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1. Capability is a condition for commanding good and forbidding evil. So its level of obligation on a particular person is proportional to his capability. [Ibn Taymiyyah]
2. None is to command good and forbid evil unless he understands what he is commanding and what he is forbidding, is gentle and is patient. [Ibn Taymiyyah].
3. The believer tries to find excuses for others, while the hypocrite looks out for mistakes. [Ibn al Mubarak]
4. Although today, we find ourselves without a khalifah, this is not the cause of our troubles; rather we as an Umma have become neglectful of our Deen and have become preoccupied with this life. [Aftab Ahmad Malik]
5. All the believers are the Friends of Allah (Awliya), and the noblest of them in the sight of Allah are those who are the most obedient and who most closely follow the Qur'an. [Imam Abu Hanifah]
6. The best form of speech is that in which a little removes the need to say more, and the meaning is self evident in the words. [Ibn Abbas radi Allah anhu]
7. People are warned to beware of indulging in talk on matters that are of no concern to them, or when there is no occasion for them to speak------for a person who speaks out of place has indulged in excess. [Ibn Abbas radi Allah anhu]
8. The real miracle occurs when the one who has broken the creational norms of his soul by taking its low customary nature to being attached to the values of the Shari'ah completely in all movements and stillness. [Shaykh Othman]
9. Engage yourself not in speech either with the learned or the fool. For the former is likely to defeat you, and the latter is likely to abuse you. [Ibn Abbas radi Allah anhu]
10. Mention your brother favorably in his absence, not in a way that you displease him, were he to hear you. [Ibn Abbas radi Allah anhu]
Friday, November 20, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
LESSON OF THE DAY 1163
Ayahs of the Day:
Everything in the heavens and everything on earth praises God, the Sovereign, the Holy, the Almighty, the Wise: that is who sent the unlettered a messenger from among them to recite the signs of God to them, and purify them, and teach them scripture and wisdom----even if they had indeed been in evident error before-----and others of them when they join them. And God is the Almighty, the Epitome of wisdom. That is the grace of God, which God grants to whomever God will; and God is the holder of supreme grace. [62: 1 to 4]
Hadith of the Day:
The marriage which is most blessed is the one which is lightest in burden and expense. [Bayhaqi]
Wise Quote of the Day:
The sincere person is safe, secure, and at peace in this world and the Hereafter. His actions find divine reward. Allah is pleased with him, and he is pleased with his Lord. [Imam Birgivi]
Guidance of the Day:
You should have a wird of reading useful knowledge, which is that which increases your knowledge of the Essence of God, His Attributes, Acts and favors, makes you aware of His commands and prohibitions, leads you to renounce the things of this world and wish only for the hereafter, and brings your faults, the defects in your acts and the plots of your enemy to your notice.
You should have a wird of remembering God (dhikr), which you must define with either a determined time or number. Remembrance has fruits and consequences which those who persevere in it with good manners and attentiveness find. The least of these is to find it so sweet and pleasurable that every worldly pleasure that one knows becomes insignificant. The highest is to become extinct in the Remembered, to the remembrance, and to all else. [Al-Haddad, The Book of Assistance]
Food for Thought:
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. All life is an experiment. No great man complains of want of opportunity. Our greatest glory is not in never failing but rising up every time we fail.
Everything in the heavens and everything on earth praises God, the Sovereign, the Holy, the Almighty, the Wise: that is who sent the unlettered a messenger from among them to recite the signs of God to them, and purify them, and teach them scripture and wisdom----even if they had indeed been in evident error before-----and others of them when they join them. And God is the Almighty, the Epitome of wisdom. That is the grace of God, which God grants to whomever God will; and God is the holder of supreme grace. [62: 1 to 4]
Hadith of the Day:
The marriage which is most blessed is the one which is lightest in burden and expense. [Bayhaqi]
Wise Quote of the Day:
The sincere person is safe, secure, and at peace in this world and the Hereafter. His actions find divine reward. Allah is pleased with him, and he is pleased with his Lord. [Imam Birgivi]
Guidance of the Day:
You should have a wird of reading useful knowledge, which is that which increases your knowledge of the Essence of God, His Attributes, Acts and favors, makes you aware of His commands and prohibitions, leads you to renounce the things of this world and wish only for the hereafter, and brings your faults, the defects in your acts and the plots of your enemy to your notice.
You should have a wird of remembering God (dhikr), which you must define with either a determined time or number. Remembrance has fruits and consequences which those who persevere in it with good manners and attentiveness find. The least of these is to find it so sweet and pleasurable that every worldly pleasure that one knows becomes insignificant. The highest is to become extinct in the Remembered, to the remembrance, and to all else. [Al-Haddad, The Book of Assistance]
Food for Thought:
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. All life is an experiment. No great man complains of want of opportunity. Our greatest glory is not in never failing but rising up every time we fail.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Pearls of Wisdom....203
1. Break away from the lower self and lust, seek the help of God, for how excellent is the Master.
2. It is incumbent upon you to have real faith, and the sense of God's presence in well-doing. Hold fast to that with knowledge, and you will experience the increase in wisdom.
3. Cling to sincerity and godly piety, and forsake the abodes of evil, and you will attain the loftiest degrees.
4. Be not be heedless of God, neither consider yourself secure from His cunning. Look to no one except God, and you will acquire sciences, gifts, and understandings, and you will obtain from God an unceasing reward.
5. Serve your Lord wherever you may be with contentment, and you will enjoy what the people of beneficence have obtained.
6. Faith is increased by thanksgiving for graces, endurance under trial, and contentment with the Divine decree.
7. Remembrance of God is the light of the heart, and His presence is the key to the invisible.
8. The understanding man is one who has an understanding from God of His signs and whose occupation is dhikr of and reflection upon His favors.
9. The real significance of remembrance lies in one's being detached from remembrance and joined to the One remembered in the dhikr, and detached from everything except Him.
10. Whenever anyone of the jinn and men intimidates you, say, 'Our sufficiency is God, and He is an excellent Protector. [Above quotes by Shaykh Abul Hasan al Shadhili]
2. It is incumbent upon you to have real faith, and the sense of God's presence in well-doing. Hold fast to that with knowledge, and you will experience the increase in wisdom.
3. Cling to sincerity and godly piety, and forsake the abodes of evil, and you will attain the loftiest degrees.
4. Be not be heedless of God, neither consider yourself secure from His cunning. Look to no one except God, and you will acquire sciences, gifts, and understandings, and you will obtain from God an unceasing reward.
5. Serve your Lord wherever you may be with contentment, and you will enjoy what the people of beneficence have obtained.
6. Faith is increased by thanksgiving for graces, endurance under trial, and contentment with the Divine decree.
7. Remembrance of God is the light of the heart, and His presence is the key to the invisible.
8. The understanding man is one who has an understanding from God of His signs and whose occupation is dhikr of and reflection upon His favors.
9. The real significance of remembrance lies in one's being detached from remembrance and joined to the One remembered in the dhikr, and detached from everything except Him.
10. Whenever anyone of the jinn and men intimidates you, say, 'Our sufficiency is God, and He is an excellent Protector. [Above quotes by Shaykh Abul Hasan al Shadhili]
Monday, November 09, 2009
LESSON OF THE DAY 1162
Ayah of the Day:
Believers, be helpers of God, as Jesus Son of Mary said to the disciples, "Who will be my helpers to God?" The disciples said, "We will be helpers of God." And a part of the Israelites believed, while a part scoffed; We backed those who believed against their enemies, so they became victorious. [61: 14]
Hadith of the Day:
The excellence of a person's Islam includes leaving what does not concern him. [Tirmidhi]
Wise Quote of the Day:
Servantship is strengthened by persisting in neediness, impotence, weakness and lowliness before God. [Shaykh Abul Hasan al-Shadhili]
Guidance of the Day:
You must fill up your time with acts of worship so that no period of time elapses, whether by night or by day, without being used in some act of goodness. This is how the baraka within time is manifest, the purpose of life fulfilled, and the approach to God the Exalted made constant.
You should allocate specific periods of time for your habitual activities such as eating, drinking, and working for livelihood. Know that no state can be sound in the presence of neglect, and no wealth useful in the presence of heedlessness. If you abandon yourself to neglect and purposelessness, as the cattle do, and just do anything that may occur to you at any time it happens to occur to you, most of your time will be wasted. Your time is your life, and your life is your capital; it is the basis of your transactions (with God), and the means to attain to everlasting felicity, in the proximity of God the Exalted. Each of your breaths is a priceless jewel, and when it passes away it never returns. [Al-Haddad, The Book of Assistance]
Food for Thought:
There are many fine things which you mean to do some day, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances. But the only time that is yours is the present. Don't wait until your time is almost up to call home and say, "I love you." Don't bring flowers to the grave; rather, bring them home or send them to the person who is precious to you today.
Believers, be helpers of God, as Jesus Son of Mary said to the disciples, "Who will be my helpers to God?" The disciples said, "We will be helpers of God." And a part of the Israelites believed, while a part scoffed; We backed those who believed against their enemies, so they became victorious. [61: 14]
Hadith of the Day:
The excellence of a person's Islam includes leaving what does not concern him. [Tirmidhi]
Wise Quote of the Day:
Servantship is strengthened by persisting in neediness, impotence, weakness and lowliness before God. [Shaykh Abul Hasan al-Shadhili]
Guidance of the Day:
You must fill up your time with acts of worship so that no period of time elapses, whether by night or by day, without being used in some act of goodness. This is how the baraka within time is manifest, the purpose of life fulfilled, and the approach to God the Exalted made constant.
You should allocate specific periods of time for your habitual activities such as eating, drinking, and working for livelihood. Know that no state can be sound in the presence of neglect, and no wealth useful in the presence of heedlessness. If you abandon yourself to neglect and purposelessness, as the cattle do, and just do anything that may occur to you at any time it happens to occur to you, most of your time will be wasted. Your time is your life, and your life is your capital; it is the basis of your transactions (with God), and the means to attain to everlasting felicity, in the proximity of God the Exalted. Each of your breaths is a priceless jewel, and when it passes away it never returns. [Al-Haddad, The Book of Assistance]
Food for Thought:
There are many fine things which you mean to do some day, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances. But the only time that is yours is the present. Don't wait until your time is almost up to call home and say, "I love you." Don't bring flowers to the grave; rather, bring them home or send them to the person who is precious to you today.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Pearls of Wisdom....202
1. Whenever you desire to do a certain thing or abstain from doing it, flee to God, and call to Him for help. Accustom yourself to that.
2. Take heed not to lose confidence in God. Trust in God, for God loves the trustful.
3. Knock on the door of dhikr, seeking shelter with God and avowing your need of Him, if you desire to have spiritual sufficiency.
4. Sustenance is Divinely apportioned. It is not the piety of a pious man that increases it, nor it is the impiety of an impious man that diminishes it.
5. Display not your knowledge in order that men may consider you to be sincere, but display your knowledge in order that God may consider you to be sincere.
6. Act toward God with certainty. Stand fast where He has established you, abstain from forbidden where He has forbidden you, with true insight (basira) in the religious certainty, and be not one of heedless.
7. If a person loves God, and He loves him, his friendship is brought to perfection.
8. The lover in very truth is he over whose heart there is no authority belonging to any except his Beloved and in which there is no will other than His will.
9. He whose friendship in relation to God has been established for him feels no aversion in meeting with God (on the Day of Judgment).
10. The veritable friend (of God) is not averse to death if it comes to him, since one who has tasted of intimacy with his Master will love meeting with Him. [Above quotes by Shaykh Abul Hasan al Shadhili]
2. Take heed not to lose confidence in God. Trust in God, for God loves the trustful.
3. Knock on the door of dhikr, seeking shelter with God and avowing your need of Him, if you desire to have spiritual sufficiency.
4. Sustenance is Divinely apportioned. It is not the piety of a pious man that increases it, nor it is the impiety of an impious man that diminishes it.
5. Display not your knowledge in order that men may consider you to be sincere, but display your knowledge in order that God may consider you to be sincere.
6. Act toward God with certainty. Stand fast where He has established you, abstain from forbidden where He has forbidden you, with true insight (basira) in the religious certainty, and be not one of heedless.
7. If a person loves God, and He loves him, his friendship is brought to perfection.
8. The lover in very truth is he over whose heart there is no authority belonging to any except his Beloved and in which there is no will other than His will.
9. He whose friendship in relation to God has been established for him feels no aversion in meeting with God (on the Day of Judgment).
10. The veritable friend (of God) is not averse to death if it comes to him, since one who has tasted of intimacy with his Master will love meeting with Him. [Above quotes by Shaykh Abul Hasan al Shadhili]
Thursday, October 29, 2009
LESSON OF THE DAY 1161
Ayahs of the Day:
Believers, shall I guide you to a trade that will save you from intense agony-----you believe in God and the messenger of God and strive for the cause of God with your properties and your persons------that is best for you, if you knew: God will forgive you your sins and admit you to gardens with streams flowing below, pleasant abodes in gardens of eternity-------that is the great success. And another you will like----help from God, and victory close at hand; so give the good news to the believers. [61: 10 to13]
Hadith of the Day:
The best (act of worship) in the sight of God is that which is done regularly. [Bukhari]
Wise Quote of the Day:
He is not a person of intelligence who does not strengthen himself by the strength of God. [Ibn Ata'Allah]
Guidance of the Day:
Know that one who claims to have a thriving inward but whose outward has been corrupted by his abandoning outward acts of obedience is a pretender and a liar. The one who exerts himself in the reform of his outward aspect by caring about the way he dresses and appears, speaks, moves, sits, stands, and walks, but leaves his inward full of repellent attributes and vile traits, is one of the people of affectation and ostentation, who have turned away from the Lord.
Beware, O brother, of doing in secret that which if seen by people would make you ashamed and worried about being censured. If you cannot make your inward better than your outward, the least that you can do is to make them equal, so that you behave equally well privately and publicly in obeying God's injunctions, avoiding His prohibitions, respecting what He has made sacred, and hastening to please Him. This is the first step a servant takes on the path of special knowledge. Know this! Success is from God. [Al-Haddad, The Book of Assistance]
Food for Thought:
Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you----love, prayer and forgiveness. As long as you don't forgive, who and whatever will occupy rent free space in your mind. Resentment is one burden that is incompatible with your success, always be the first to forgive.
Believers, shall I guide you to a trade that will save you from intense agony-----you believe in God and the messenger of God and strive for the cause of God with your properties and your persons------that is best for you, if you knew: God will forgive you your sins and admit you to gardens with streams flowing below, pleasant abodes in gardens of eternity-------that is the great success. And another you will like----help from God, and victory close at hand; so give the good news to the believers. [61: 10 to13]
Hadith of the Day:
The best (act of worship) in the sight of God is that which is done regularly. [Bukhari]
Wise Quote of the Day:
He is not a person of intelligence who does not strengthen himself by the strength of God. [Ibn Ata'Allah]
Guidance of the Day:
Know that one who claims to have a thriving inward but whose outward has been corrupted by his abandoning outward acts of obedience is a pretender and a liar. The one who exerts himself in the reform of his outward aspect by caring about the way he dresses and appears, speaks, moves, sits, stands, and walks, but leaves his inward full of repellent attributes and vile traits, is one of the people of affectation and ostentation, who have turned away from the Lord.
Beware, O brother, of doing in secret that which if seen by people would make you ashamed and worried about being censured. If you cannot make your inward better than your outward, the least that you can do is to make them equal, so that you behave equally well privately and publicly in obeying God's injunctions, avoiding His prohibitions, respecting what He has made sacred, and hastening to please Him. This is the first step a servant takes on the path of special knowledge. Know this! Success is from God. [Al-Haddad, The Book of Assistance]
Food for Thought:
Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you----love, prayer and forgiveness. As long as you don't forgive, who and whatever will occupy rent free space in your mind. Resentment is one burden that is incompatible with your success, always be the first to forgive.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Pearls of Wisdom....201
1. Take to yourself for armor ritual purification, fasting, worship, patience, performance of the dhikr, recitation of the Qur'an, and disclaiming the strength and power of God, and you will be in safety.
2. The increased blessings are actually the increases of religious knowledge, certainty, and intuitional knowledge (ma'rifa).
3. Every desire that summons you to long for the thing represented in the mind is the tool and weapon of Satan; and every desire that summons you to obey God and long to perform good deeds is praise worthy.
4. So long as your heart is attached to your knowledge and your striving, you are not as one going toward God, and you will not be such until you despair of everything, cleaving to hope in God with every breath---------then you will find help from God.
5. Whenever God honors a servant in his activities and moments of rest, He assigns to him service to perform (ubudiya) and conceals from him his personal gratifications.
6. Steadfastness before God with a clear consciousness of Him is the fairest of obedient acts.
7. He is described as niggardly and blame worthy who holds back his possessions on account of fear of poverty, wrong conjecture about God, contempt for the respect due to the believers.
8. Whenever you find pleasure in your outer or inner states, say: 'Whatever God wills, there is no force except with God.'
9. If we fear God with a fear that makes us secure from everything, then there is no sense at all in having fear of anything, since He is by everything, with everything, above everything, below everything, near everything, enveloping everything.
10. May your servant ship consist in resignation, contentment, acceptance of what is sent, good opinion of God in whatever you encounter, and being occupied with what is most worthy. [Above quotes by Shaykh Abul Hasan al Shadhili]
2. The increased blessings are actually the increases of religious knowledge, certainty, and intuitional knowledge (ma'rifa).
3. Every desire that summons you to long for the thing represented in the mind is the tool and weapon of Satan; and every desire that summons you to obey God and long to perform good deeds is praise worthy.
4. So long as your heart is attached to your knowledge and your striving, you are not as one going toward God, and you will not be such until you despair of everything, cleaving to hope in God with every breath---------then you will find help from God.
5. Whenever God honors a servant in his activities and moments of rest, He assigns to him service to perform (ubudiya) and conceals from him his personal gratifications.
6. Steadfastness before God with a clear consciousness of Him is the fairest of obedient acts.
7. He is described as niggardly and blame worthy who holds back his possessions on account of fear of poverty, wrong conjecture about God, contempt for the respect due to the believers.
8. Whenever you find pleasure in your outer or inner states, say: 'Whatever God wills, there is no force except with God.'
9. If we fear God with a fear that makes us secure from everything, then there is no sense at all in having fear of anything, since He is by everything, with everything, above everything, below everything, near everything, enveloping everything.
10. May your servant ship consist in resignation, contentment, acceptance of what is sent, good opinion of God in whatever you encounter, and being occupied with what is most worthy. [Above quotes by Shaykh Abul Hasan al Shadhili]
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