (Canonical Prayer)

According to Mufti Moulana Taqi Usmani (db) there are four preambles to namaz (canonical prayer in Islam) which when performed before the main prayer create humiliation (khushu, which actually stands for surrending the heart to God; and successful is one in this world and the hereafter who achieves khushu) in one's prayer:

1. Taharat: Cleanliness, attaining bodily purity as per the rulings of Islamic law (based on Koran o Sunnah)

2. Wudu: Ablution when performed exactly the way Prophet performed

3. Two rakah teh-tal-masjid: Better if performed before sitting in the mosque

4. Performing the Sunnats before the farz prayer whether compulsory or not.

After passing through these introducing acts to salat, insha Allah, attentiveness and concentration will be achieved in one's prayer. Prosperity and prosperity for us - if our canonical prayers get corrected.

(From Islahi Khutbaat, vol. # 14.)

The demon of the believer vs. The demon of the unbeliever; And a very beautiful prayer

I found this very fine comparison made between the difference of being a believer (he who fears Allah) and non-believer (he who conceals truth, and doesn't believe in Allah, His last revelation, prophets, etc.) in The Marvels of Heart, by Imam Al-Ghazali (may Allah have mercy on him). It shows the usefulness of being a muttaqi (one who fears Allah and abides by laws and commands), and clear disadvantages of not being a muttaqi. In it signs for those who understand.

"Abu Hurairan related that the demon of the believer met the demon of the unbeliever. The demon of the unbeliever was sleek fat, and well clothed, while the demon of the unbeliever was emaciated, dishevelled, dust-colored, and naked. The unbeliever's demon asked that of the believer, "What is the matter with you that you are so emaciated?" He replied, "He replied, "I am with a man who names the name of Allah when he eats, and so I stay hungry. He repeats the name when he drinks, so I stay thirsty. He says the name when he dresses, and I continue naked; and when he anoints himself he repeats the name and I remain disheveled." The other said, "I dwell with a man who does nothing all this, so I share with him in his food, his drink, and his clothing."

"Muhammad bin Nasir/Wasir (?) used to say every day after the morning prayer, "O Allah, thou hast given power over to us an enemy who has insight into our cohorts sees us as we cannot see them. O Allah, cause him to despair of us even as thou hast caused him to despair of thy mercy. Make him abandon hope of us you hast made him abandon hope of thy pardon. Remove him far from us as thou hast removed him far from thy mercy, for thou art able to do all things."